Harry Potter had tried to leave the tournament, but just one sentence from Malfoy, "You won't get any better without working for it..." had stuck in his craw. Well, he'd show Malfoy that he wasn't a worthless excuse for a Hufflepuff. With quill and ink, he was analyzing Ron's match against Padma. She looked so much like Parvati that it was eerie. And Harry kept wanting to cheer for Ron, whenever he did something interesting.

It was aggravating, because Curt didn't know Ron at all.

Draco Malfoy had turned those unnervingly silver eyes towards the game, and was at least providing intelligible commentary, even if he was apparently just a bad at playing as Harry.

"They opened with Queens Gambit, then Weasley castled, and after that Padma tried to run a pawn home." When Malfoy was commentating, and not sneering down his nose at people, he honestly wasn't all that bad.

It helped that there was still dirt under his nails, from Mandy sending him to repot her favorite plant.

Harry never trusted people who didn't have dirt under their nails.

Ron won the tournament, to no one's great surprise (though Harry swore that Malfoy looked the slightest bit impressed. Harry wasn't sure if Malfoy was faking or not, though).

It had actually taken Tony asking Ron how he'd analyzed a particular formation for Harry to think of asking Ron himself.

"Can you teach me how to play?" Harry asked, feeling a tightness in his chest relax a bit. He'd missed Ron, temper and all.

"You were already playing in the tournament," Ron said, while behind him, Malfoy covered his forehead with his palm.

"Yeah, but you're ... really good." Harry said, meaning every word as a Hufflepuff should.

The conversation was mostly between Harry and Ron, but before too long, Malfoy sat down - mostly just watching carefully. Ron was really good at teaching chess, he loved the game and you could see it in his eyes.

Harry nearly snapped at Hermione when she came around, asking, "Chess not done yet? Wasn't the tournie supposed to end at five?"

Malfoy sneered, "Tournament. Ended on schedule. Weasel's running a clinic on proper knightly behavior."

Hermione frowned, saying, "You mean the horses, right?"

Malfoy smirked and nodded emphatically.

As Harry headed down to the dungeons beside Malfoy, he smiled.

Some things truly never change.

[a/n: yes, this was Malfoy's plan. Hence why he needled Harry into it. Please leave a review?

Also, Slytherins speak in codes. Malfoy was saying that if Harry didn't do this, he wouldn't look like a proper Hufflepuff.

Hufflepuffs don't give up easy.]