You Find It In The Strangest Places

You Find It In The Strangest Places

Chapter 3: Potions Sucks

Harry was in bed by midnight, it had taken nearly four hours to scrub the entire Great Hall until it was spotless. Malfoy had, thankfully, not said another word since their truce, and Harry was beginning to believe that he might have actually meant it. No more fighting with Malfoy? He decided not to get his hopes up. When he had told Ron and Hermione about the detention that night they had both been absolutely dumb-struck. If he thought he was shocked about this he hadn't even thought about how his two best friends would react.

At first Ron had just stared at him and then burst out laughing, he thought Harry had been joking, and then he had seen the serious look on Harry's face and he went silent again. Hermione, on the other hand, had thought it was wonderful. Harry wouldn't get into anymore fights and would have no more detentions; they could spend more time with their friend.

The trio made their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. When they walked in Ron cracked a grin and said,

"Nice job on the floor Harry, you missed a spot..."

"Oh really, Ron, that isn't necessary," Hermione chided, though she was smiling too.

"No, I think I was pretty thorough, Malfoy must've done this side of the room," Harry said, matching Ron's grin.

They moved over to the Gryffindor table, laughing and light heartedly joking with each other as they sat down to eat their breakfast.

As Harry was eating his breakfast his eyes strayed to the Slytherin table where Malfoy was sitting between Crabbe and Goyle, across from Pansy Parkinson who was constantly trying, without succeeding, to get Malfoy to pay attention to her. Harry chuckled inwardly to himself; she would never get his attention, especially not by trying so hard to achieve her goal. Then again, if she didn't try she'd have equally as good a chance; Malfoy was clearly not interested in her!

While Harry was musing to himself, Malfoy looked up and caught him watching. Normally he probably would have scowled at Potter but since their truce last night he'd told himself he would not throw any dirty looks his way. So he smiled. He nearly laughed when he saw the look on Potter's face, if he didn't know better; he could swear he'd seen Potter nearly fall off of his seat. Now that would have been funny. And then to his shock, Potter actually had the nerve to smile back; Draco didn't know if it was genuine or just to spite him, but he decided it was probably a good sign, at least he hadn't received a glare in return.

***

Harry had been shocked when he received a smile from Malfoy from across the room, smug as it was; he resisted the urge to glare and smiled back. That would teach the smart-ass little ferret, Harry thought to himself. Then he reminded himself he probably shouldn't be thinking like that, seeing as they had a truce now and all, but hey, he couldn't be expected to like Malfoy now, just because they had agreed not to fight each other anymore.

Hermione, taking the last bite of her breakfast on her way up, announced that she was going to class and that they had better go with her if they didn't want to land themselves a detention from Snape. He would be looking for any excuse to take points off of Gryffindor, including the unforgivable sin of being two seconds late.

They arrived to Potions five minutes early. Being five minutes early was definitely better than being five minutes late at least, thought Harry. Snape seemed to be in his usual foul mood when he walked into the room with his usual scowl in place, probably pissed off that the Gryffindors didn't seem to be doing anything wrong that he could deduct points for. They had faith that he would find something during the lesson though, he always did.

After spending a portion of the lesson taking notes on the potion they would be brewing that day they were assigned partners. Snape, being his usual cruel self, had paired off the Gryffindors with the Slytherins. Harry really didn't see the logic in this. After all, Snape was trying to torture the Gryffindors, but in actual fact, he was making it just as bad for his own house.

Of course Harry would have to be paired up with none other than Draco Malfoy.

Harry rolled his eyes when Snape announced who he would be working with and gathered his things in order to move over to the bench that the blonde Slytherin was currently sitting at.

"Can't seem to stay away from me can you Potter?" said Malfoy as Harry took a seat next to him.

"No, I try my best to stay away from you; it's the world that seems to disagree," Harry shot back, glancing at Malfoy before re-opening his book to the page he had taken his notes on.

"Well, as much as I would love to continue this I think we should really get back to work." Malfoy mentally patted himself on the back, it was about time he start taking advantage of their newfound... Whatever it was, it was a far cry from friendship but it would have to do for now.

Harry realised that maybe Malfoy hadn't been kidding about having a truce the night before, he could sure get used to not having to put up with Malfoy insulting his friends, family and, Malfoy's favourite thing to insult, Harry himself.

"Right," Harry said, "pass the Bezoar then."

Surprisingly enough, Malfoy complied and went about preparing some other ingredients they would need. They were working on antidotes for dangerous poisons, which they weren't actually allowed to experiment with, but Harry didn't particularly care, Potions wasn't exactly his forte.

The potion turned out quite well. As much as Harry hated to admit it, Malfoy was quite good at Potions, almost as good as Hermione was at everything else. It amazed Harry how much it had paid off to work with Malfoy this lesson. They'd finished the potion without any major screw-ups and there hadn't been a single snide remark in the entire lesson.

"Good work Potter, you managed to stay out of my way quite well," Malfoy commented with his usual smirk playing on his lips.

"I did do a fair bit of work today you know, Malfoy," Harry objected, throwing an irritated glance his way.

"Of course you did Potter, you just keep telling yourself that."

"Well the potion did turn out quite well if I do say so myself, and it wasn't completely your doing."

"Alright, alright, you can have some of the credit, if you consider following orders a good contribution."

Harry rolled his eyes and wondered if it was at all possible that Malfoy could have friends that actually liked him for him. How unlikely.

They finished bottling their potion and cleaned up their work bench and equipment, hoping Snape might dismiss them sometime soon.

Snape collected the labelled bottles, storing them and returning to the front of the classroom.

"Before you are dismissed, you shall collect your new assignment. You will be required to complete it with a partner as it is too complicated for some of you to do it on your own," he looked pointedly at some of the Gryffindor students in the class, "your partners will be those you were assigned to work with today, and there will be no objections," he said as a collective groan began to rise from the class.

Harry glanced from Snape, to Malfoy, and back to Snape. He was going to have to complete a Potions assignment with Malfoy? Now this was taking the truce thing a little too far. He may have agreed not to fight with Malfoy, but now he had to work with him for an extended period of time? How was he expected not to succumb to the urge to rip Malfoy's throat out if he didn't stop being so irritating?

Maybe he was overreacting. Judging on this morning's lesson, there was a distinct possibility that Malfoy was being quite serious about 'getting along'. He would just have to wait and see.

Snape put a stack of papers on his desk, intending for everyone to pick one up on their way out.

"I want all of you to read over the assignment and I will discuss it in our next lesson. That will be all for today, you are dismissed."

There was a mad rush for Snape's desk as people raced to be the first out of the door, and Harry went over to where Hermione and Ron were standing.

"Well this will certainly put that agreement of yours to the test, won't it Harry?" Ron said, snickering.

"Yeah, well at least he doesn't have to work with Millicent Bulstrode" Hermione said with a shudder.

Harry really wasn't looking forward to working on this assignment. Potions was bad enough without adding Malfoy into the equation. He would just have to deal with it when he got there. At least the rest of his classes, that day, were completely Malfoy free.