Hello to all! I am finally back! I have to give you guys all a BIG apology! Although shouldn't give you lame excuses, the truth is that I've been super busy filling out applications for schools and going on personal interviews to all different states! It's been really hectic, and whenever they ask what my favorite subject is, I tell them English, because I love to write and how I can freely express myself and whatnot, and then they ask me if I write in my spare time. And I think to myself, "Yeah, I write gay stories and post them on the internet for people of all ages. You want a sample?" I mean, seriously, what do they want from me! I wish I could freely tell people what I enjoy writing most about, but in a society filled with prejudice, I must keep it myself. tear

Anyway, I don't have to keep it from you guys, so here it goes!

BTW: I dedicate this and every other chapter to my dearest friend, Gabriella Malfoy Potter. You rock! Love ya.

Chapter 4

An Angry Teacher

"Harry, come down for breakfast!" Lily Potter called from the kitchen.

Harry let out a tired groan as he lazily opened one eye, looking over at the digital clock on his nightstand. The luminous green numbers read 8:30. "Ugh," he moaned out again, rolling over on his back to stare at the ceiling in order to give himself some time to wake up a bit more.

Why his mother insisted on waking up early even on Saturdays, Harry would never know.

He slowly rolled over onto his front again, and used his arms to push himself up, as if he were doing push-ups. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he languidly raised his hand to rub the sleep from his eyes. The young teen breathed in deeply and then let it out in a heavy sigh.

Mornings were not the best time of day for Harry.

After another shout from his mother was heard, Harry gave up trying to hold onto the precious warmth of his bed and let his feet meet the floor as he pushed himself off the bed.

Sluggishly, he dragged his feet out of his bedroom, and to the bathroom door on his right. Feeling too lazy to lift his hand all the way up to open the door, he simply used his head. Pushing into the door as a bull would to a man yelling "torro!" Harry looked up into the mirror and decided to finally get ready for the day.

DHDHDH

After brushing his teeth and doing all the other necessities in the bathroom, Harry leisurely made his way down the stairs, still half asleep.

"Well, it's about time," voiced James Potter from behind his newspaper.

"Mmm," Harry murmured sleepily, taking a seat across from his father at the kitchen counter.

"Don't tell me you're still tired!" The older man exclaimed, incredulous.

"Don't yell so loudly," Harry whined.

James let out an amused chuckle before taking a quick glance at his watch and standing up. Unlike Harry, James didn't have the day off. He had to go to work.

"Have fun, Kiddo," James said, giving Harry a chaste kiss on his ruffled hair, before kissing his wife good-bye and then leaving out the front door.

"Here you go, Sweety." Lily said, placing a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon before him.

"Thanks, Mum." Harry murmured, with a small smile.

"You're welcome, Dear. So, is there any particular reason why you're feeling especially groggy this morning?"

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean, you're usually not a morning person as it is. But you're usually only this exhausted when you're worried about something." Lily explained, knowingly.

Harry dropped his head low. He hadn't even been thinking about the detention he was going to have to face on Monday, with Draco. Now, however, it all came rushing back to him. How did his mother know him so well? Mothers…Harry thought to himself, smiling a little.

He didn't want Lily to know, however, so he simply shook his head and answered, "No, Mum. I'm fine."

"Well, I don't exactly believe that, but I'll let you have your space." Lily answered understandingly, as she walked away, getting ready to leave for work, herself. She remembered how she had always gotten annoyed at her own mother when Mrs. Evans always pried into Lily's personal life, and she didn't want to treat Harry in the same, nosy way.

Harry smiled to himself, gratefully, and quickly ate up the food on his plate so that he could get dressed and pay his friend a visit.

DHDHDH

Ronald Weasley was running. He was running from a mob of angry, giant spiders with burning torches in each of their long, spindly legs.

He could feel the sweat glistening on his forehead as he pushed himself to keep running for his life. His lungs were on fire, and his legs were begging for a break.

With a quick look behind him, he gasped, terrified, as he realized that they were getting closer! The red-head looked forward again and urged his legs to move him faster. But he was too slow.

A young female spider, although how he knew it was a female was a mystery to him, threw herself on top of him and tackled him to the ground. Panting, Ron turned himself over to look the Spider in her several eyes with a pleading look in his own blue ones.

"Please, don't kill me!" He whimpered, pathetically.

The spider opened her mouth, oozing with slimy saliva and answered, "I'm not going to kill you, I'm going to-" TAP TAP TAP.

The spider had suddenly started tapping her head against Ron's.

"What the…?"

TAP TAP TAP

"Hey, stop that!"

TAP TAP TAP!

Ron suddenly woke up with a start.

TAP TAP TAP

He turned his head to the right, only to find his best friend, Harry, sitting atop a thick tree branch, and tapping on his window to get Ron's attention. Rolling his eyes, Ron walked over to the window and opened it, allowing Harry access into his room.

"Why didn't you just ring the door bell, like normal people?"

"I didn't want to wake up your family."

"Oh, but you don't mind waking me up?"

Harry answered with a lop-sided smile.

Ron simply shook his head and walked to his bathroom to wash up.

DHDHDH

"Three cokes please," Harry said to the waitress.

After Ron had gotten dressed, they had gone over to get Hermione, who had already been up and dressed. Now, they sat in a small local store called, "The Perfect Place." The trio always came here for either a quick bite to eat, or just to hang out.

"Oh look, there's Luna." Hermione said, with a pleasant smile.

Luna, catching Hermione's friendly smile, walked over to them.

"Hello, Harry," She greeted with a small, shy smile. Although Luna wasn't always all there in the head, it was a well-known fact that she had quite the crush on Harry.

"Hey, Luna."

"Hi to you guys, too, by the way." Luna said to Ron and Hermione, who nodded back in polite greeting. "Well, I guess I just wanted to say hi, which I did. So…bye." Luna said with a blush creeping up her neck, before quickly walking away.

"Well, that was both weird, and entirely pointless." Ron said.

"Oh, Harry. She's such a lovely girl. Why don't you ask her out?" Hermione asked.

"Well, because it's Luna!" Ron exclaimed.

"I wasn't asking you, Ronald. So hush up."

Ron simply glared down at the wooden table.

"I don't know. I'm just not attracted to her, I guess. Maybe I will some day, but not right now." Harry answered.

DHDHDH

The rest of the day had gone by quickly, and Sunday had disappeared so soon, Harry couldn't even remember it. Today was Monday and he was currently sitting in his eighth period class, literature.

"I am going to be giving back your paragraphs on the first chapter of The Red Badge of Courage." Draco announced. "Some of you need to improve on your writing skills, and some of you," he said, grinning in an almost seductive manner, as he handed Harry his paper, "astound me entirely."

Harry tried to ignore Draco's over-friendly smiles, but couldn't help the embarrassed blush as he noticed several of the girls, Pansy Parkinson, in particular, glaring at him enviously.

Looking down at his paper, Harry noticed a check plus and a comment on the very bottom of the page, written in fancy, elegant script, just as Harry had imagined Draco's handwriting would be. It read:

You have excellent ideas Harry, and you have a natural talent for writing. I can't wait until our little "get-together" after school.

Harry quickly crammed the page into his backpack, ignoring Hermione's protests. The emerald-eyes teen normally had no problem with allowing his fellow female friend to see his assignments and grades, but this was one paper that Harry definitely did not want Hermione to see.

Although it didn't outright state anything out of the ordinary, Harry couldn't help but feel something in the pit of his stomach that told him there was more to the comment than it seemed.

"Now, class, I wanted to get into a discussion about…"

The class went on with the exchanging of opinions on the novel and the main character until there were only five minutes left before the end of the class.

"Now, one last, quick question before I let you all go. Who, here, believes that Henry's decision in leaving home for the war was the right thing to do? Yes, Dean?"

"I do." Dean answered simply, with a triumphant smile on his face.

"Alright…" Draco said, with an expectant look on his face. Seeing, however, that Dean didn't know that he was supposed to explain his opinion, Draco decided to give him a little push. "Can you tell me why you feel that way?"

"Oh," Said Dean, with a slight frown at having to actually think more in order to come up with a valid explanation. "Well…I mean, he got to impress all the girls in his brand new uniform, you know? I mean, who doesn't want more chicks if they can have 'em?"

"Yeah!" Several boys called out in agreement.

"Alright, well, would anyone like to disagree with Dean's opinion?"

Harry looked up into Draco's expectant face. He could tell the Draco was trying to get someone to see the true feeling of the story; to see beyond the happy façade of a soldier's life. Hermione's hand was waving about frantically, but Draco wouldn't pick her, and Harry could understand why. Whenever Hermione explained something, she tended to completely lose the class between her impressively large vocabulary and airy tone of intelligence.

Not knowing what took over his brain, Harry felt his arm shoot up into the air.

"Yes, Harry?" Draco asked immediately, a grin of appreciation on his face.

"Well, I…umm…I disagree. I mean, because well, that was just what it looked like on the outside. People would look at the soldiers in their fancy uniforms, smiling like heroes and looking so brave, but that wasn't what it was really like. After they had all their fun and stuff, there was really a lot more to it. See, Henry wasn't going to be able to live like a care-free teenager anymore. War was going to change him and even potentially kill him. And Henry's mom, well, she knew that. She could see past the whole charade that everyone put up so that they could get guys to sign up for the army, and she knew that it wasn't going to be easy. Sure, Henry would have the girls all over him at first, but what about once he left for the camps? What about when he went to war? He'd be lucky to just come out alive. And I think Henry's mom really understood that better than anyone, and that's why she cried." Harry said, looking down with a faint blush after he'd finished his small speech.

"Well, said, Harry!" Draco exclaimed, with a huge smile lighting up his handsome features.

"What a teacher's pet." Pansy Parkinson mumbled enviously, a little too loudly.

Draco's head instantly snapped up, his eyes glaring with fury in her direction. The atmosphere in the room had suddenly turned very tense. "What was that, Pansy?"

"Uh…nothing, Draco." Pansy said in a frightened voice, although she struggled to put on a sweet smile.

"Don't you dare lie to me! I heard exactly what you said. I am usually a pretty easy-going guy, Pansy, but I refuse to have any name calling, whatsoever in my classroom. Is that understood?" He asked, seething with anger.

Pansy nodded dumbly, too frightened to do anything else.

"Good, because if I ever here you call anyone any names again, you will have a week's worth of detention." Draco finished, in a deathly low voice. His eyes continued to crackle with grey-blue sparks of pure anger as he stared at Pansy, still completely consumed by fury.

The students all sat around uncomfortably, desperate for class to end so that they could escape the angry teacher. Harry felt especially sorry for the next class.

He looked down at his hands on the desk, blushing with slight embarrassment at the way Draco had immediately jumped to defend him so intensely. The young teenager idly wondered if anyone else would think that Draco had just done it to defend him or because he hated name-calling in general. He hoped it would be the latter.

The bell finally rang, and everyone scrambled out of the room as quickly as their legs would take them.

DHDHDH

Harry Potter gulped deeply as he stood outside of Draco's room.

"Go on, Harry." Hermione urged, giving him a slight push toward the closed door.

"I'm too nervous." Harry said, before realizing what he'd said. His eyes went wide and he abruptly shut them, dreading the question he would get for his statement. He had to think of an excuse, and quickly.

"Nervous? What for, Mate?" Ron asked.

"Oh, umm…because of…erm…well, you know." Harry said. Some thinking he had done.

"Oh, I know what you mean, Harry." Hermione said, an understanding look in her eyes.

"You do?" Harry asked, stunned. How had she found out? He hadn't told anyone about his confused feelings toward Draco.

"Of course. You're a bit scared because of the way he snapped at Parkinson today, aren't you?" The brunette supplied, helpfully.

Yes! Harry's mind shouted, very thankful, indeed.

"Uh, yeah, Hermione. That's it. I just didn't want to say it because I thought I'd sound like a bit of a coward."

"Oh, Harry, don't worry about that. He only got angry because that Parkinson girl has really been getting on everyone's nerves, lately, and Draco was the first one to actually do something about it. Besides, she had no right to call you a teacher's pet."

"Yeah, but Harry has a point, Hermione." Ron cut in. "You know, as bad as Pansy is, don't you think he overreacted just a bit?"

"Well, maybe. I don't know. I suppose the fact that I very much dislike Parkinson might be making my opinion more subjective than objective." Hermione admitted.

"Listen, Mate, just go on in and do whatever it is that you have to do. It's better to get it over with than prolonging the whole thing. Do you want us to wait for you?"

"Uh, no. It's fine. You guys go on."

"Alright, Harry. Just tell us about it tomorrow, alright?"

"Sure, Hermione. You guys better get going. See you."

The two friends waved good bye and then walked away together, leaving Harry alone.

DHDHDH

This is it. Harry thought to himself.

He took in a deep breath and then slowly let it out. Why was he even feeling so nervous? Draco was a teacher, and as such, he was going to treat Harry in the respectable manner that all teachers treat their students.

…right?

AN: I know, you guys hate me. First, I don't update for nearly two months, and then, I break my promise and leave the detention for next week! I'm sorry! Listen, I just thought that you guys might want me to at least update now just to let you know that I hadn't given up on the story. If I had included the detention, I wouldn't have update until next week anyway, so in the end, you're still going to get the detention in the next chapter. At least this way, you got a small taste of the story. The reason I hadn't update for so long was because I have been applying to schools and have been terribly going to personal interviews and preparing myself to leave a good impression on the admissions officers. But I have finally finished all my interviews and have nothing left to do except wait. So I can go back to updating once a week as I had initially planned. I apologize if this chapter sucks. The next is where the plot really starts to heat up between Harry and Draco. This time I promise to have the detention in the next chapter for sure, because I mean, it's not as if I can actually prolong it for any longer. Oh and also, I know some of the stuff in this chapter seemed just like it was dragging and unnecessary, but I promise it was ALL NECESSARY. I have it all planned out. (Except for Ron's psycho spider dream. That was just fun to write.) Toodles.

xoxo Spideria xoxo