"I told you I didn't hate you and wanted to know why you hated me in Flourish & Blotts, the year the Chamber of Secrets was opened."

"You did, I was...quite in denial about myself back then. For a long while. Always attempting to one up you to get you mad so one day you'd confront me and it worked. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

Harry tried not to speak as he and Ron, disguised as Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle respectively, watched Malfoy prance around the Slytherin common room before settling on a nearby couch after retrieving them from the hallway.

They wanted to punch him out a few times, but they bided their time and waited. "Honestly, according to my father, Dumbledore was the worst thing that ever happened to this school."

Harry didn't mean to get so angry, but it came rising to the surface before he could stop himself. "You're wrong!"

"What!?" Draco, squinting, moved to his feet to tower over them, seemingly furious. "You think there is someone here who is /worse/ than Dumbledore?"

Ron, as Crabbe, looked over at him panicked and he floundered on the spot before speaking again, hoping he sounded both like Goyle and confident. "Harry Potter?"

Draco reeled back, the look in his eyes frantic. "I told you never to mention him around me."

"Why?" Ron couldn't stop himself from asking next to him. "You hate him that much?"

"No! Now shh!" Draco quickly looked around them as some of the currently studying student's eyes turned to them before moving away again and he lowered his voice to watch them carefully. "I told you about my...situation with him in confidence and all it takes is one gossiping witch for this whole school to know about it."

He huffed. "I'm quite lucky that mostly no one knows that Ganger's tutoring me either, so I would appreciate it if you keep your big mouths zipped on both of those issues."

Draco almost looked...disheartened as he continued. "If my father even hears a word about me having a crush on 'Saint Potter" or even boys in general...I'll be ruined. He'll kill me."

It was lucky that the potion had started to wear off then and they'd had to run for the hills (or really, the girl's toilets) because otherwise, he and Ron wouldn't have known just what to do with themselves.

"Hermione was tutoring you?" Harry was so confused. "That's...no, that's not how the conversation went. You threatened her and told us that you hated the Weasleys."

"No, Harry." Draco looked a little fired up, but whatever flames he'd conjured soon burnt out. "That was a false memory, Hermione helped create it for you, given you wanted your memory not to be compromised. To be honest, I was quite angry with her when I found out about that interaction. I actually became...well, we weren't friends at first, but she was a good help to me. Behind the scenes of course."

"So...when did we…?" He went to ask, but Draco shook his head. "Keep concentrating."

Harry (and Ron seemingly) had omitted the part of the conversation where Malfoy had confessed to having a crush on Harry, but in that time, Harry had found out a lot more information about the Chamber of Secrets.

A lot more information that was suddenly missing from his room along with belongings that were trashed practically everywhere and by the time he'd located Malfoy (despite Hermione and Ron equally attempting to stop him) and pulled him around into a hallway to confront him, he was a red as the Gryffindor house colors.

Holding him up against the wall, Harry angrily sneered at him. "Did you take it!?"

"Take what, Potter? Put me down!"

"You being so high and mighty, you would have done it or you sent someone else to do it! There are only so many students that know the common room password and most of them are in your house So tell me where you put it!"

"Put what!?"

"The diary! You had to have taken it!"

"Whatever delusion you are under-" Draco had a calming note to his tone that unfortunately for Harry, was starting to work on him. "-it doesn't involve me. I have no idea what you are talking about and the last thing you need, Potter, is to be taken to Azkaban."

Huffing, Harry conceded that despite him being a pain, he was correct and dropped him from the wall, but didn't let go of his robes, bringing his face within inches of the other, so close that he could smell the pumpkin juice Malfoy must have had with breakfast that morning.

"I know it was you and one way or another, I will find out." He didn't mean to gaze into Malfoy's eyes, but he briefly became lost in them, before Malfoy's hands pulled his own off his robes and straightened them, the touch lingering on his skin even as he walked away.

He wouldn't see Draco again until he'd walked out of Dumbldore's office and showed up Draco's father by not only giving back the diary, but freeing Dobby as well, but just as he was putting his suitcase on the trolley to go to the station, he appeared. "Potter."

"Malfoy." Harry nodded, both of them looking at each other awkwardly before Harry spoke again. "I believe I owe an apology. For the...uh…"

"Confrontation? I'm used to it, Potter." Draco sighed, but nodded. "I will accept it, but that's not the reason why I'm here. Luckily, Mother hasn't noticed I've slipped away for a moment. I just wanted to thank you, actually. For the house elf."

"Thank me?"

"Yeah." He nodded, shuffling from side to side. "Father not only is a terrible but fistudious man, but he treated him worse than he treats me some days. Freeing home as the right thing to do, despite the trickery you put into it. I'll never hear the end of it going home, I'm sure."

"Right." Harry didn't know really what to say to that, so he just nodded and the awkward silence stretched in between them before Draco spoke again. "You should most likely go and catch your transport to the station, before it leaves you."

"Of course." Harry went to go to the gate where others were waiting to either the station, but then in a leap of faith as Malfoy turned around to leave, he stopped and rushed over to him, magiking a contact card. "Here Malfoy. Write to me, yeah? If you want."

Malfoy, shocked and a little bewildered, just tucked the card into his pants and nodded before stalking away back to wherever his parents or own transport were waiting for him.