Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Author's Note: Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews! I'm glad you enjoyed Harry and Draco's first library meeting. Yes, I definitely wanted to make the tension between them extremely palpable, and I'm pleased that you could see it. There's a lot more where that came from, I assure you.

And yes, Madam Pince is certainly not happy with Snape, and she's going to continue to be very displeased with him as time passes.

I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

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"I'm guessing it didn't go well, then?" Hermione said to Harry as he joined her, Ron, and Neville in the Gryffindor common room later that evening. After Malfoy had run out of the library, he had stayed for a while longer, but he couldn't focus on the material in front of him. His interactions with Malfoy kept running through his mind, all the little nuances of their discussion causing him a lot of thought.

Harry snorted. "You can say that again," he grumbled as he sat down on one of the squashy couches. This was one thing he absolutely loved about Hogwarts - the decor of the Gryffindor common room. No matter what was going on in his life, it gave him an extreme amount of comfort to sit here with the people he cared about most.

"What happened?" Ron asked. "Did Malfoy spout the usual rubbish?"

"Yeah, he was all acting like I'm his servant," Harry said with a scowl. "Potter, do this. Potter, do that. Potter, get these books for me. The strange thing was, though, that when I said no, he actually went with me to retrieve the books. He threatened to tell Snape that I'd been oh so mean to his Highness, and when I said I wasn't afraid of him, he looked at me really oddly."

He went on to explain the evening's events, but he skipped over the part when Malfoy had mentioned Harry's relatives. He hated the way Malfoy had looked at him then, demanding to know what the expression on his face meant. Harry had cursed himself for letting any kind of emotion show when the Dursleys were mentioned. He did not want Draco Malfoy, of all people, to know anything about his life outside of Hogwarts. He wondered how Malfoy knew about that, anyway - did all the Death Eaters know about it? How had Harry been able to stay safe there, year after year? He obviously knew that not all of the Death Eaters had gone to Azkaban - what had happened at the Quidditch World Cup was a clear indication of that.

As he spoke, he couldn't get that last minute with Malfoy out of his mind. He'd seen the almost ... hunted expression on the blond's face when he had told him, point-blank, that he would help anyone who was being treated badly, even if he hated them. He had been looking for a reaction from Malfoy, wanting to see if there was any humanity in him whatsoever.

And he'd gotten way more than he bargained for. The boy who, only minutes beforehand had spat, "It's strategy, Potter," when talking about dosing someone with a poison that would make them so sick that they couldn't perform at normal capacity in a duel, had looked vulnerable and wounded. It was a side of Malfoy he'd never seen before - the boy looked completely undone. Perhaps there was really a soul in that body, after all.

Once he had finished telling his friends, Ron's reaction was predictable. "Don't read too much into it, mate," he told him. "You said that he accused you of wanting to play hero all the time before you made that comment. He's only trying to make you think that what you said actually made him act any different."

Hermione and Neville, however, looked more thoughtful. "Have you noticed that he's been looking at you in a really strange way these days?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah," Harry said, his mind still whirring as he continued to ponder the interactions between them. On the surface, it was the same old Draco Malfoy. Smug, smirking, malicious, arrogant tosser Draco Malfoy. But he couldn't help but notice that something seemed a little ... off. And it had been proven when Harry's comment had provoked a response that still very much surprised him.

He said as much to his friends, but Ron was still unmoved. "When's your next meeting?" Neville asked curiously.

"Dunno," Harry replied. "We never set one up, since he left in such a hurry. I'll have to corner him tomorrow."

Wanting to get the subject off of the bizarre encounter, he went on to explain the poison that they had found. His friends were all rather disgusted by it, and Ron had the same exact reaction as Harry. "Bloody cowards," he muttered mutinously. "I hate people who play dirty like that."

"Yeah," Neville agreed wholeheartedly. "If you're going to be like that in a duel, you're an awful person."

"I don't doubt that it was used during You-Know-Who's reign," Hermione said, looking very angry at the prospect. "How does someone have nothing better to do with their time than create a poison like that?"

"Because they're evil gits, and that's all there is to it," said Ron promptly. "They wouldn't know the meaning of fair play if it bit them on the arse."

"So, have any of you talked with your partners yet?" Harry asked, knowing that it was the last thing any of his friends wanted to do.

Hermione's face contorted into a glare. "Parkinson won't deign to talk to me," she hissed. "I want to get started, but she's just so vile. If she doesn't want to bother, then I'll do it myself. It's on her head if she doesn't get it done."

"Yeah, because you're insane enough to actually do such a thing on your own," said Ron with equal exasperation and admiration. "If Goyle doesn't want to do it, then I won't either. I'm not doing this bloody project without him."

"And Crabbe just cracked his knuckles at me when I confronted him," said Neville miserably. "I'm going to fail this, I just know it."

"No, you're not, Neville," said Hermione firmly, using the tone that was so typical for her to adopt. "Stop selling yourself short like that. If Crabbe isn't interested, that doesn't mean you should also get a bad grade. That goes for you too, Ron."

"But it's Snape," Ron said with a derisive snort. "Do you really expect him to give me any credit at all?"

Harry tuned out his friends' bickering as he sat back on the couch, sighing. Snape had certainly succeeded at making everyone supremely unhappy, him included. Why was he spending an evening speculating over anything to do with Draco Malfoy, for Merlin's sake? Bloody hell, it was Malfoy. Stupid, sodding, spoiled, arrogant Malfoy.

But tonight had felt different, and that look in the boy's eyes as he'd run out of the library ... why on Merlin's green Earth did Harry want to know what that was all about?

xxx

"Malfoy."

It was the following day, and Harry had gone over to the Slytherin table after he'd finished breakfast, much to his chagrin. He might want to study the boy a little more closely, but he hadn't slept well the night before and he was tired. It was too early in the morning to be doing this, but he didn't want the blond Slytherin to leave the Great Hall before he was able to corner him.

"Go away, Potter," Blaise Zabini glowered at him. Harry hadn't really had much interaction with Zabini - the boy wasn't Malfoy's bodyguard, as Crabbe and Goyle were, but he still spent way too much time around the blond, in Harry's opinion.

"It's about the Potions project, Zabini," Harry snapped. "Do you think I WANT to be here?"

"What do you want, Potter?" Malfoy snarled at him, and Harry was taken aback by the pure venom in his tone. He looked rather disheveled, and wasn't sitting in his chair with the usual Malfoy posture.

"What's the matter, Malfoy?" Harry couldn't help but needle him, though his conscience told him that it was a bad idea. But with last night's events swirling around in his mind, he couldn't control the urge. "You don't look so good."

"Say what you want to say and go to your own class, Potter," Parkinson sneered at him, her voice shrill. "Go back to your adoring fans and leave us alone."

Having had quite enough of the usual Slytherin rubbish, Harry plunged on. "Meet me tonight in the library," he said to Malfoy.

"Excuse me?" Malfoy drawled, trying to get back his usual pose.

"I said, meet me in the library tonight, Malfoy," Harry reiterated. "After dinner."

And without giving Malfoy the chance to snap something back at him, he turned away from the Slytherin table and left the Great Hall.

xxx

"So, what are the ingredients for this poison? Get on with it," Malfoy drawled that evening as they once again sat in the Restricted Section with the two books on poisons splayed out in front of them. "You're being awfully slow, Potter, and some people ..." He smirked, that normal Malfoy smugness in his tone. "... have things to do this evening. Just because you have all the time in the world doesn't mean that everyone in the world has time for you."

Harry had noticed immediately that Malfoy was much more jumpy and twitchy than usual. He was attempting to act normal, but Harry could see a tiny crack in his mask. His insults and snide comments were said in more frequent intervals than ever, and Harry couldn't help but be intrigued, something he'd never felt around the other boy before. There was a strangely desperate quality to each barb as it was shot at him.

He could freely admit that he'd never been good at letting Malfoy's insults roll off him in the past. There was truly no other student at Hogwarts who could boil Harry's blood like Draco Malfoy did. He remembered their very first meeting, and he'd disliked the boy on sight. "I'm sure I can bully my father into buying me a broomstick." The uncanny similarities to Dudley had pushed every single one of Harry's buttons. He did not have one good memory of his cousin, and it set off every single one of his nerves. When he was suddenly offered a life away from Dudley's constant bullying, he just had to go and meet Malfoy.

And he knew from too many years of experience just how nasty Petunia and Vernon Dursley were. He thought he'd met the worst kind of people, but Lucius Malfoy was on a whole other level. The way Draco idolized him made Harry sick to his stomach. He wouldn't hear a bad word against the man, and that had been proven true the day before as well. He did not believe for one single second that Malfoy didn't know about his father's involvement in the Chamber of Secrets plot. Sometimes, he'd wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, remembering Ginny lying on the floor, barely breathing, life slipping slowly away from her as Tom Riddle smirked triumphantly down on her, his taunts and the basilisk's hisses ringing in Harry's ears.

And now, Harry was stuck with Malfoy on this stupid project. But yesterday's meeting had opened a door within him, and he wanted to study Malfoy in a way he never had before. Some of his mannerisms had been distinctly odd, and Harry's mind kept wandering back to when he'd told him that he would protect him from harm, even though he hated him. That look in the boy's eyes had stayed with him, both in sleep and in his waking thoughts.

"Well, gosh, I don't know, Malfoy," Harry couldn't help his own snide comment from coming out. "Since you're so curious to find out, why don't you look it up? I'm sure you can figure out what page it's on. You're literate, after all, or am I wrong about that?"

Malfoy's face twisted. "Must I say it again, Potter? If you keep talking to me like this, I'll ..."

"Tell Professor Snape," Harry shot back at him, putting on a bored expression. Thinking of Snape still made him feel uneasy, but he pushed past it in order to make his point. "Like I care. This is our project, Malfoy, and I'm not going around in circles arguing about the same thing day after day." He pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill from his rucksack, knowing that they would get nowhere without some kind of compromise. "Tell you what," he said as he placed them down on the desk. "If you look up the ingredients, I'll write them down. Is that a deal?"

It was plain to see that Malfoy hated the very prospect, but he grumbled, "Fine," as he found the poison they had been studying yesterday and searched for the page with the ingredients on it. "Here," he said rather uncharitably, and Harry almost laughed at his expression. It was incredibly melodramatic, and so completely unwarranted for the situation he was in. He looked as though Harry had asked him to sweep the floor in every single corridor that the entire castle of Hogwarts contained.

True to his word, Harry looked at the ingredients and wrote them down. Once finished, he said, "Now we have to find ingredients that ... that ..."

"The word is neutralize, Potter," Malfoy drawled, looking supremely unimpressed. "It's not a shock that your vocabulary is stunted, growing up with Muggles."

Harry tried hard not to let his face show anything. He knew he had failed spectacularly yesterday when Malfoy had brought up his relatives - the boy had noticed, and demanded to know what it meant. Harry was determined not to give him any more ammunition.

"What?" Malfoy barked. "Not going to say anything to that?"

"What do you expect me to say?" Harry replied sharply. "You didn't like it when I mentioned your father. So, yeah. I grew up with Muggles. What of it? You grew up with parents who taught you that they're scum."

"That's because they are," Malfoy smirked. "Not a drop of magic in their blood. They're exceedingly ignorant about how the world works. But you just love them, don't you?" Malfoy looked into Harry's emerald eyes, and at that moment, Harry wanted nothing more than to look away. For the first time in their tumultuous rivalry, Harry felt like the other boy was probing him, analyzing him, looking for chinks in his armor.

But Harry wasn't going to let him. Instead, he'd turn the tables on Malfoy. But he hoped to do it in a way that wouldn't cause the other boy to run away again. They needed to work on this project, and they wouldn't get anything done if they continued this verbal sparring routine for the next few months.

"We're not here to talk about Muggles," he said quietly. "We're here to talk about poisons. How does it feel, Malfoy, to know that Crouch would have had no problem using one on you? He already turned you into a ferret. I reckon he'd have used this poison against you - he didn't seem to like you very much, did he?"

Malfoy's face went white. For a second, it looked like he was about to bolt again. Harry realized he may have miscalculated. He thought quickly, realizing what he had to say in order to get the boy to stay.

"It's the truth, Malfoy," Harry said quietly, looking meaningfully into the boy's gray eyes. They sparked with emotions Harry hadn't thought the boy possessed. "Just face it. You can't run away from it. And I'm not trying to gloat, either."

For the first time in his life, Harry actually thought he might be getting through to Malfoy, even though it was only by a miniscule margin. For once, he did not see the hateful, bigoted, awful bully who constantly called Hermione a Mudblood and made fun of the Weasleys for being poor. He looked into his eyes, and didn't just see Malfoy. Instead, he saw Draco - a young boy who was struggling to find his place in the world. He had never before looked for someone beneath the surface of the enemy he'd made on his very first day at Hogwarts.

"I told you, Draco. I don't try to play hero," Harry said softly, not knowing where the instinct came from to refer to the other boy by his first name - it was the first time he'd ever done such a thing. Malfoy blanched, not expecting that at all, and Harry could see that it had rattled him. "My life hasn't gone the way you think it has."

He didn't know where those words had come from. He did not want Malfoy to discover anything about the Dursleys - that was still true. But he saw Malfoy's vulnerability, and that sense of fair play he had always possessed was rearing its head again. It would probably be to his detriment, but it was done now.

"Oh yeah?" Malfoy tried to drawl the two words, but he couldn't quite pull it off. "Tell me another one, Potter."

"I'm telling you the truth, Draco." Harry couldn't understand why, but there was a noticeable flinch when Harry used Malfoy's first name again. "And I helped you that day because I knew it was the right thing to do. No one deserves to be treated like that."

He straightened, and looked away from Malfoy at last. "Now, we need to get back to work," he said, Malfoy's shaken expression fixed in his mind. Something significant had just happened, and where they went from here was anybody's guess. Harry never would have thought such a thing was possible - Malfoy was always just going to be Malfoy. But there was more to the smirking, arrogant, strutting bully of a boy he had spent the last few years despising with a passion.

"Fine," Malfoy muttered, sounding both wary and subdued.

And for the next few hours, they worked in silence, only exchanging words occasionally. And in that moment, Harry made a promise to himself. He was going to have to spend the next few months working with the boy, so he might as well make it worthwhile. He had been forced into this situation against his will, but hadn't his life always been this way? He had been forced into many situations that weren't to his liking, after all.

But he wasn't about to waste this opportunity. He wasn't going to let this chance pass him by.

He was going to look inside Malfoy ... and find Draco.