It was a sunny afternoon. Term had just started for Harry's Seventh Year. It was odd without Dumbledore, but nevertheless, Harry had decided to come back. The Order of the Phoenix may be in disarray, with its leader dead, but Hogwarts found itself open, and more importantly, secure in the hands of Minerva McGonagall.

It was upon her request, and mostly Hermione's, who McGonagall managed to convince first, that Harry now found himself back at Hogwarts.

"I will assist you to become an Auror if it is the last thing I do!" he remembered the now headmistress of Hogwarts shouting at that dreadful woman Umbridge less than two years earlier.

Life was boring at Hogwarts. Despite their numerous attempts to convince Ron otherwise, his brothers had been more persuasive and hired him as their aide. He had even been offered a keeping position on a small Quidditch team as well.

"They must have bewitched him," Hermione told Harry accusingly, "Fred and George."

But Harry thought there wasn't really any proof of that.

"You know," Ron had told them during their last meeting, "I can apparate to Hogsmeade on your weekends. Just send me an owl and I'll be there, maybe even permanently..." he had whispered that last part. "You remember Fred and George talking about a branch shop at Hogsmeade? They might just let me run it, if I prove to be good enough."

With Hermione once more seeking wisdom in books or the library or wherever she was, Harry wandered aimlessly around the corridors. Maybe I ought to organise another D.A. meeting, thought Harry. But then it hit him; who would want to be in Dumbledore's Army now that Dumbledore was dead?

While Harry was thinking about his first kiss from Cho Chang at the end of that meeting two years earlier, Harry suddenly found himself on the 7th floor at the corridor leading to the room of requirements. The door was plainly visible. Was someone using it right now?

Harry paused for a minute, trying to memorise the way the room had looked while he was there. Last year, while trying to hide a book from his former potions master, he had found it full of old and dusty stuff. The year before, he remembered it being full of dark magic detectors and stuff like that.

He never really got to check out most of those, and they might turn out to be quite helpful in his career as an Auror if he did. He remembered now that Mad-Eye Moody had quite a collection of them. But then that had been an impostor.

Harry waited one more second with his hand on the door knob, then resolutely turned it and stepped in. Expecting to walk right into the D.A. classroom the way he had left it over a year ago, Harry was surprised to find it the way it was when the Death Eaters had emerged from it only a few months earlier. Sure, house elves seemed to have been around to clean up some of the mess, and... Harry froze in his tracks. On the dusty floor was what looked like fresh footsteps, many of them. And he could hear the sound of someone sobbing.

Harry silently crept around one of the bookcases to look for the origin of the noise. It was quite a surprise to find, sitting on a crate with his back turned to Harry, the figure of someone who looked familiar. The bit of white hair sticking out of the black Hogwarts robes was unmistakably a feature of... Draco Malfoy.

Harry looked around the rest of the room. He hadn't heard or seen Malfoy ever since he came back to school. After what he had done last year, it was amazing to find him back at school at all. However, Crabbe and Goyle seemed to be missing from the picture unfolding in front of him.

Convinced that it was just the two of them, and that Draco didn't seem to pose any threat to him, Harry cleared his throat and spoke out. "Are you hiding in here again, Draco? What evil are you up to now?"

Draco jumped up and looked around, "You!" he shouted, as his hand dove in his robes, looking for his wand. His eyes looked red and his cheeks were glistering. He had obviously been crying. Seeing Harry there seemed to surprise him as much as the sight of Draco had surprised Harry.

Harry's heart jumped; he was facing his worst enemy and hadn't even bothered to take out his wand. However, neither had Draco, whose hand was frozen in his pocket, clutching his wand.

"Where are the others?" Draco asked. "Which others?" asked Harry. "That mud... sorry, Hermione, and the Quidditch King."

Harry's ears went pink. Did Draco just apologise to him? Did he use Hermione's name for the first time in probably his whole life? "I..." Harry stuttered, "I don't see Crabbe or Goyle either."

"They joined the Death Eaters."

"Oh", said Harry, a little apologetically. "Well, Hermione is reading and..." Harry paused for a second. "None of the Weasleys came back this year."

"Not even Miss Bat Bogey?" asked Draco.

Harry shook his head, while Draco sunk back on his box. Both of his hands had been fumbling at his face, as if he wasn't convinced that the bat wings the youngest Weasly once hexed him with had totally vanished from his face.

Harry had still not taken his wand out, and Draco's hand didn't return to his pocket either.

"So what brings you here?" asked Draco. "Are you coming to mock at my misery?"

It didn't take Harry long to figure out what Draco might be miserable about. Both his parents and most of his relatives were in prison, and none of his friends were around. "No," said Harry, "When we were practicing defence here, there were quite a few useful items around that I wanted to check out."

"Well, sorry, I didn't exactly want anything useful when I came in here."

"And you didn't exactly want to be cheered up either," replied Harry, looking at all the dusty, dull, and broken items in the room.

"Oh, I even tried to fix some more of this stuff, Potter", said Draco. "But I just can't do it anymore."

"But at least your parents aren't..." Harry didn't finish his sentence.

"They are not with the Dementors anymore..." started Draco. "I visited them before coming to school. They were livid about it, wanted me to stay with relatives. But the first three they mentioned were already sitting in cells a few blocks away from theirs."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Harry.

"Well, I'm better off here anyway, away from them. Quite frankly I wouldn't want them to break out from Azkaban right now. I've been fleeing from my father ever since he sent me that howler threatening to kill me because I had failed to kill Dumbledore. He called me a weakling. I don't know what will happen once the Dark Lord finds me."

"Well, he won't be coming through there now, is he?" asked Harry, pointing at what appeared to be the broken remains of a vanishing cabinet piled up in the corner. He sank down on the crate next to Draco.

Draco stared straight into Harry's eyes. Harry stared back for a moment. They had never been so close to each other in their entire lives, yet here they were, not trying to kill each other for once. When Draco looked away, his wand was suddenly in his hand.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he chanted, pointing the wand at the remains of the closet, which started to float a couple of feet above the ground. Then he looked at Harry again, while the pieces of cabinet crashed to the floor. "I repaired it last year, and demolished it this year. It's easier than mending stuff, you know."

For the first time Draco seemed to be smiling at Harry, and Harry smiled right back.

"You sure did a thorough job on that one," said Harry.

"Does your scar still hurt?" asked Draco, now pointing at Harry's scar.

Before Harry could nod an answer, Draco touched his forehead.

"Does that hurt you?" Draco asked.

Harry shook his head.

"Weird," said Draco. "Not that I wanted to hurt you, but I do wear the Dark Lord's mark, you know."

"I'd expected it," said Harry, while Draco rolled up his sleeve to show him the mark.

"Just don't touch it with a wand," said Draco. "They would all know."

Harry rubbed his thumb over the mark a couple of times. The serpent looked quite miserable itself, but didn't seem to move at all.

"It doesn't come off either," said Draco, smiling. "Believe me, I've tried."

"You don't want to be a death eater anymore then?"

"Well, I..." Draco started, and then jumped up so suddenly that he caused the box to tip over and made Harry, who'd only been sitting on the edge of the box, crash to the ground with a loud thud.

"What are you doing?" asked Draco, who had heard a hissing noise emerging from Harry's mouth.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I thought if I asked it to leave, it might just do so."

Draco looked at his arm. The mark was still there. "Nice try," he said, extending a hand to Harry.

Harry grabbed Draco's hand and allowed him to pull him up.

"Not the most comfortable thing now, is it?" Draco asked, gesturing to the box and giving it a slight kick.

"Not quite," said Harry, trying to dust off his robes.

"I know just the place," said Draco, beckoning Harry to follow him.

Draco looked at the door before leaving the room of requirements. It would certainly look odd if anyone saw the two of them wandering around the school together.

It only took them about a minute to reach a statue that looked very much like Boris the Bewildered.

"The prefects' bathroom?" asked Harry.

"Yeah, your hair could use a wash and..." said Draco, "Well, you'll see."

"But you're not a prefect anymore," said Harry, his voice full of astonishment, having noticed that Draco wasn't wearing his badge anymore.

"They didn't bother to change the password, and I don't reckon anyone will be using it anyway, what with the nice weather outdoors."

Harry reluctantly followed Draco into the bathroom. A warm bath would certainly be more comfortable than a wooden box, but still... sharing a bath with Draco? Someone he had loathed only a few hours ago?

"Do you mind?" asked Draco, pausing after unbuttoning his robes half way already.

"No", answered Harry, not quite sure what to do. He had never shared a bath with anyone except Moaning Myrtle and perhaps his cousin Dudley when he had been just a baby. He was about to disrobe when he suddenly noticed what Draco must have meant by "you'll see."

"Oh my goodness, what happened to you?" asked Harry, looking at Draco, who was wearing nothing but his underwear.

"I told you I was made to live with relatives for a while, right?"

"They beat you up?" asked Harry, quite astonished.

"Crabbe and Goyle did," said Draco, "They stayed at my place, too. Their parents are..."

"In Azkaban, too," completed Harry.

"Yeah," said Draco. "They weren't exactly proud at my hesitance to finish off Dumbledore either." Taking off his underwear and stepping painfully into the empty tub, he asked, "You won't mind if I add a bit of soothing solution to this?"

Harry was struggling to get out of his robes, still not quite over the shock of being in a room with a naked Draco Malfoy. "Of course not," he muttered, quickly glancing at Draco to make sure he wouldn't be paying too much attention to him as he dropped his underwear.

Blushing, Harry climbed into the bathtub. Draco and Harry both stared at the foaming water that was rising rapidly. Harry glanced sideways a couple of times, trying to take in more of Draco's bruises.

"They're only bruises; you can watch," said Draco, looking at Harry's face. "They must have inflicted quite a few of those on you and your friends, too," he added.

"Yeah," said Harry, now turning to inspect Draco more fully. "So did my cousin and his bully friends back home."

"Really?" queried Draco, "I'm pleased to hear the results of this sort of Muggle duelling do eventually fade away."

"They do," answered Harry, feeling the hotness in his cheeks fade as the hot foamy water finally rose high enough to hide his private parts. "You may be stuck with purple and blue spots for a couple of weeks longer though, but they'll eventually turn yellow and disappear."

"Good," said Draco, before briefly sinking under the water entirely. "Better get a move on then," he said, once his head had emerged from the water. "Here, let me help you," he added, moving slowly behind Harry.

Not sure what to expect, Harry allowed Draco to push him under the water a few moments later, gently rinsing his head for him. "Boy, that room sure is dusty," he commented.

Harry laid himself back in the water, trying to relax as Draco fumbled with the taps, trying to find the right kind of shampoo. "Here now, this smells lovely," he said, pouring a solution over Harry's head and gently washing his hair.

"Thanks," said Harry, who had never had his hair washed like that before. "Dumbledore was right, you know. You could have become one of us." At this Harry turned around to face Draco, who had turned pink in the face.

"I didn't know you heard that." Draco added, "I wish I had accepted his offer, then none of all this would have happened." After a moment of silence, Draco asked, "Friends?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Will you do a good word to Hermione for me?"

"What?" asked Harry in astonishment. "Tell her about all this?"

"I don't think that's a particularly good idea," said Draco. "But I'll come around and apologise to her one of these days. Do you reckon she could help me with some Muggle remedies for these bruises?"

"I'm sure she can!" said Harry. "But she might need a bit more convincing to do it for you."

Draco smiled again. "Thanks, Harry," he said, trying to take him into an embrace.

"We're..." Harry started, but Draco interrupted him with a painful grimace on his face.

"Careful now!" Draco said as he leaned close against Harry, patting him softly on the back.

Knowing how painful this must be for Draco, Harry just rested his head on his shoulder and put his hands on his back.

"We better get out of here before anyone notices," Draco whispered in Harry's ear, after a good five seconds.

"Good idea," grinned Harry, as he made to jump out of the bath tub.

"Wait!" shouted Draco, grabbing Harry's behind and pulling him back into the water. "Let me get that shampoo out of your hair first."

They took turns making sure none of the foamy solution was left in their hair for a few more minutes, before finally climbing out of the water.

"You know, you look much better already," said Harry, staring quite unashamedly at Draco, who was reaching for a towel.

"Thanks, Harry. I'll let you know when I get back in here. You're always welcome to join!" Draco said, handing Harry a towel. "But I remind you though..." he added, rather alarmed, "I don't exactly want you to bring Hermione in here when you come next."
"Right", answered Harry, as Draco finally started to dry himself. "That would definitely be a bad idea." Harry laughed.

Five minutes later they were both back in their robes and ready to leave the room. The water had drained itself from the bath tub and they had folded the towels back in a corner of the room.

"We shouldn't be seen leaving together", whispered Draco. "See you later Harry." With a big smile on his face Draco winked at Harry and left the bathroom.

Harry left about a minute later and went straight to his dormitory, thinking hard of a way to convince Hermione to be nice to Draco.