No sooner had they stepped through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor Common Room than Ron completely lost it.
"What in the bloody hell was that?" he shouted at Hermione.
She smiled. "Oh, come on, Ron. You know you're just jealous."
Ron went, if possible, redder than his hair. He looked at the ground. "So?" he said sheepishly.
Hermione laughed.
"Um... I'm going to have to agree with Ron in saying, 'What in the bloody hell was that?'" Harry said.
"Oh, whatever!" Hermione said exasperated. She stomped off to her dormitory to get changed for her classes.
Classes were, as usual, a complete and total bore. Until Double Potions with Slytherin. For once, Harry was not dreading two class periods of Snape. On the contrary… he was quite looking forward to it. But only because he was anxious to take a stab at a civil conversation with Draco, hoping that their utter hate and loathe toward each other had finally receded to, if nothing more, simple tolerance.
Harry walked into class and sat at the back of the room with Ron and Hermione, waiting to move, hopefully unnoticed, when Draco appeared. To their surprise, they did not need to. When Draco arrived, alone, amazingly enough, he sat at the table right next to Harry.
"Wow," Draco said. "It's quite a different view from the back of the room."
Harry snorted and was about to say something when Snape walked in.
"All right, class," Snape said, "today, we are going to try something different. Since I can't seem to get you to SHUT UP this year, what with you having the freedom to sit next to your friends, we will have assigned partners. Now, when I call your names, please sit at the table I point to; God knows you can't figure out a pattern by yourselves. —" He glared at them. "— Weasley, Goyle; —" He pointed to the first table. "— Finnigan, Zabini; —" He pointed at the second table. "— Granger, Longbottom; —"
Silence fell in the room…. You could have heard a pin drop. Every eye turned toward Snape, and Snape, in turn looked from his parchment to the shocked class. "See," he said, "I'm in a bit of a, well, a good mood today." The class exchanged odd looks and continued gathering their belongings to change tables.
(A/N: I know that was all majorly OOC… oh well, not my problem.)
"— Thomas, Crabbe; —" He pointed at the fourth table, (and I'm sure you've all figured out a pattern, so I'm going to stop writing this stuff in). "— Parkinson, Brown; — Malfoy, Potter; —"
Harry paid no attention to the rest of the names called as he and Draco moved up to the table behind Seamus and Blaise. When they had situated themselves, Harry turned to Draco. "Okay, I'm going to shove a bit of pointless hope toward us being civil to each other in the future."
Draco looked up at Harry, the slightest trace of a smile on his lips. "And why would this be a pointless hope?"
"Because I… well, I—I didn't think that…. You know, I don't know," Harry returned.
Draco suppressed a laugh. "Harry, Harry, Harry…."
Harry's head shot up.
"What?" Draco asked.
"Oh, nothing," Harry replied. "I'm just so used to you calling me Potter."
"Yeah, well… I got sick of calling you Potter."
"What if I don't want you to call me Harry?"
"Well, then you have a bit of a problem, don't you? Now I'm gonna call you Harry just to spite you."
"You're impossible, you know?" Harry said, annoyed at the fact that he was not going to win.
"Ah, Harry, you poor naïve little thing. That's what makes it fun!"
"Whatever."
Draco smirked, knowing he had hit the spot with his former rival.