Authors Note!

Wonderful Thankies to my beta… XD

OMG My birthday was not long ago and guess what one of my presents was… A SIGNED PICTURE OF TOM FELTON SIGNED TO ME WITH LUCK AND LOVE FROM HIM!!! I HAVE NEVER SCREAMED AT A PRESENT BEFORE THAT MOMENT!!!!

Disclaimer – Y'all know the usual jargon!

Warnings - Homophobia, Gryffindor Bashing, Slytherin friendly, OOC Snape & Things that wouldn't usually happen in Hogwarts, but hey! It's fanfiction… I can do what I like lol!

"Speech" means parceltongue

Chapter 10 – Home, To The Place Where I Belong.

Once everyone was in their seats, Snape turned to the class and began his usual opening lecture. They were making the Shrinking solution, a perfectly easy third year potion. He'd made sure it was a simple potion that they'd already done in order to test the new pairings that he had assigned. Well, one in particular, that happened to be right at the front for safety's sake.

As Hermione began writing down the instructions, she felt a gaze burning the side of her head. She looked up to see Blaise sitting, head on his hand, other hand out, waiting for her to shake it.

Hermione took the boy's hand in hers, "Zabini." She said softly shaking hands with her new partner.

"Call me Blaise." He replied, letting go of her hand. "Shall we put this little house rivalry aside? To be honest I find it quite petty." At seeing the strange look in Hermione's eyes, he continued to talk, "At least for this lesson. We're going to be partners for the year. We need to be civil for the sake of our grades."

Hermione finally snapped out of her stupor, "Okay, sure. You're right too; it is petty. The princes of the feud seem to be getting along too." She said with a little smile as she looked over at her best friend and his new partner smiling with each other. She turned back to Blaise and this time held her own hand out, "I'm Hermione, pleasure to meet you."

"Phew! I'm glad we got through that! I need to let you know that I like to chat while I'm brewing potions, I hope you don't mind?"

"That's perfectly fine. Chat away" Hermione laughed.

.HPDM.

"Hey, Draco, thank you for telling me about that spell. I'm glad I could talk to you earlier, I think it just got too much for me." Harry said as they began writing the list of ingredients.

"No problem, Harry, that's why I told you it. The snake was really cute. I've never been able to tell them where to go though. I tried and it never listened to me."

"I think you need to be a parselmouth for that one." Harry said with a little smile, remembering talking to the snake in his lesson.

"I never thought about that. Thank Merlin you can, or that note wouldn't have got anywhere." Draco laughed.

"Yeah, that would've been a nightmare." Harry joined Draco's laughing, "Speaking of nightmares, you've seen my work in potions before… Please say you'll help!"

"Sure, I'll explain what we're doing and why we have to do it. I'll have you brewing like a pro in no time." Draco smiled, getting up to collect the ingredients.

Harry sat and smiled to himself. I have a new decent friend, and now I'll be able to learn potions properly and get a decent grade on my own. Brilliant! Harry's thoughts were cut off by Draco's voice.

"Harry, you coming? We do need ingredients to make this potion!"

Harry got up and followed Draco to the ingredients cupboard, leaving the rest of the class in a state of shock. They're on first name terms? They're making jokes. Merlin's beard! What's this world coming to!? A few Gryffindors began humming with anger, one red head especially. The faggot's now friendly with Slytherins; I'll show him he's made a huge mistake.

As they collected the ingredients, Draco began explaining the properties of each and why they were in this potion. Harry spent that time listening intently and suddenly realised that potions wasn't as difficult as he had believed it had been first through fifth years. He began repeating things back to Draco, remembering everything that the blonde said. He realised that he just needed to do some extra reading and he could do ok. He slowly realised that this could be the best lesson of potions that he had ever had – He would learn everything properly, and maybe even get a compliment from Snape, though he wasn't holding out hope on that one.

Everything was running smoothly in the lesson for a while. Harry was brewing a near-perfect potion and actually joining in with the brewing rather than letting Draco (formerly Hermione) do all of the work. They made it through most of the lesson brewing and keeping quiet conversation. At one point the conversation drifted over to the topic of their best friends who were partnered at the other side of the aisle, laughing with each other, having a rather animated conversation. Both were secretly glad that their friends got along.

They made it through most of the lesson without any trouble; human or potion-wise, it wasn't until Snape had collected the potions and proceeded to put them in the cabinet for marking that it all kicked off. Ron and the others started on Harry, shouting obscenities at him about his sexuality and now his new friendship. First, Hermione stepped in to help Harry, who was handling it pretty well, next gave way for Draco and Blaise to defend Draco and the other Slytherins being ridiculed. By the time Snape returned to his classroom, there were three Gryffindors being held down by a group of Slytherins and Harry Potter standing over them, glaring at the Gryffindors with Draco Malfoy next to him. Snape actually thought he's entered the twilight zone when he realised that the Gryffindors were supposed to be Harry's close friends.

It took Professor Snape a while to snap out of his trance like confusion at the situation before him. By the time he'd come around, he had an entire class staring at him in shock and awe, with the exception of the whimpering Gryffindors still at wand point. As he began to speak, the class all jumped.

"What is going on here? Misters Weasley, Finnegan and Thomas you had better start explaining yourselves." The Slytherins who were holding the three boys down began to loosen their hold, until Snape continued, "No. They can stay there. Tell me what happened and the rest of the class can verify to me whether what you're saying is true."

"Well, we were packing away our things when I heard Malfoy and Potter laughing about my family. I went over to ask why they felt the need and they just attacked." Ron said, Dean and Seamus nodding in agreement.

"Oh, that's a downright lie and we all know it." Harry spat down towards them.

"Well, Mr Potter, would you care to tell me what transpired? I'd appreciate the truth, if you don't mind."

"As you went to store our potions, Draco and I were discussing the potion, since he's helping me to understand the entirety of it, not just how it's made. Anyway, we were just talking when I heard Weasley and co. here start calling us names." Harry said.

"Oh, and what kind of names were included in this?"

"Faggot was used considerably, Professor." Draco cut in, "Any other words were all within the same context. They then decided that it would be a good idea to insult Slytherins whilst in Slytherin territory. As any other would, we decided that we would defend ourselves and housemates. The three of them tried to attack all of us and so we had no choice but to bind them and hold them down ready for your return."

The rest of the class all nodded in agreement to what their two classmates had said.

"Thank you very much. It would have been much easier if I had heard this story in the first place, but what else could I have expected from a Weasley. Thirty points from Gryffindor for attacking other students in a full classroom. 40 points to Slytherin for defending each other and your house." Snape said as he strode towards his office. "Oh and Mr Potter, 10 points to Gryffindor for inter-house unity. Class dismissed."

.DMHP.

By the time it got to dinner, word had spread about what had occurred throughout in that potions lesson. Some stories were told slightly differently but that was just the Chinese whispers effect. All stories did tell how it was started by the three Gryffindors and that Harry was against them and with Slytherins.

As Harry sat down with Hermione at the Gryffindor table, he was bombarded with questions from all years from his house, most of them were asking for the full story. He told each and every person that he just wanted to enjoy his dinner in peace but he wouldn't be left alone for 2 minutes.

He was getting more and more agitated. How long is it going to be like this?! He thought. Just as he came back to earth, he heard a very unwanted voice.

"Here's the snake in lion's clothing." Ron said as he squared up to Harry.

"Piss off, Weasley. I really don't have time for you right now." Harry said, turning back to his dinner.

"Oh but you have time for the snakes, huh?" Seamus said, pushing past Ron to get to the front.

Harry rolled his eyes, this is never going to end is it, He thought to himself.

Harry got up and just barged past the little group and headed out the doors. As he was about to leave, he turned to the Slytherin table and shot Draco a look that said Meet me outside somewhere, I need to talk to you please.

.HPDM.

Draco sat down to dinner and found himself considerably luckier that Harry looked. The majority of people who dared to even speak to him were already in that potions lesson, and any others knew not to pester him. All except one.

"Drake, what's this about you being all buddy buddy with Potter?" Pansy said, cozying up to Draco, as usual. "It's got to be a lie, hasn't it? A stupid rumour, aww my poor Drakey!"

"Pansy, how many times do I have to tell you not to call me Drakey and can you please let go of my arm." Draco replies prying his arm from Pansy's iron grip, "and yes, it's true. Harry and I are trying to be friends."

Pansy's face distorted and she looked towards her dinner. No matter how much she liked to find out gossip, especially when it came to Draco, she knew to just leave it. She could tell through the tone of his voice. It said if you say one more thing, I will hex your nose onto a part of the body that you know you wouldn't want it. With that in mind, she simply replied with an "Oh." And she began to fill up on bread.

The rest of dinner went by pretty quietly for Draco, he enjoyed his meal and had a decent talk with Blaise (one without his squealing to be precise, he'd really taken to doing that a lot recently), but his smile soon faltered when he heard some familiar shouting coming from the Gryffindor table. He couldn't hear the exact words this time but from the look on Harry's face, he could tell that it was not celebration shouting. Harry suddenly jumped up from the table and stormed towards the doors. As his hand reached the huge handle, he turned and locked his green eyes with the grey of Draco's.

"Um… Blaise, I've just got to go for a second, you'll be ok, right?"

"Oh, so you're ditching me for your new friend."

"Of course not, Blaise, I…"

"Don't you worry, I'll be ok. You go. Just. Go."

"Blaise, please don't be like this." Draco said with pleading eyes.

"Babe, I'm just messing with you! Go to your love. FLY MY PRETTY. FLY!" Blaise exclaimed, standing up waving his arms to Draco, who was walking away from the table.

"You're seriously not funny sometimes." Draco said over his shoulder, suppressing his laughter.

"Oh, but you so love it." Blaise said quietly to himself as he sat back down and waited for his dessert to arrive.

Draco walked out of the hall and stopped. Shit he thought, where the hell could Harry be? Draco stood in the entrance hall and thought. And he thought hard. He tried to think back to anytime he had seen Harry outside of lessons and the places he could be. He racked his brain until he realised… Every time he had seen Harry on his own with his brooding, he had sat under the same tree, by the lake. Draco sprinted from where he was standing, out the doors and towards the lake. Sitting exactly where he thought, he saw Harry with his face in his knees. Draco ran straight to Harry's side and wrapped his arms around the raven haired boy.

Harry tensed as he felt arms around him. He looked up and his tearstained face met a very worried Slytherin. He immediately relaxed into the arms and his crying quickly stopped.

"You okay?" Draco said once he thought it was safe.

"I don't know. I don't think I can take much more of this. The questions. The ridicule. Can't I just be left alone?" Harry said, his voice sounding pretty controlled considering the tears he had shed. "How do you cope with it?"

"I don't really get any problems. I get left alone to be honest. People know not to even approach me when something has happened because they know they'll get nothing but a well aimed hex as an answer."

"Lucky you." Harry laughed. "I don't think I can go back to Gryffindor tower. Not after what's happened today."

Draco had an idea. Could it work? Would he let it happen? Well, it's worth a try, isn't it? He stood up and held out his hand towards Harry. "Come with me."

"What?"

"Take my hand, and come with me. I have a plan."

Harry took Draco's hand and was suddenly dragged back up to school. He ran behind Draco feeling his arm being pulled from it's socket. If Draco was as fast as this on a broom, he'd probably win a quidditch match! They ran and ran, through the halls, down several different corridors. It took him 2 minutes of running to realise that they were getting deeper and deeper into the castle. It was beginning to get colder as they kept going. After a while, which to Harry seemed like forever, they stopped outside a portrait of a very sinister looking man.

"Um, Draco, what are we doing here?"

"I'm getting you help."

"Actually, where is here?"

"Professor Snape's quarters. He should have finished dinner by now. Damn! I can't remember the password…"

"Why would Snape help me?"

"Screw it, I'll just knock." And he did just that, seemingly ignoring Harry's last question.

The portrait swung open to reveal the Potions master looking rather relaxed.

"Mr Malfoy?" He then glanced to the boy next to the blonde and raised an eyebrow. He then looked between the boys and smirked at the joint hands. "With Mr Potter. What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you could help us, Professor. Well, more specifically help Harry." Draco said, biting his lip and hoping this could work.

"Come in." Snape moved aside and allowed the boys through, both still grasping each other's hand, and closed the door. "Now, explain."

Draco and Harry then explained the entire situation from the beginning. Harry described his feelings and Draco explained everything else, since Harry seemed to be getting emotional again.

"And I was wondering if Harry could seek sanctuary in Slytherin house for a while, just until Weasley calms down."

Snape's face twisted in consideration.

"Please, sir. I wouldn't ask unless I really needed it. I can't take any more of them. You saw what happened in potions today. They're getting worse." Harry was close to tears by the time he stopped talking and Draco had his arm draped over his shoulders in an attempt to calm and comfort him.

"Well, Mr Potter. I'm just going to have to say one thing." Harry lowered his eyes to the floor in defeat. "Welcome to Slytherin."

.HPDM.

Okay so I am apologising for the very late update, my exams are finally over… NO MORE SCHOOL EVER!!!! So my updates should come a bit quicker now… I hope you review… you can review slap me if you like.. even if you enjoy this chapter, I think I deserve it!!!! xD

Thank you to all the reviewers and favouriters, I hope you stick with me…

Loooooves,

Nee.. Aka Idina Malfoy!!! xxx