Disclaimer: Anything that you recognise does not belong to me; it belongs to the very talented J.K. Rowling. Lucky her! I am doing this purely to see if I can, I am not making any money off of this what so ever. Unlucky me!

Also, I have read a lot of stories on this site, so if anything is familiar, it is not on purpose… Could you simply take it as an homage?

Well this is just great, abso-sodding-lutely fan-bloody-tastic thought Draco as he added skinned shrivel figs to his cauldron. My mate, the person I am destined to be with forever, is the saviour of the wizarding world, the one person I need to appear to loath more than anyone else. Why do these things always happen to me? I mean, I am a good person, I work hard, I respect my elders, what have I done to deserve this? Fully involved in his self pity, Draco did not notice when he started to deviate off the potion on the board. Suddenly a hand grabbed his wrist.

"Hey, watch it! Malfoy if you stuff up my grade point average I will definitely make your life miserable! I didn't endure two weeks of straight up boredom to have Professor Snape give up on me on the first day!" Harry lectured as he removed the vial of holy water from Draco's hand and quickly added some salt to neutralise the effect of the lemon juice Draco had inadvertently added. Draco, concentrating very hard on not swooning at Harry's touch, drew his attention back to the task at hand.

"Right, sorry." He muttered looking up at the board to see where he was up to.

Slowly he was regaining his senses and what Harry had said filtered through his befuddled brain.

"What do you mean two weeks of boredom?" He asked curiously

"I spent two weeks in my room at the end of the holidays learning my books and reviewing the past couple of years work." Harry replied tersely "I decided to get a head start so I would be able to keep up easier." Suddenly Harry stopped, "Why am I telling you this? You don't want to hear it. I'm going to get back to work, don't do anything stupid Malfoy."

With that, the two young men went back to work, both absorbed in their potions and no other mishaps occurred for the duration of the lesson. When the lesson had reached the stage when the potion only needed to be stirred every five minutes Draco went back to his own thoughts. It was well known that Harry was Voldemort's main target, he'd even overheard his father nattering about some kind of prophecy that involved the two and one not living while the other lived, of course he wasn't supposed to know about that, he'd overheard it one night when he'd been snooping through his parent's room for anything interesting and his father had walked in talking to Narcissa. How would this affect Draco though, having his mate in mortal peril on a regular basis? How was he going to play quidditch against the guy for crying out loud? Were veelas able to harm their mates? He certainly didn't want to harm Harry, nor did he like the idea of anyone else hurting him come to think of it. But then again, he had never really wanted to harm Harry intentionally, the hexes and curses between them over the years had always been non-harmful, mainly stuff that caused things to grow or embarrassing situations. Resolving to read his Defence text book again to see if there were any answers to his questions, Draco packed up his things and left the classroom after depositing his finished potion on his Godfathers desk.

Harry stared after Draco thoughtfully; the Potions class had been an interesting lesson. He was quite proud of the fact that he had been able to successfully complete the potion on the board and it seemed that he had retained at least some of the information he had learnt over the summer holidays as he had known what to do to fix Draco's mistake. What had been really interesting though was the blonde's attitude towards him, not once had the Slytherin been nasty to him and he hadn't set out to sabotage Harry's potion or anything. In fact the only time Draco had sounded like he was going to insult Harry; he had faded off and never completed the threat. He had also sounded genuinely curious to hear about Harry's summer when he had mentioned it, that was another thing Harry couldn't believe; he had willingly shared information with Malfoy. Not very interesting information and he had been purposely vague about the circumstances but he and Malfoy had… talked. Like normal acquaintances, not the mortal enemies that Harry knew them to be. Hermione came up to stand next to Harry

"You ok?" She asked, looking at Harry with a concerned expression

When Harry had told her and Ron about what happened during the summer holidays yesterday her heart had been filled with compassion. Hermione couldn't imagine what Harry must be going through in his mind at the moment, but she had worried when Professor Snape had placed him next to Draco Malfoy for the class, what her friend did not need at the moment was an hour and forty five minutes of verbal abuse and mind games.

"Yeah," Harry answered

He finished packing his equipment into his bag and put his finished potion on Professor Snape's desk, still looking at the door that the blonde had left though moment earlier.

"Just a bit confused" he elaborated with a rueful smile at his favourite girl in the world.

"Confused?" Hermione questioned

"Yeah, Malfoy and I made it through an entire lesson without either of us seriously damaging the other in any way, shape or form. I even saved him from stuffing up his potion permanently if you can believe that."

"Harry, that's wonderful news!" Hermione squeeled, she squeezed Harry around the waist in an impromptu hug as they walked up the stairs, away from the dungeons.

"Did you do some study during the holidays?" Hermione was very excited; usually she couldn't get either of her boys to do any study at school let alone at home during the holidays.

"Yeah, after what happened with Mark, I didn't really feel like going out, so I read my books, and our books from last year, and my old assignments." Harry said softly, the smile that had been beginning to grow with Hermione's excitement dying on his face. "Ask me anything, I followed your lead and memorised the books." He said, the smile returning as his best female friend stared at him in shock.

Hermione quickly recovered, "Oh my goodness, this is going to be such a great year!" She exclaimed, "You are going to be so ahead with all that you know so any homework we get will be easy, and with you doing your homework Ron will too and this is just going to be great! You guys will be able to blitz NEWTs because of your study; oh I am just so proud of you both!"

"Mi, I think your getting a bit ahead of yourself, why don't we wait until we get our first piece of homework and go from there, hey?" Harry suggested with a smile. Hermione might scoff at Divination, but she had just done a very good job at predicting a rosy future for himself and Ron.

"Oh shush you, come one, we've got Defence now, let's go find Ron"

Ron had decided against becoming an auror, preferring to follow in his brother Bill's shoes by going into Gringotts, the wizarding bank, this had enabled him to drop Potions, something that he loved to lord over Harry, he didn't have to put up with Snape anymore but Harry did.

Collecting Ron and their books from the Gryffindor common room they made their way to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and took seats at the front. Remembering their third year, most of the seventh years were eagerly anticipating Professor Lupin's defence class; he was one of the only competent DADA teachers they had had in their school careers.

A certain blonde Slytherin sitting in the back of the classroom groaned when he saw the trio walk into the room. Not only was his mate in this class but so was the smartest girl in the school, if anyone would be able to work out his secret it would be her. Draco's dreams of a stress free seventh year went flying out the classroom window as the three Gryffindors sat down.