The Final Battle

Chapter two:

"Hey, you guys, what class do we have first?" Ron asked.

"Potions, with the Slytherins," groaned Harry while consulting his schedule.

"When do you think they will stop with the whole inter-house relationship thing? It's not working," muttered Hermione.

"Yeah, I think it's the first idea that Dumbledore's had that doesn't make any sense," Harry snorted.

They all laughed at this while heading off to the dungeons. When they reached the potions classroom, almost everyone was there, including Draco. Snape quickly brushed pass the crowd of students and said, "Well, come in, don't waste my time."

There was a silence as they entered.

"Everything will be the same as last year - there will be no fooling around while I'm in charge, is that clear?" spat Snape. "We will be working on a highly complicated potion today, you will be working in pairs."

At this, everybody was looking around trying to find a partner.

"Settle down, I have chosen your partners," Snape snapped. "You will be making a potion called the Wolfsbane Potion. Does anybody know what this is?"

Quickly, Hermione's hand shot up, as well as Ron's and Harry's because of their experience with it. Snape was obviously surprised that Ron or Harry would know the answer to the question so he picked on Ron.

"It is a potion given to werewolves. The potion doesn't actually stop a person from transforming but it keeps the person from becoming violent during the transformation."

Snape, hiding surprise, said, "Correct Mr. Weasley, now, do you know the ingredients for this potion?"

"Er, I'm not sure, sir," sighed Ron.

"Still haven't read your schoolbooks, Weasley? That's five points from Gryffindor," said Snape. "I will hand out the instructions for this potion in a minute but first, I will put you in pairs. Patil with Crabbe, Weasley with Parkinson, Brown with Bulstrode, Granger with Davis, Finnigan with Goyle and Potter with Malfoy. Now, get to work!"

Reluctantly, everybody went to sit with their partners and, as ordered, got to work.

"Hello, Potter," said Draco.

Harry fell off of his seat from his surprise at the greeting. Everybody looked up but when they saw it was Harry with Draco, they quickly went back to work.

"Hi," grunted Harry, resolving to ignore him as much as possible. He just lost his father. What's he doing?

"I'll cut up the aconite and you'll powder the bicorn horn. Can you handle it, Potter?" asked Draco.

"Fine, whatever," consented Harry. During the class period of an hour and a half, Draco and Harry didn't say anything more than necessary. A simple, pass the rat tails could be heard from Harry or in Draco's case, give me the scarab beetles.

When the bell rang, Harry and Draco were more then relieved to get out of each other's presence. The tension between the two was high, to say the least.

***

"Rise and shine you two," sang Hermione as she strolled into the boys dorm.

"Shit Hermione! This is the boys dorm, you can't come in here!" cried Seamus as he was pulling up his trousers.

"It's not like I haven't come in here before," said Hermione matter-of-factly.

"Yes, well, next time you come in here would you please knock," sighed Seamus.

"Of course," replied Hermione.

By the time Seamus and Hermione had finished their little talk, Harry and Ron and woken up, along with the rest of the dorm.

"Morning you guys! I hope you didn't forget that we're picking a quidditch captain," inquired Hermione.

"Nope, we just knew that you would wake us up in time," said Ron.

"So what am I, your personal alarm clock?" said Hermione in mock anger.

"That's basically it," Harry said with a laugh.

"Well, if I'm your personal alarm clock then you guys had better get up because you only have thirty minutes until you have to vote," Hermione replied.