By: PepperjackCandy
Rating: PG13 (up to "second base" explicit, beyond that implied)
Disclaimer: This is J.K. Rowling's universe. I just play here.
Warning: This will be a slash story (Harry/Draco) eventually, though romantically-slashy, rather than erotically-slashy. Hence the PG-13 rating.
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Harry returned to his room in Gryffindor tower, and as the sky outside began to lighten, fell down into his bed, remembering to change into his nightshirt first this time.
Ron woke him up. "Where did you go last night?" He asked.
"Go?" Fortunately, Harry was good at coming up with answers at a moment's notice. "Oh. I couldn't sleep, so I got up to work on our Potions essay." The look on Ron's face told Harry that he was going to raise some kind of objection, so Harry added, "I didn't want to be bothered, so I left the Tower and found someplace quiet to work."
Ron nodded, to show that Harry had answered his question. "Where did you go?"
"Oh," Harry hedged, wishing he could tell Ron the truth, but he had to keep up the 'business as usual' façade. "Just a quiet room downstairs."
"What about Malfoy?"
"What about him?"
"Did you ever talk to him about . . . you know?"
"Oh. Well, yeah, I talked to him."
"And?"
"And," Harry shrugged, business as usual, he reminded himself, "he did it 'cause his father expected him to. You know, family tradition and all that."
"That's *all*?" Ron asked, surprised.
"Isn't it enough?" Harry responded, genuinely confused.
"Yes, but, I don't know. I was expecting something . . . more."
"Like?"
"Like he wanted to get the inside track to You-Know-Who in order to kill you. Something like that."
"He might very well have had something like that in mind. But he certainly wouldn't admit it to me, now, would he?"
"True." Ron admitted.
After they got cleaned up, Harry and Ron went down to breakfast. The room was abuzz with the news that Charlie and Trent would be giving a lecture on dragon behavior that afternoon.
"You gonna go?" Ron asked his friends. Then, as his breast puffed up with pride, he added. "I don't need to. Since they're my brother and brother-in-law."
"Can't." Hermione responded. "I have an essay to do for History. Plus," she added, looking pointedly at Ron and Harry, "the essay for Potions."
Harry shrugged. "I've already gotten a good start on my Potions essay."
"Really? When?"
"Last night. I, er, couldn't sleep, so I found a quiet corner downstairs and got most of my notes for it done."
"Do you mind if I have a look at them?" Ron asked. "I'm not even sure where to start on mine."
Hermione sighed.
"What?" Ron said testily.
Just then, Dumbledore stopped by the Gryffindor table. "Harry? If I may speak to you for a moment?"
"Yes, sir." Suspecting that he knew what Dumbledore wanted to talk about, Harry stood and followed Dumbledore down the hallway to the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to his office.
"Spring Surprise!" Dumbledore said to the gargoyle, who promptly jumped aside to admit the Professor and student.
Once they were in Dumbledore's office and had taken their usual seats, Dumbledore said, "It's my understanding that tensions between you and Mr. Malfoy have been relaxed a little recently?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, as I told you the night of Mr. Malfoy's unfortunate accident, Professor Snape and I have decided that the only way to ensure the safety of both you and Mr. Malfoy, as well as the rest of the students, to take is to keep everything . . ."
"Business as usual. Draco and I fight, he complains about you, and so on."
Dumbledore smiled. "I see that you and Mr. Malfoy have been talking."
"I went down to visit him last night." Harry admitted. "He told me about the talk he had with you."
"Are you willing to help out?"
Harry nodded. "I sort of have to, don't I?"
Dumbledore nodded. "And I'll give *you* a message to take to Mr. Malfoy. I assume that you and he will be captains of your respective Quidditch teams this year?"
"I am. I'm not sure about Draco."
"Well, tell him that the pitch will be ready for you to begin practicing next week-end. That means that you should put your minds - separately, of course - to deciding who will be on your teams, and in which positions."
Harry went through the rest of the day in a blur, working on homework, getting caught up on reading his novel, and trying to avoid calling Draco by his given name
They were in the library working on their homework. Harry had just given Ron his notes on the Potions reading. "What's with all of these question marks?" Ron asked.
"Huh?" Harry realized that he'd been doodling on the page of notes that he'd loaned to Ron. Business as usual. Business as usual. He repeated to himself. "Oh. Just doodles. You know, trying to figure out what Snape's looking for on this essay."
That seemed to satisfy Ron, who responded. "Oh."
Finally, though, it was bedtime. Harry put on his nightshirt and got into bed, after making sure that Hedwig would come and wake him in a couple of hours.
He needn't have worried, though, because he woke about half an hour earlier than when Hedwig came to his window, so by the time she tapped softly to wake him, he was already dressed and had his Potions book and notes, plus extra scrolls and quills for Draco, in his bag.
He quietly slipped from the room and down the stairs. Then, with a wave at the fat lady, he headed off to the hospital wing.
Draco's eyes were closed, and he was breathing deeply and evenly. He's asleep. Should I wake him? Well, he asked me to visit him . . .
"Draco?" He whispered, but got no response.
He touched Draco gently on the shoulder, sending Draco sitting upright immediately, gasping in fear.
"Sorry! It's just me." Harry whispered.
"Oh." Draco was still breathing heavily.
"Didn't mean to frighten you."
"That's all right." Draco shook his head slightly. "It's just that I haven't been having very pleasant dreams lately." He was so pointedly not looking at his left arm, he might as well have been waving it in Harry's face.
Harry nodded understandingly. "That's okay. So, you wanna get started on the Potions essay now?"
"Sure. I did the reading, and it seems to me that the biggest drawback of armadillo bile is that you can't tell *what* it'll do when combined with another ingredient until you try it. I mean, combine it with cactus juice and you get a potent cure for the furnunculus curse, but if you combine it with rattlesnake venom, you get a cloud of noxious gas that explodes on contact with anything containing carbon - paper, wood, food . . . ."
Harry handed Draco a scroll and a quill. "That's pretty much what I came up with, too. What did you get for the best benefit of it?"
"You won't like my thought."
"Try me." Harry smiled.
"You can't tell what it'll do when combined with another ingredient until you try it. You could get a cure for a rare disease, you could be annihilated. It'd be a good way to get rid of an enemy."
Harry nodded. "You were right. I don't like it." He laughed at Draco's disappointed expression. "But I could completely see the advantages." He added.
"What about you?"
"I guess I was thinking along the lines of, like you said, the potential benefits to everyone. I mean, even combining it with rattlesnake venom would be a good thing, if you could guarantee that the explosion would be directed the way you need - opening locked doors, things like that."
"I can see that, too." Draco smiled as the pair got to work on their essays.
They sat in companionable silence while they wrote, the only sound the scratching of their quills on their scrolls.
"Draco?" Harry asked.
"Yeah?"
"What're you going to do about your potion? I mean, won't Crabbe and Goyle notice that it's . . ."
"Gone? Yeah, well, Snape and I talked it over, and he took a couple of grams from everyone's cauldrons to put into Crabbe's and mine. Hopefully no-one will notice the slight difference in the levels."
"Maybe they'll chalk it up to evaporation. After all, they've all got to sit for a week."
They went back to work.
"Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
"For what?"
"For saving my life. Snape says that if you hadn't come along, I would have bled to death."
"No problem." Harry smiled.
"It's just . . ." He stopped, then looked at Harry. Seeming to draw some strength from Harry's green eyes, he continued. "I hated it. The feeling of being . . . owned. Marked. Branded.
"And I just needed for it to *end.*" He laughed humorlessly. "The thing is, they think there's a chance that once the skin's all healed, it'll come back."
"Really?" Harry seemed to feel some of Draco's pain.
Draco nodded sadly.
They were close, so close to each other and Harry longed to reach across the few inches that separated them to offer Draco some comfort, but something made him hold back, some fear of rejection, perhaps. So, instead, he offered sympathy with his eyes, and went back to work.
Sooner than he expected, Harry finished his essay, rolled up his scroll and put it and his quill back in his bag. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
"Harry?"
"What?"
"You've been asleep for over an hour."
"Asleep?" When he opened his eyes, he could tell from the fogginess of his brain that Draco was telling the truth. "Sorry."
"That's all right. You looked . . . like you needed the sleep." It sounded like Draco wanted to say something else, but he never completed that other thought.
"Not as much as I'm sure you do." Harry sat up and started arranging his things in his bag, preparing to leave.
"No. Please stay."
Harry looked at Draco, surprised.
"We need to make up some fights to have tomorrow. You know, business as usual, and all that."
"Oh." Harry was disappointed that Draco didn't just want him for his company. "You're going back to classes tomorrow?"
Draco nodded. "They were just keeping me here until we were sure I'd make it. The only healing I need is superficial now."
And emotional, and spiritual, Harry added silently, but knew he could never say those words aloud, and that Draco wouldn't find that healing here in the hospital wing. Only by returning to his life could he heal those wounds.
"Oh. Professor Dumbledore gave me a message to give you." He said instead. "He says that the Quidditch pitch will be ready for us to start practices next week-end. That is, if you're going to be captain of the Slytherin team this year."
"You're Gryffindor's captain? Of course you are." Draco answered his own question. "Yeah, I'm Slytherin's captain. If I can get their respect after this."
"I thought," Harry said, winking to indicate he was joking, "that Slytherins ruled by fear."
"Actually, that's pretty close to the truth." Draco admitted.
Harry wasn't sure how to respond to this, so he dragged their conversation back on-topic. "So, what should we fight about first?"
"How about . . ." Draco thought, "I can blame Dumbledore, loudly, for my injury?"
"Oh! Good one! Let's see . . . have you thought of a cover story for your injury yet?"
"Not really."
"You could chalk it up to, like, a bite from a big spider, and get Dumbledore and Hagrid in one."
Draco's eyes lit up. "That sounds like something I would do. I, of course, would threaten to owl my father about it all."
Harry laughed. "Brilliant! And the whole time you're complaining, I'll glare at you spitefully."
Draco laughed, too. "I think we're onto something here. You know, I haven't made anyone's cauldron explode for a while. If tomorrow's potion isn't too dangerous, would you mind?"
Harry thought. "I *think* I have a clean robe in my trunk. Let me check. If I do, I think we could manage an exploding cauldron." He grinned.
They came up with another couple of days' worth of harassment, then Harry saw that the sun was coming up. "I've gotta go before they notice I'm missing. Remember, business as usual."
The two boys shared a grin, and Harry blew out the candle by Draco's bedside.
"Thanks." Harry could hear Draco smiling in his tone.
"You're welcome." Harry smiled back before he returned to his own room.