The peaceful attitude displayed at breakfast is not meant to stay, and this should have been clear to Harry. He will still say: "Malfoy." with a teasing expression when he meets him alone in the hall and step aside when Draco answers: "Potter." with an inclined head.

One time, Cora overhears them doing this on the way to do the laundry in the basement, so they have to hide from her wrath in a different flat, much to the occupants' confusion, and when they finally emerge laughing at the faces they pulled, it's hard for Cora to remain cross with them.

It reminds Harry of the time in fourth year when he wouldn't speak with Ron and Hermione tried to negotiate between them, until they managed on themselves and all she had left to sigh was: "Boys." and roll her eyes, because well, they had been. And Harry is delighted to find he can still feel these rashes of childish joy, another part of him that hasn't died during the war.

"I think I'm heading home on Sunday.", Cora says during breakfast the next week, "Can you take me to the station with your car, Nate?"

"Sure.", Nate nods.

"You have a car?", Laura suddenly asks, wide-eyed, "Why didn't anyone tell me? Can you take me as well?"

Nate nods again and continues to eat his muesli. He is the only one to refuse Laura's porridge, although nobody exactly knows why. Cora assumes it's got something to do with digestion.

"Looks like it's just the two of us, then.", Harry says to Draco when the others have bid them good-bye on Sunday to visit their families, "Do you want to watch a film or something?"

Draco grins and raises his eyebrows at Harry. "Ladies and gentlemen, let me present you Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, elected Most Marriable Wizard Of The Year by The Witch Weekly twice in a row, but most important: The man who chooses to watch a film when he has a Muggle household all to himself." And with that, he takes his wand and hexes Harry's hair green.

"Hey!", Harry exclaims.

"Too bad you were in Gryffindor. The Slytherin colour really goes with your eyes, you know?" Harry knows this sarcastic drawl all to well, but never before was it accompanied by a chaffing smile and a glint in Draco's eyes.

"Oh, you just wait."

If there's one thing spending a year in America with many diverse groups of wizards has taught him, it's a lot of homemade jinxes Draco will have a hard time recognising. So they chase each other around the flat, setting up riddles for one another (Harry can't go into the kitchen without a stack of enchanted books attacking him, before he finds out that he needs to greet every single one of them with a military salute before he enters) and a treasure hunt (Too bad Draco's entire scarf collection is now tied to one another from his room's window to the top of the house.), until they flap down on the couch, panting.

"That was fun.", Harry says after a while.

"Hm.", Draco nods, staring in the distance, then turns to Harry with a sudden interest gleaming in his eyes. "Did you create those spells yourself?"

"No.", Harry shakes his head. "I could never. I know Hermione did – well, I guess there's no thing she didn't do – but I just can't. I learned them in America. I can... show you, though, if you want."

Draco's eyes light up even more as he already stands up again. "Really? Brilliant."

Harry just hopes he doesn't regret this as Draco goes on with: "I've actually created a few spells myself, I aspire to be a curse-breaker, I mean, I practically got the job, but I still have to pass some time here, so when you teach me some new ones, it's not completely wasted."

Harry just picks himself up to get off the couch, when a small paper plane zooms in through the window and hits him square on the head.

"What's that? Looks like one of those memos flying around the ministry...", Malfoy asks.

"So that's where Hermione stole this idea!", Harry says with a grin, "It's a reminder that I'm meeting her and Ron tomorrow at the Leaky Cauldron for coffee, when I'm back at Diagon Alley anyway..."

"What are you doing there?", Draco asks.

"Oh, just the usual, giving Ginny a staged interview about my favourite colour, going to Gringotts, maybe asking Florean about free icecream-"

"You're going to Gringotts?", Draco interrupts Harry's explanation, and bites his lip as if in doubt when Harry answers with a quick nod. Then he starts rummaging around in the large pockets of his weirdly patterned, wide trousers and unsheathes a small golden key. "Could you... Could you get some money from my vault as well, please? Just enough 'til Christmas."

"Er..", Harry glances from the key to Draco's eyes, "Yeah. Sure." and carefully takes the key to his room. He doesn't bother that this request is a bit weird, even coming from Draco Malfoy, who dresses like a Wall Street worker in the morning and like a Vampire Weekend fan when he goes out in the afternoon, who dismantles an entire flat with him in four hours, just to clean it up with one swish of his wand afterwards, no, Harry ponders about what exactly it was he had done to make Draco Malfoy, who was all of the things above and apparently so much more, a guy with dreams and visions, trust him like he is family.

It worries Harry a little how enticing the thought of being family with Draco is, and how they can pass each other conspiratorial smiles when Cora asks "Luke, what is your favourite scarf doing in the fridge?" the next morning. But he can't help but notice small beautiful things about Draco's personality that were completely lost on him before: How warm his smile is when Harry hands him his coffee in the morning. How adorable he acts when he gets excited about something, like showing Cora a new coffeeshop. How tiny his tongue looks when he uses it to chase a bit of porridge from the edge of his mouth...

"Potter?"

"Hm?", Harry startles when he suddenly hears his name.

"We should all start to call you by your surname like Luke did", Cora shakes her head fondly, "sometimes you spend even more time in your head than Nate!"

"Hey!" The difference to Nate being that he usually notices when Cora makes snide remarks about him.

"No offense, Nate. Harry, are you still up for cooking dinner tonight?"

"Yeah.", Harry nods, "If everybody's okay with Pizza."

Laura gives him a big smile and and a thumbs up in anticipation.

"Well, then I'll be shopping this afternoon-"

"Luke's already going.", Cora interrupts Harry's loud thinking.

"But he always buys the wrong ingredients for a proper pizza!"

Draco raises his eyebrows at Harry's insult, but before he can fire anything back, like 'Just because you can't appreciate the good consciousness fairtrade coffee gives you!", Cora concludes: "Then accompany him, but please stop bickering. Your worse than any old couple feeding ducks!"

And that's just one of the things Cora learned from Draco's and Harry's acquaintance: How to shut them up for good.

I hope you're not to cross with that while this should canonically happen in 1998 or so, it somehow managed to be set in the 2010s, where things like Hipsters and boys wearing far too many scarfs exist.

Also, I'd be really grateful if you let me know if the whole "slowly falling in love" thing is credible and all. xxx