The Augurey's Cry

Harry Potter was certain that falling in love was never meant to be quite like this. But, as was usually the case with happenings concerning The Boy Who Lived, there was little in the way of normalcy.

He didn't know what had happened right away. There was no spontaneous attraction, no anonymous letters and no love potions. In fact, Harry Potter approached love like he approached most things in life: with good intentions and obliviousness. And impressive mistakes of the highest degree on potion assignments.

"I see that yet another potion has proven to be far more than you can handle, Mr. Potter." Snape rounded on his least favourite pupil, looking as menacing as always, if not a little more weary. "You have entered your sixth year now, still unable to brew the simplest of concoctions."

Harry had the decency to look sheepish. He wouldn't admit to anyone, least of all the towering Potions Master, the reason he was distracted.

"And, you've managed to waste precious ingredients while doing so." Snape stirred Harry's muddled brew, looking at the sickly green colour in distaste. "I believe five points and detention for the remainder of this week is a fair punishment for your inadequacy."

It was their first class since returning to Hogwarts, and Harry was well aware he had just landed Gryffindor into the negative points category. Ashamed, he gritted out a soft "Yes, professor" before the class resumed their activities.

Ron sent him a sympathetic look, but Hermione's glance was more inquiring. She caught up with his retreating form before he could safely make it to Divination, and he inwardly groaned.

"Harry, that potion was on our O.W.L.s last year. Even Ron managed to get it."

"I know, Hermione," Harry sighed, though had to smile slightly at the indignant look on Ron's face. "I was distracted, that's all."

Unsatisfied, but running late for her next lesson, Hermione pursed her lips and nodded. "Alright. But be careful next class. Snape's been foul lately."

"He's always foul," Ron quipped harshly, obviously still stung by her earlier remark.

Leaving his friends to their usual bicker, Harry slipped away, feeling inexplicably numb.

xxx

There were very few things Harry always kept with him. The Marauder's Map was one, a small photograph of his parents another, and the very last was a neatly cut square from the Daily Prophet announcing Sirius' death. He played with the edges absently as he walked along the second floor corridor, placating himself with the fact Sirius was proven innocent after his murder.

Though skipping dinner was likely to spur another interrogation from Hermione, Harry couldn't help it that he wanted to be alone. He had put on a facade of nonchalance all summer while at the Weasleys', and it was draining him.

"Lost your appetite?"

Too startled to be immediately irritated, Harry looked up from the clipping at once. His hand was already on his wand when Draco Malfoy started walking toward him.

"What?"

"Your appetite. Why aren't you at dinner?" Draco leaned against the stone wall, hands behind him, as he regarded the Gryffindor curiously. "Or was there nothing left after Weasley got a hold of his fork?"

That was when the annoyance began. Harry gripped his wand tighter, scanning Draco for any indication the blond was doing the same. He wasn't quite in the mood for a brief exchange of hexes, but he wasn't going to stand around as his friends were insulted either. "What do you want, Malfoy?"

The Slytherin gave a nasty smile then, eyes wandering to Harry's fist. "Apart from you no longer existing, you mean?"

"You're out of luck then." Harry narrowed his eyes, but was surprised when there was still no movement to suggest an oncoming duel. Instead, a rather awkward silence erupted between them.

Until Draco leaned his head against the wall, steel grey eyes staring at the high ceiling calculatingly. "You could never understand the things I want, Potter."

Unprepared for such a remark, Harry could only stare dumbly as Draco pushed himself off the wall with one last look at Harry. Surprised to find it lacked any true menace, Harry blinked unknowingly. What was it that Draco Malfoy could want? Harry Potter was sure, after all, that the Slytherin had everything.

xxx

Harry kept his bizarre exchange with Draco to himself. For one, he wasn't quite sure how to explain it. To any outsider, it would seem quite normal - an insult here, a sneer there. But there was something unsettling about it all the same.

"Neville's got a new chess set if you're up for a game." Ron had given up on his Transfiguration essay long ago. In his opinion, it was unfair to schedule such lengthy assignments in the first week of classes.

"Can't," Harry apologized, shoving a roll of parchment into his bag. "I've got detention, remember? And didn't Hermione want you to meet her in the library tonight? Alone?"

Seamus whistled suggestively behind him, and Harry laughed at his friend's expense. "I hope detention's awful," he muttered.

Harry grinned as he made his way through the portrait hole.

The walk to the dungeons was strangely peaceful, he noted. Save for one close encounter with the Bloody Baron, Harry finally had the quiet he'd been craving since the start of the year. Though, that was surely about to change considering he would be spending the night with Severus Snape.

His thoughts wandered to all the things he might be expected to do, from cleaning the ingredients cupboards to splicing newt remainders. Or, if he was lucky, a little bit of filing or archiving.

When he reached the Potions classroom, however, he stared blankly at the inhabitants. Four Slytherins were walking briskly around the room, all of whom he recognized. There was Goyle, who was dissecting a large bird with painstaking precision, Parkinson who seemed to be timing when Zabini was to stir a steaming cauldron, and Malfoy, who flipped wildly through a heavy looking tome, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Definitely not the spectacle he was expecting.

"Er - I must have gotten something wrong ..." he began, but Draco stopped flipping his book at once and arched a brow.

"Not at all, Potter. Didn't Professor Snape tell you? You're to be our test subject for tonight." Harry's eyes widened, and Pansy gave a shrill laugh. Blaise joined in shortly after.

"I'm not ingesting a thing you give me, Malfoy!" Harry's panic shot straight through his system, and unbeknownst to him, he inched backward. The image of four predatory Slytherins brewing potions late into the evening, gathered like some sort of wizarding cult, was not one that he'd soon forget.

"Look at his face!" Blaise smirked, before Pansy swatted him lightly on the arm, indicating it was time to stir.

"Clockwise this time, Blaise," she remarked casually, the potion simmering to a brilliant yellow.

"Right."

"If you are all finished terrorizing the boy, let us begin in earnest." Snape walked into the room like a chill wind, and Harry fought the urge to shudder. "As you know, Mr. Potter, I prepare samples for all my lessons. These four have kindly offered to volunteer their services in creating them. They are of the trivial sort, meant as training for third years and below. You will be helping them tonight as I'm sure even you can handle such simple mixtures. You will be brewing a boil cure potion. I believe Mr. Malfoy has the page ready, if you do not immediately recognize the ingredients." Snape sneered at Harry's creeping flush.

"Counter-clockwise, now, Blaise." Pansy's gaze slid over to Harry's mockingly. "We all have it memorized, of course," she added.

"Hand me the vial, Pansy?" Blaise noticed the potion take on a sort of translucency, indicating it was properly prepared and ready.

Harry was nearly sorry to see Snape leave, unwilling to be left as prey to the other four. However, he found with great interest that they were fully invested in their work. He crushed the snake fangs diligently, less than eager to slip up in front of his peers. Even Goyle was expertly separating the insides of his overgrown bird.

"Hang on!" Harry eyed the others suspiciously. "There are no bird entrails in this potion. What are you playing at?"

Gregory looked nervous, but Draco sighed impatiently. He had moved on from his potions book and was extracting porcupine quills. He winced suddenly as one pricked his finger, but Harry was unsympathetic.

"Careful, Draco," Gregory said, clearly concerned.

"Any blood near those quills and we could be in an incredibly messy situation." Pansy slid off the desk she was perched on and began inspecting them.

"There's none, don't worry, Pansy. We use the ingredients for ourselves."

Harry frowned, glancing up from the scattered quills to stare at Draco's collected exterior. "You brew potions for fun?"

Draco rolled his eyes, and went back to his original task at hand. "Yes, Scarhead. Unlike you, some of us actually enjoy doing other things with our time than playing Gobstones."

"I don't get it. Why do it here and now?" Harry would have thought the best place to brew potions recreationally would be in their own common room, without the added work of Snape's samples.

"We have access to Professor Snape's entire supply of ingredients," Blaise answered helpfully. He finished pouring the potion into labelled vials, and stared at his work approvingly. "Where do you think we'd find augurey for ourselves?"

Harry looked toward Goyle's bird and grimaced. The bulky sixth year fretting over the delicate augurey parts was almost comical, but Harry couldn't find the will to laugh. Instead, the unsettling curiosity flared in his gut once again, and he let go of the snake fangs in his hand all too readily. "What are you brewing then?"

"Don't!" Pansy's voice rang out clearly in the classroom. "If you tell him, he'll snitch. Dad will be put off if he hears from the headmaster this early in the year."

Draco didn't look up from the porcupine quills, but a slight smile graced his features. "Potter won't say a word. After all, from what I remember, he's done worse things to Bulstrode."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, despite knowing it was true, but Draco swiftly cut him off.

"We're only brewing a Hate Potion for Theodore. He fancies Millicent Bulstrode, for some reason none of us can fathom. We've decided to knock it out of him." He stared at Harry challengingly, as if daring the Gryffindor to take some kind of action against them. Noticing Harry's visible deflation though, he couldn't help but laugh. "What? Expecting something worse? Something deadly, perhaps?"

Blaise looked annoyed. "Of course he did. Look at him, he thinks we're all blood-thirsty murderers. Don't you, Potter? Find we're a bunch of wild animals?"

If he was to be completely honest with himself, Harry had to admit that such a frivolous potion was not what he had expected. While it was certainly a cruel endeavour when concerning Millicent, nothing about it outright screamed 'Death-Eaters-To-Be" like he had initially thought.

"Well, you've never exactly proven yourself as otherwise!" Harry exclaimed, his eyes unmoving from Draco's, which they had somehow locked onto in the midst of the conversation.

Draco sent Harry an unnerving smile, before carefully picking out the best quills and extending them to his housemates. "You don't even know us," he said evenly, and just as before, the all-consuming silence returned.

xxx

Wednesday morning meant double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs. Harry sat on his workbench quietly, still contemplating the events of the evening before. To him, it all seemed surreal, especially in contrast with the inane normality of where he currently was.

"I still think the most exciting thing to happen regarding Herbology was in our second year," Ron mumbled, poking a putrid bulb with disgust. "It's gone downhill since then."

Hermione rolled her eyes, gloved fingers carefully prodding her own plant gently. "You say that now, but I don't remember you being that excited where basilisks and spiders were concerned."

"That's true," Ron amended, groaning as one of his bulbs burst.

"Perfect! Twenty points to Gryffindor. Good job, Weasley, usually it takes weeks for them to warm up to their partners."

Hermione looked put off, her own plant still swaying uninterestedly in front of her. Harry laughed heartily at the dual expression of pride and dismay on Ron's face.

"Maybe we should have left Herbology to Neville."

xxx

"If you keep skipping dinner, you'll hardly be able to hold down your broom come next Quidditch match."

Harry hastily shoved the Marauder's Map into his bag. He would never admit to himself that he was steadily watching Draco's name trudge across the Hogwarts' corridors, right until he came to the fifth floor. No, he conjured up the excuse that he was watching out for Hermione or Ron. Purposefully running into the Slytherin was not something he'd ever thought he would do, and his conscious mind resisted the fact that he might have done just that.

"Not that I'm complaining," Draco continued.

"I was looking for some peace and quiet, actually, Malfoy. Thanks so much for disturbing that." Harry glared.

"As long as you're not stalking me." Draco sent Harry an unreadable look, before climbing down the staircase fully, managing to look almost cat-like as he did.

"Don't flatter yourself."

Draco smirked, before tossing his bookbag onto one of nearby benches which he sat on soon after. "The potion worked, by the way."

His momentary confusion was washed away almost at once. It was eerie, Harry decided, to be in the know of one of his Slytherin rivals' plans. "And you don't mind at all that you may have caused heartache to one of your housemates?"

The blond seemed to contemplate that, head tilting to one side. "Say one of your friends, Thomas perhaps, wanted to shag Millicent. Would you pat him on the back and send him along to her room?"

Feeling, for some reason, offended on Millicent's behalf, Harry shrugged. "I think we should be able to love whoever we want."

For the first time since the school year began, Harry sensed an old fury reach Draco. It showed in his demeanour, and made its way to his eyes.

"And here I thought you'd eventually get over your simple-mindedness, Potter." Harry looked taken aback at his rage, and Draco almost effortlessly regained his composure in response. "One day, you'll understand why that just isn't the case."

He stood up then, looking just as fragile as before, yet somehow more formidable. Harry watched him go.