THE FRIENDSHIP OF RIVALRY

Notes:

Disclaimer - I do not own the setting of Harry Potter or any of the characters; those are the property of J.K. Rowling. I have however added a few new names, given that this story is centered on the time after Harry and Draco have graduated. The plot is entirely mine.

This story is a male x male slash so please don't read it if you don't like to read these types of fanfics.

Key:

"Thoughts"

"Speech"

~Parseltongue~

Chapter 13: Distractions (Harry)

Harry followed Draco back to the dorms as they left Severus' class. He cast a silent Muffliato then stepped up next to him as they walked. He could see by his facial expression that he was not happy about their plan. Harry decided that he would have to diffuse the tension somehow. "You know, the distraction did work out pretty well back there…"

Frankly, it looked like Draco was about to explode, but Harry knew he would get his anger under control before he spoke. He had to admit though; Draco did look kind of hot when he was angry… 'No, no bad line of thought. I have to concentrate on calming him down. But how can I do that? I don't even know why he's angry about it in the first place.'

Harry's thoughts were interrupted as Draco softly began to speak and the soft tone magnified the fact that Draco Malfoy was probably trying to keep himself from beating the stupidity out of a certain one-time Gryffindor. "Do I really have to tell you why I'm upset? It's quite obvious if you think about it."

He seemed to pause to let Harry speak, but when he said nothing, Draco continued. "You are in Slytherin now Harry and all Slytherins keep their trump cards a secret for when they actually need to reveal them under extremely bad circumstances. What you just did, cost you two of your biggest chances of safety and you probably tipped off a whole lot of people to who you actually are. I stepped back because I thought you would handle it the right way, instead, you painted a target on your head."

Harry looked closely at Draco. So that was what the whole thing was about. Draco was afraid that he had just revealed his biggest secrets. Harry smirked. "Aww Draco, I didn't know you cared." He had to duck swiftly as a fist sailed through the air where his head had just been.

"Of course I care you idiot! Where am I going to find another rival? No one would come close to how persistently irritating and dense you are." Harry wanted to take offense, but he rather focused on the fact that Draco was worried about him. 'I wonder what he would do if I kiss him again…? Wait no, bad idea. Besides, anyone could walk around the corner any moment now.'

Harry took a deep breath to calm down before looking up at Draco again. "Look, I didn't mean to reveal them on purpose. Snow had been keeping the eggs warm for me and I didn't know that they would hatch so soon. I don't even know how Blaine managed to hatch without a toad sitting on the egg."

Heck, he wasn't even sure how they managed to track him down. Harry dragged a hand through his hair. "I still have a lot of so-called tricks up my sleeve…you haven't seen everything yet. Yes, it might make it harder for me to leave the spotlight, but the goblin nation owes me a favor so they will make sure that the 'paperwork' they have, reveals that I am telling the truth about the inheritance story."

Harry saw Draco nod in relief as they came to the door to the Slytherin common room. The room was silent and empty except for two very familiar Slytherins sitting next to the fireplace, playing chess. Harry smiled inwardly as he saw that they were taunting each other by copying each other's moves, which created a rather interesting symmetrical design on the chessboard. "Hey there, did anything interesting happen while we were away?" The two looked up from their game and smiled.

"Yeah, right. As if anything ever interesting happens around here without the two of you around. So what happened? Did you get in trouble?" Harry shook his head and sat on a chair close to them with Draco following his lead.

"Nope. Professor Snape just wanted to ensure that I could control my familiars well enough. I also had to promise that they wouldn't interfere with school though." Jean and Theo nodded before turning back to their game. Harry decided to finish his homework as well when he saw that Draco was busy taking out his own books.

A companionable silence descended upon the common room and Harry finished his homework just ten minutes after Draco. They called goodnight to Jean and Theo who were still playing chess, but Jean called them closer before they moved more than to steps in the direction of their dorm room.

"Hey before the two of you head to bed. Could I ask you something?" Harry immediately nodded but Draco crossed his arms in front of him. His expression immediately told Harry that he was very wary about what Jean would ask.

"It depends on what you want to ask." Harry really couldn't stop his eyes from rolling at the blatant Slytherin behavior. 'It's no wonder Draco and I never got along at school. I would never have been able to trust him with anything if I knew I had to check for loopholes or a secret Slytherin code of conduct before telling him anything.'

Jean smirked and didn't take offense. "You know Filch, the castle's caretaker?" Both of them nodded. "Well, I would suggest you find a way to get him on your side. If you help him, he will help you and you might find that getting around the castle whenever you want, will become a lot easier."

Harry was surprised at the advice and it was obvious that Draco was as well, but they had nothing to lose. "Alright, well go see him when we can, although I'm now very curious as to how you were able to get on his good side."

Jean and Theo looked at each other then laughed. Theo nodded to Jean and he turned back to Harry and Draco. "We found some kids bullying him and we didn't like it so we bullied them back. Filch is a lot smarter than he looks and after he realized that students weren't teasing him anymore, he decided to look into it. He easily found out about our pranks and caught us red-handed once when we placed a jinx on the brooms of one of the students who taunted Filch about the death of Mrs. Norris."

Everyone flinched at the stupidity of said student. Death was hard no matter who died. But Jean continued his tale. "Needless to say, when we were called to his quarters we expected hours of torture in detention. Instead we each got a glass of butterbeer and he let on that he left all his confiscated prank gear in the chest in the corner of the room. From then on we made sure to alert him to any harmful objects we heard about around school and he would, in turn, ignore our pranks. I must say, I was surprised to find out that he actually enjoyed the pranks when he wasn't the target."

Harry had never found himself more shocked in his entire life. He was pretty sure he resembled a gaping fish at the moment and when he glanced at Draco, he saw that he wasn't faring any better. 'So the Prince of Slytherin can be shocked speechless too? That was interesting.' Harry filed it away for future teasing material.

"Okay, so any ideas where we could talk to him without getting a detention?" As much as they probably needed the caretaker on their side, Harry really didn't want to sit through a two-hour torture session with Filch to get it. He would probably force them to clean the dirtiest part of the castle by hand.

This time it was Theo that answered. "The only way to not get detention is when he leaves on his break, but he usually goes into the Forbidden forest in that time, so even if you do follow him there, students aren't allowed in the forest and he would automatically be forced to give you detention."

Draco seemed to think a bit at this. "Any idea what he does in the Forbidden Forest? I mean, I heard it's normal for people to sneak in from time to time and my father also mentioned that the half-giant named Hagrid spends a lot of time in there, but he never mentioned anyone else spending time there. Isn't it supposed to be dangerous and cursed?"

Harry felt his lips twitch and he had to mentally force down the smile that wanted to form. Draco actually played the 'innocent schoolboy' very well. It would have raised a lot of questions if it became apparent that they knew more than mere first-years were supposed to know and this way they can easily get more information.

"The Forbidden Forest is very dangerous, but it's not cursed. And you're right about Hagrid spending a lot of time there. He's a good man, but he's a bit too kind-hearted, to be honest. He would probably get eaten by one of his pets one day." Harry didn't really like to think about it, but he knew Hagrid well and this was a fact.

Jean glanced from Harry to Draco then shrugged. "We don't know what draws Filch to the Forbidden forest time and time again, but he didn't start doing that until after Mrs. Norris died, so most people think that he's visiting her grave. I have seen him coming from the forest numerous times though and every time it's as if he's happy."

Harry wanted to shake his head as the strange picture of a happy Filch entered his mind. The two concepts just didn't fit together at all. But it should probably not have surprised him. After all, the image of a pranking Filch didn't faze him too much so how can a happy Filch be any worse? 'Oh, who am I kidding? Both are equally bad and if I wasn't in shock at the moment I would be rolling around on the floor laughing my head off.'

"Well, thank you and goodnight. Well try and see what exactly Filch is up to tomorrow, but for now, we really need to head to bed. Enjoy your game of chess." Harry could see Jean and Theo share amused smirks as they settled back around their game of chess. Draco was apparently still in shock because he said nothing as Harry dragged him towards their room.

As they shut the door behind them, Harry made sure to cast a few privacy charms around the room to keep any nosy listeners at bay. Once it was safe to do so, he spoke. "You know, if I didn't know for a fact that this was our reality, I would've started to think that the ritual had taken us to some far-fetched parallel world where unexpected happenings were normal."

Draco breathed deeply and nodded. "I'm with you there. I really didn't expect that. But then again, no one ever did bother to talk to him. Even if we did, he would have probably just given us detention for distracting him from his duties. I didn't even know he had a lunch break."

Harry found himself laughing hard at this. "Well, that's not too shocking. You do tend to ignore everyone you think is beneath you. Not to mention that in the past you would have barely even deigned to talk to a half-blood, let alone a squib."

Draco blushed a little at this and Harry could clearly see that he was embarrassed because of his behavior. "Yeah, I was a real prat I know, but I didn't know how to behave in any other way at the time. So are we going to try and corner Filch in-between classes tomorrow? I don't know about you but I am actually very curious as to why he goes to the Forbidden forest so much. If he's meeting an enemy and giving them information then we might be able to catch him red-handed if we follow him."

Harry felt himself nodding in understanding. "That's true, so then it's settled. We'll follow him into the Forbidden forest. We'll just have to wear my cloak to keep anyone from noticing us. We're going to have to be quick about it too, we can't skip classes." Harry moved over to his bed and sighed in exasperation before glancing at Draco with hands on his hips as he realized that something huge had burrowed under his covers.

"I should have known this would happen when I placed that heating charm on my bed." Draco looked confused at first, but he burst out laughing when he stepped closer to find out why Harry sounded so amused.

"I would say that you're the first person in the world that can say that you have a basilisk waiting for you in bed. Well, unless Salazar Slytherin also had a habit of sleeping with his snake. Jeez, saying it out loud makes it even worse." Draco chuckled uncontrollably as Harry shot him a dirty look before pulling the covers off of Blaine.

~You know Blaine, if you keep growing at this rate, I might have to either shrink you or get a bigger bed, now move over.~ Harry was pretty sure he saw the snake grin, but he didn't move as much as an inch, so he tried again. ~I guess you're just going to have to sleep on your own bed then.~ This only gained him a little attention and Harry shook his head in exasperation as he moved to take out his wand. At least he knew a useful shrinking spell.

Not that he got very far though since Blaine chose that moment to whip his tail out from under the covers to grab him around his waist and Harry found himself dragged beneath the covers and encircled within the coils of a snickering basilisk before he even had a chance to realize what had happened.

A singing tone alerted him to the fact that even Leah, who was perched on a stand next to his bed, found the entire situation funny. A thud made him glance down and he saw an almost hysterical Draco lying on the floor and clutching his stomach while trying to speak in between the fits of laughter. "Y-you should s-see your face H-harry!"

Even Harry had to admit that the entire situation was comical, but he wasn't about to admit it. Oh well, two could play at this game. "Really? I see something much stranger though. I never would have ever imagined that I would live to see the day that the Malfoy heir didn't find it beneath him to roll around on a dungeon floor in laughter."

This sobered Draco slightly, but not as much as Harry had hoped. "These carpets are made from the finest materials that can be found even in the Wizarding world Harry, so trust me when I say that you can't really use this to try and blackmail me without giving away your own situation. If this is the way your familiars listen to you then we are all in big trouble." Harry scoffed at his words. He knew Draco was teasing him, but the brat didn't have to sound so smug about it.

He turned to face Blaine. ~Come on Blaine, let me go, I need to change clothes first.~ The snake didn't move an inch, but he could feel a slight shiver run down the snake's body and Harry frowned as apprehension dawned on him. ~Are you upset because of what happened earlier? I wasn't in any real danger you know. Draco would have helped me out if I was.~ Harry reached up to softly stroke the scales and Blaine finally lifted his head. He noticed that Draco had moved away to allow them some privacy.

~I know this snakeling. Yet it still doesn't sit well with me to leave my blood-bonded wizard out in the open like that. Even Leah had to hold herself back from shredding those useless sacks of meat, and she is a creature of the light.~ Blaine put his head on Harry's chest.

Harry nodded in understanding before softly hugging the snake to him. ~Don't worry, I won't make the two of you go through that again. Can you let me up now? I still need to write a summary to Severus, to inform him about what we've found so far.~ Blaine nodded and loosened his hold to allow Harry to slip out.

He glanced at Draco, but the once-blonde man was already in bed, reading. He always knew when to move away to give him some space, after Hogwarts at least. "I'm quickly going to write that summary for Severus. Is there anything specific you want me to add to the letter?"

Draco shook his head and Harry moved to sit down at the desk where a paper and a quill were already placed. He didn't have much progress to report, but they could use Severus to look into a few things.

Severus

It's come to our attention that Argus Filch could possibly be considered an ally, but we will first look into it further. We haven't found anything else of importance yet, but we will keep you updated. Please alert Moony to this information as well. The link between my familiars and me is that of a blood-bonded familiar link. Fawkes brought me Leah's egg before he disappeared and I found the basilisk egg in the Chamber. Snow nipped my fingers once and some blood fell onto the eggs. The bond was accepted on both ends.

Have you and Moony found anything interesting on your end?

H and D

Harry folded the letter and held it out to Leah who made it burst into flames. They had found out early on that phoenixes had the extra ability to teleport objects and people to wherever it wanted. Fawkes had used the ability a lot during the war.

He moved back to bed after stroking Leah's head and this time Blaine had moved over enough so he could climb in without moving the snake. It didn't matter much though since Harry found the snake on top of him again as he settled into his pillows. He stroked Blaine's head as he heard a soft sound of breathing echo around the room.

Draco had fallen fast asleep. Blaine looked up at Harry and Harry nodded. The snake finally allowed his inner eyelids to open and Harry was entranced at the sight of the thin catlike eyes. The black pupil stood out against the yellow of the iris and Harry found himself become lost as his entire world shifted to black.

Thank you for reading this fanfic… And a special thank you to those who follow it.