Until I Wake Up

Until I Wake Up

----

And every day you gaze upon the sunset

With such love and intensity

Why, it's almost... it's almost as if you could only crack the code

Then you'd finally understand what this all means

But if you could... do you think you would

trade in all the pain and suffering?

Ah, but then you'd miss the beauty of the light upon this earth

And the sweetness of the leaving

Calling All Angels; Jane Sibbery

-----

Almost as if he could see it, the teenager moved his hands forward, tracing the air in front of the invisible barrier. Gently searching, pale fingers stiffened and outstretched, the teenager pressed gently forwards. The air resisted him, pushing around his fingers and holding him back. Steadying himself, he bent down to his knees, pushing his outspread arm downwards. He was almost unprepared when his hand reached where the resistance ended, and he jerked to avoid falling against the barrier.

Cautiously, he twitched his fingers upwards, feeling gently where the barrier started and ended. The barrier caused his arm to deaden, and he knew if he let his touch linger too long he wouldn't be able to feel his arm after too long. Good thing it wasn't his wand arm, then.

Draco twisted, marking the two points to his left and right where the barrier ended, and jabbed again in the air with his left hand. There was just enough room to slip underneath, if he crawled. Looking with a slow distaste at the muddied ground beneath his feet, Draco dropped to his knees and hesitantly crawled forwards; his wand gripped beneath his teeth.

Narrowly missing numbing his behind, Draco scrambled to his feet. Now he was on the opposite of the barrier, he could see the blue shimmer that reflected on that side of it. Invisible on one side, blue on the other, that's what Professor Flitwick had said. With a brief flood of panic, Draco checked to see whether there had been any larger holes to get through. He would not live through the teasing he'd receive from his housemates- let alone the Gryffindors - if he'd dragged himself through the mud when he was barely two foot from somewhere he could have walked through.

Luck, fate, destiny, whatever you could call it, it was on Draco's side. That had been the largest hole of all of them. The Gryffindors would attribute it to dumb blind luck, rather than Draco's ineffable talent for wizardry. Of course, this time they'd be correct, but hell would freeze over before he was going to admit that.

Hell existed, of course. They'd learned that in one of Professor Binn's endless droning sessions, popularly referred to as "History of Magic Lessons" and behind the back of the teachers referred to as a damn good time to snatch a quick kip.

I could have done with an extra few minutes of sleep this morning, come to think of it. Sighing irritably, Draco spat his wand rather inelegantly into his hand, wiping it off on his sleeve before looking up to see his next task. He hated Defence Against the Dark Arts, if only for the end of year exams. Practical exams such as this were never his forte, and meant extra hours practising when his housemates and lackeys had all gone to bed just so he could keep up with certain unmentionable students.

Let's see. Invisibility Charm, check. Reversal Charm , check. Pregnant Boggart, check. Doxy, check. Male unicorn... Draco shivered. Check, check and check. What else did we do this term?

His brow furrowed, and he grasped on the answer just as a hairy leg peeked from around the corner.

"Acromantulas," Draco recalled, spitting out the answer and running to the side as the creature skulked out of the shadows, the eyes rolling round in unison to glare at him edgily before it jerked forwards on its large spindly legs. Just our luck to have a nest of them 'discovered' the year as we need them. Just our bloody luck. The other years probably had to make do with fighting a sack of wet sand.

Draco edged closer to the shadows of one of the walls.

It's a pity the killing curse is outlawed, Draco thought rapidly as he threw up his wand, thinking rapidly for the right attacking spell. The best defence is a good offence. Or something like that... The words of their teacher came to Draco just as a hairy leg rose up to hit him.

"Arachnia exhumé!"

The Acromantula was knocked off all eight of its feet, and it slammed into the wall with a satisfying crunch. Lowering his wand in abrupt relief, not even knowing he'd been that tense in the first place, Draco looked upwards as the illusion around him shattered and he was left stood in the hall.

Nonchalantly flexing the fingers on his left hand, hoping he'd be able to feel them again soon, Draco tilted his head to one side reflectively as the Slytherins in the hall - pressed up against one wall with students of the other houses - started to clap and cheer. The Defence teacher flicked him a smile, crossed over to where Draco was stood and passed him a small scrap of parchment. Scared now, Draco let his eyes lift up reluctantly to see his final mark.

"Ten out of ten, Mr. Malfoy. You've passed."

And Draco let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

------

He lifted up his head, barely managing a weakened smile. The effort of the smile was more than it should have been, and it showed in the weakness of the expression and the muted glance.

"Come on. You passed. Ten out of ten! What've you got to mope about, Harry?" Ron was squeezing his arm in a companionable sort of way, but the iron grip of his fingers told Harry that Ron was concerned. Ron wasn't the sort to get concerned so easily.

"You were our last hope, man," Dean Thomas added fervently. "I don't know how we would have lived it down, if--"

There was no need to say it. If Malfoy had gotten the top marks in the class. There would have been no living it down and Harry knew it. He wished that thought made him feel better.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm the saviour of the world," Harry grunted with a deprecating snort of laughter.

"Don't go overestimating yourself, now," Seamus said, with a wide grin. "Eh, you beat the bugger, Harry. Let's celebrate." The sandy-haired boy sprawled over Harry's bed, half on the floor, to yank a box out from underneath his own. The problems of that movement were evident when Seamus had to scramble off the bed, landing almost on his head, before scrambling to his feet in acute embarrassment. Blushing, his hair and clothing a ruffled mess, Seamus bent down and pulled up the box he'd been aiming for. "Here."

Harry took the offered bottle of Butterbeer without even bothering to ask where it had come from. He'd stopped asking that after he realised Seamus was only going to wink at him and offer him a response involving his supposed Irish charm.

Luck of the Irish, eh? With a bland shrug, Harry watched as his other roommates cracked open their own bottles before doing the same and taking a swig of the drink.

Five mouthfuls were spat out almost simultaneously.

"What the hell, Finnigan, this is poison!" Ron exclaimed, pushing the bottle to one side and launching himself at Seamus across the bed, and, unfortunately, across Neville at the same time. Neville sprawled backwards, his hand and bottle crashing into the head of the bed. Harry's pillow caught fire.

"Fuck!" Dean had tentatively tried to take another mouthful of the stuff, and ended up spitting the second over the inferno. The flames licked upwards and Harry, in a moment of resourcefulness, flicked out his wand and shot a jet of water out of it. The fire flared up against it for a minute, but Neville and Ron added their own efforts to it, and the fire disappeared, leaving behind it an inky black mess of destruction.

The door flung open, heralding an enraged looking Professor McGonagall and a timid Professor Flitwick. The boys hid the bottles behind their backs, sharing identical looks of panic.

"What. Happened. Here?" Professor McGonagall managed after a minute. Her hair was coming out of her bun, and her face was red.

Seamus elucidated the amount of trouble they were in with a muffled: "Uh, oh."

"You can say that again, mate," Dean hissed.

-----

Surprisingly, they didn't get into trouble.

Draco lounged over the edge of one of the Slytherin settees, glass of frothy Butterbeer in one hand as he languidly watched his housemates get giddy on the bubbly liquid. It was always worth it to see his housemates get smashed on the weak Butterbeer, and smashed they did get with alarming regularity. It was rather astounding how many excuses the Slytherins could drag up for a party, and astounding how many times they didn't get away with it, unlike tonight.

Parkinson was more than a little tipsy already, and it was only half past eight. She crashed down into the settee, her bulk making the springs creak and lurch suddenly. She pushed up against him, her hot breath smelling of apricots and inebriation, her weight pressing against his side. Draco felt himself recoiling from her sweat and engulfing mass.

"Dance with me, Draco." Her voice was warm and husky against his. He could almost feel her tongue against his skin. Bile rose up his throat, and he lurched to his feet. She crashed over in a mass of giggling and acridity. "Where you goin', sweetness?"

"Feel sick," Draco said, using his standard excuse. He ran from the room, dropping his untouched glass of Butterbeer on one of the tables as he ran up the stairs to the Sixth Year boy dormitory. His legs giving out beneath him, Draco dropped to the floor in a clumsy heap and convulsed as if he were going to throw up. Landing on his hands and knees, the thin carpet no protection against the hard stones of the floor, Draco gripped onto the nearest bedpost as his body tried to regurgitate the contents of his stomach. A thin puddle of water spilled out, but nothing more, and the ground bit hard at his weary knees. He'd been unable to eat all day, in wary anticipation and nervousness of the test, and yet again he'd failed. Oh, his marks were a pass. More than a pass. But yet again he'd failed to beat Potter.

It had been a long time since that hadn't been all he'd wanted in the world.

-----

"Someone could have died."

Resisting the urge to say he felt like he was dead from her constant lecture that didn't end, that just went on and on like that bunny rabbit on the Muggle battery advert Dudley had been so amused by, Harry shuffled and looked at the carpet.

"Be glad I'm not taking any points off Gryffindor."

The entire room breathed a hearty sigh of relief. The people within it held nervously onto each other, waiting for the shake to subside.

"Wh-what was that?" Neville squeaked, his face that pale white colour it did when he was under some great strain.

"This room used to be the Gryffindor common room," Professor McGonagall snapped. "Please say I do not have to repeat basic facts you should have learned here in your first year."

"In history of magic?" Ron squeaked, his voice pitching awkwardly upwards like it hadn't done since their third year.

"Yes, Mr. Weasley. Thank goodness one of you had the sense to listen in your lessons." Professor McGonagall turned around, staring melancholically out of the window. Ron shrugged vacantly at his friends. ("Was I listening, by heck," Ron said ferverently when they finally got back to their dorms.)

"All of you will serve detention with Mr. Filch tomorrow night," Professor McGonagall said with a sigh, turning around and fixing them with a disappointed glance, the one that was perhaps the deadliest of all her teacher glares. It was the one that said they'd let her down, and while they cordially detested her lectures, it was the glance that winded them and made them remember exactly what they'd done.

"Well, what are you waiting for, boys. It's nearly nine, off to bed!"

Seamus opened his mouth to protest that since they were now sixth years their bedtime was a more respectable ten, but at Professor McGonagall's death glare he thought better of it and slammed his mouth shut. The death glare was their second least favourite of her glares, and Professor McGonagall knew it.

-----

"Draco Malfoy is a git."

Staring sourly into the mirror, Draco lifted his head and examined himself slowly. There was an unnatural shadow sweeping under his eyes from lack of sleep, his eyelashes drooping like bars across it. His hair was a tousled mess, and he almost couldn't be bothered to brush it. Aware that he would be pestered by Pansy or Greg or Vincent or one of the countless sycophants in his year, Draco let his hand stumble over the sink to reach an abandoned comb. Yanking it through his hair, Draco pulled it quickly into some semblance of an order and roughly flannelled his face afterwards with some hot water.

Wondering if he should leave his only comb on the sink, even though Granger used this bathroom too every once in a while and could curse it, Draco shrugged and let it clatter to the marble surface anyway. Granger was a prefect, after all, just like him. She knew the rules, and kept to them more than-- more than others he could mention.

It had been the surprise of his life when Granger and Patil were the named Gryffindor prefects. He'd so been expecting another of the Gryffindors to be a prefect, and had worked hard to gain the position he'd eventually found out that Potter had refused.

Draco glanced around the bathroom with a disparaging glance. Potter really must be an idiot if he'd give up luxury like this. But then, who was he to call someone an idiot? Thinking on that made Draco decided he was probably well qualified. After all, wasn't there a saying like that? Takes one to know one.

Draco raised his gaze to the mirror again, the ash-colour in his gaze a blank mask of hidden emotions, and he tried out the words again with an inner, painful laugh. "Draco Malfoy is an idiot."

The Gryffindors must say it all the time, and it didn't hurt them.

Gripping the edges of the basin, Draco paused to splash water on his face, getting his hair wet but not minding. "Draco Malfoy is a huge, big git."

The words sounded foreign in his mouth, choking around his tongue.

"You know, you're not the only one that talks to 'emselves like that."

Draco lurched upwards, and discovered very rapidly why Harry Potter may have turned down the privileges of Prefecthood.

-----

Harry picked idly at the breakfast on his plate. He wasn't hungry at all, whether that was a combination of nerves or last night's episode, he wasn't sure. The news had gotten out about the fire, and Hermione was not very amused. Thankfully her indignation made her miss the fact that Harry wasn't eating.

He hadn't eaten properly for over a year, if truth be told. Eating made him feel queasy, and the long summer of being underfed at the Dursleys hadn't done him any harm, of course...

"Someone could have died," Hermione finished, with a tsk! sound.

"No one could have died!" Ron protested. "We all know how to put out a fire. Harry, you tell her."

"Hm? Oh. No one could have died."

Hermione clucked at him disapprovingly over her own half-demolished bowl of cereal, merely shaking her bushy head in disapproval. "I strongly suspect neither of you studied for the Potions exam this afternoon?"

"As if." Ron snorted into his scrambled eggs. "I think I distinctly saw Snape last week scrawl a big fat zero on my exam sheet. Last time I knew, that was called an instant fail."

"Harry?"

Hermione regarded Harry with a cool, dangerous gaze.

"I studied," Harry offered. Hermione grinned at him. Ron shot Harry one of those patented and annoying "you're-a-git" looks. Harry shrugged it off.

-----

"Moaning Myrtle?"

Draco stepped backwards involuntarily as the smudgy bespectacled ghost poked her head mischievously through the mirror.

"Nice to see you too," the ghost sniffed, unimpressed with Malfoy's response.

"Were you watching me?" Draco felt his stomach curl in horror, and abruptly remembered the hunger he'd felt that morning, the pang momentarily distracting him. He looked up at Myrtle, shaken. "Well?"

"Well, if people are getting naked, like, I close my eyes. Don't want to see no ugly naked body. Boy, you are skinny, aren't you!" Myrtle giggled, flew up to one of the large taps of the bath and started to sniffle into her sleeve. "As skinny as Potter, come to think of it. Oh, he's a fine lad."

"It's all about Potter isn't it!" Surprising even himself with the venom in his tone, Draco picked up his comb and flung it with all his strength at Myrtle. It missed by a mile, thudding against the wall, skidding onto the tiles and shattering. A dry laugh bubbled up in Draco's chest, forcing him to bend over, and he coughed out the laughs and hoarsely tried to breathe. "'S'all about him." He sunk to the floor, clutching his side, laughing hysterically without knowing why. Draco curled against the wall, gripping the sink where it disappeared down through the floor, gasping for breath until laughing was all he could hear, high, thin and reedy, and he surrendered to the welcoming blackness away from the horrible laughter.

-----

Harry picked up the brass scales, frowning at the distorted reflection grimacing back at him. Picking up the yellow duster Professor Snape had disgustedly handed him at the beginning of the night, Harry buffed the balances efficiently with the elegant grace of someone who has done that sort of thing many times before. He had, of course, which was something he hadn't been really keen to let on to Professor Snape. Proficiency at a task led to either double the workload, or a doubly worse task.

It hadn't been his fault he'd missed the Potions exam. Mind you, he reflected ruefully, it couldn't have possibly been predicted beforehand. Who could have guessed three barn owls, a bludger, two sneakoscopes, a suit of armour, a barrel of pumpkin juice, a packet of Tarot cards and a cheerleader could have had such a potentially explosive outcome?

Harry could even still feel the bump on the back of his head.

But no. Snape wouldn't believe the cosmos had conspired together with the random conspiracy theory to knock out Harry Potter for the duration of the Potions exam. It was pretty hard to believe, but then again, Professor Vector and his seventh year class had an hour before worked out the exact possibility of everything happening that had happened, including exact trajectories. Hermione even said some of them were working on the calculations to find out the exact odds for Sasha Wilkinson having overdosed on sugar and managed that 173.7 degree high kick.

The odds had come out, even for the whole random combination in the first place that had ended up with the suit of armour crashing down on the back of his head, was somewhere in the region of one to seventy-three billion.

Honestly, you had better odds getting a clean comment out of Seamus Finnigan these days.

Harry scrubbed viciously at the tilt mechanism of the scales, and placed them back on the shelf, picking up the next one. He didn't turn as the door creaked open, figuring if Snape caught him 'slacking' (Snape would have counted breathing as 'slacking' during detention if he thought he could get away with it) then he'd be for it.

"Potter."

The thin, dry voice didn't sound amused. Harry swivelled on his heel, duster and scales in his hands, and almost dropped the items in shock. By Snape's side was Draco Malfoy, looking surly and tired and ill.

"You've got a friend for detention. Apparently neither of you thought about being considerate of your exams. You," here he fixed a harsh glance at Harry, "didn't think to get out of the way before Miss. Wilkinson practised her gymnastics, and this idiot didn't eat before the exam. I want this room cleaned, top to bottom, spick and span, before the morning. I don't care how long it takes. Your exam grades will be based on your term averages instead."

Snape released Draco, and the boy stumbled forwards, absently rubbing the back of his neck. Draco turned around, and Harry was surprised that the Slytherin didn't look quite so... surly. If Snape's star student was being treated this way, then maybe there was some small hope for justice after all...

"You know what." Snape's voice was slow and measured. Harry resisted the overwhelming urge to say 'no, but I get the sinking feeling you're going to tell us anyway.' Dumbledore would have laughed at a statement like that. Snape would get you shipped back home in tiny boxes. He and the Dursleys would get along famously, if Snape hadn't the inbred ability to level a house with a few words if he so desired. "I always though I had a brilliant example of opposites in my Potions class with you two. One intelligent boy brought up politely, one less unfortunate boy with a limited intellect."

Harry resisted the urge to ask which was which.

"You're not who you could be, until you can compare yourself against someone you're not. That's the philosophy I was trying to teach both of you. You could have both excelled at the top of your academic areas if you could have bounced constructively off each other. But now - you're as bad as each other. Not opposite, just the same. And you don't know how disappointed I am in both of you."

He swept away in a flurry of material, clanging the door shut behind him and saying nothing more.

"Oh, that's brilliant," Harry said, more out of the feeling he should say something than the actual desire to speak. Being in the dreary silent dungeons on your own in the quiet was all very well, but being silent when someone else was in there seemed wrong for some reason.

"Yeah." Malfoy looked a bit fidgety, before edging a glance at Harry. He'd obviously seen the cut on his forehead and the bruise, for he frowned. "What happened to you?"

"The chaos theory in action," Harry said, tersely.

Malfoy pulled a face. "Succinct as usual, I see." He grabbed one of the dusters, and started on the pile of classroom cauldrons by the desk. "If you didn't want to tell me, that's all you had to say."

"Who got out the wrong side of bed this morning?" Harry said grumpily, his relatively bland mood veering towards grumpy.

Malfoy twitched. "There's only three sides I could get out of, the left, right and end. Unless you'd care to enlighten me on which one I shouldn't get out of, according to Saint Potter, I'd be much obliged."

"It's only a saying," Harry protested. "I won't try saying anything again. Sorry." Harry's tone was rife with what Hermione called 'sarcasm', his Aunt Petunia called 'impetuousness' and Seamus called his 'shit-eating tone'.

"Sorry."

Harry jerked his head up at Malfoy's voice. Malfoy's 'sorry' had sounded almost genuine as opposed to Harry's sarcastic genuflection to politeness. Looking at Malfoy softly, his face indecipherable, Harry looked at his arch nemesis, hunched over the cauldron almost as if he were defeated.

"Urm. Sasha Wilkinson, that American transfer student, with the pink hair? The cheerleader? She overdosed on Fizzing Whizbees. Attempted to show off her high-kick, slipped on Lavender Brown's tarot cards, she knocked into Neville Longbottom's sneakoscope. That flew through the air, knocked off the barrel of pumpkin juice Malcolm Baddock had been sent from home. That rolled down the table, flew into Adrian Funnel's sneakoscope. That knocked through the air, hit the bludger on the teacher's table from its binding. That flew through the air, hit two owls, and careened the third into a suit of armour. Which, urm, fell over and knocked me out."

Malfoy had turned to Harry half way through the story, and was staring at Harry with an unreadable expression, his eyebrows raised. "Huh," he said eloquently. "I think that could only happen to you."

Harry shrugged aimlessly. "I guess so," he said, watching as Malfoy turned back to the cauldrons.

"You know -" Malfoy's gaze jerked upwards, violently, before lowering down as if he'd seen a forbidden image. "What Sn-- What Professor Snape said about... opposites..."

Harry heard Malfoy's words, clenching and unclenching around his heart like a fist. "You're not who you could be, until you can compare yourself against someone you're not."

"Impressive. Total recall." Malfoy managed a faint smile. "You're-- I mean-- He said, but I, it wasn't the truth, and --" Malfoy lowered his head, gripping the sides of the cauldron furiously, the words tripping in his mouth furiously. "I don't think we're opposites either. Even though he, you know, was, kid- He was kidding around."

Harry nodded slowly, staring flatly at the stones of the dungeon. "Th-" He felt like he was choking, like the thick, stagnant atmosphere of the dungeons was trying to suffocate him. He fought down the blind panic to claw out of the room with his bare hands. "Then what are we?"

Malfoy looked upwards, and as if it had all been timed and synchronized Harry looked too. "A person and an echo."

"There's poetic," Harry mumbled. Malfoy laughed. It didn't sound as if he was amused, it sounded like he was falling. Falling, like - like he was. "But which --" Dread sounded in his stomach like a death knoll. "Which one of us is the echo?"

"I don't know." Malfoy's choked words made Harry realise what he should have all along, Malfoy was on the verge of tears, maybe had always been, but was holding it in, his pride holding them in.

"Mal-" Harry lifted up his hand involuntarily, to brush the pain away, just in this moment to calm the pain of another fellow human being. A human being like him. Realisation wound its way into Harry's brain like a snake coiling around his neck, tightening and twisting. "Maybe we both are," he said, joking, knowing that Malfoy thought he was the echo, and knowing instinctively that the slender Slytherin wasn't. There was no way Draco Malfoy could be an echo of anything. The furious thought surprised Harry, and he felt his cheeks go red.

"Oh bloody hell." Malfoy sounded slightly hysterical, his musky aristocratic voice winding headily over the syllables. "This is going to become one of those irritating bog shite riddles. You know the sort."

Harry supposed he did. "Hm. But on the plus side, echoes are bouncy," he offered, lamely.

Malfoy stared at Harry like he was insane. "Trust you to get straight to the heart of the matter, Potter."

Harry managed a wan smile, and brushed ineffectually at one of the desktops with his duster.

"So, you said Fizzing Whizbees, huh?"

Harry frowned at the tone in Malfoy's voice. "Yes," Harry said slowly, dread curling in his stomach.

A mischievous light appeared in Malfoy's eyes.

"Forget it," Harry said flatly.

"But-"

"Forget it."

Malfoy curled his lip in displeasure. "Spoilsport." And: "Hey, how did you know what I was going to do?"

"'Cause I would have probably done the same thing in your place," Harry said. "So Don't. Even. Think. Of. Trying. It."

"You're no fun."

"Never said I was," Harry retorted, picking up a jar and dusting the lid.

Malfoy burst out laughing, and just as suddenly covered up the sound with the back of his hand, and he looked up fearfully at Harry like he'd done something wrong.

"You can laugh, you know. The rumours aren't true," Harry said casually, seeing how tense Malfoy was. He's really on edge. Maybe daddy-dearest is pressuring him to do some dirty deed for Mouldiemort. Harry's last encounter with Voldemort, in a hot, sticky jungle in Australia, had lead to a showdown in a crocodile pit where Voldemort had got covered in rotting corpses, hence the dodgy nickname.

"Which rumours?"

"That I bite."

"Oh." Malfoy's brow furrowed. "But how do you eat then?"

"Huh?"

"If you don't bite."

"Er..." Harry frowned. "You know- no one's ever called me up on that before."

Malfoy grinned, pearly white teeth flashing in the dull room for a moment before he clamped his mouth shut again and focussed on dusting off some of the large, musty textbooks carpeting the walls on the far end of the classroom. "No one can accuse me of being stupid."

"Didn't Snape just do so?" Harry resisted the urge to pull a face at Malfoy; instead, he bent over the sink, scrubbing ineffectually at the grime-encrusted taps. The problem with Potions was needing water in the potions, and the problem with sinks was people liked to pour failed Potions down the plughole, usually with nasty, dirty side effects. "Because you didn't eat?"

Malfoy's ears flushed dully. "Now that's all your fault."

"Come again?"

Malfoy was silent, and didn't reply.

"How come it's my fault?" Harry demanded again, turning to pierce a confused glare at Malfoy. He could see Malfoy's reflection faintly in the windows, dark and dank as they were, and the Slytherin looked to be smirking. Harry felt a little surer of himself. Malfoy smirking was familiar territory.

"Everything that goes wrong is all your fault. I thought you should know that by now," Malfoy replied glibly, as if Harry should have known it all along.

"Ah," Harry said dully. "Gosh, I guess with something like that I should have known."

"Well then, what are you complaining about?"

"I wasn't complaining."

"Sounded like a complaint to me."

"I didn't mention complaining!"

"Then why did you bring it up?"

"I didn't!"

"I distinctly heard you."

"Maybe you need your ears cleaning out," Harry said sourly. "And I didn't complain."

"All right, stop harping on about it. I didn't bring up the complaining thing anyway." Malfoy looked miffed, as he waved his duster at the book, raising a cloud of stifling dust.

"I'm pretty sure you brought it up," Harry said sourly, running the water for a few seconds to get rid of some of the extra grime. A suspicious burp emanated from the plughole, and Harry shut off the water with a panicked glance.

"You were the one complaining. I don't know why you're getting at me for it."

"You're impossible!" Harry fumed, feeling the ridiculous urge to stamp his foot down on the floor. It worked when Dudley did it, after all, but Harry was vaguely sure that the same techniques a miniature Killer Whale used on his parents would work on Malfoy.

Malfoy kept his back turned to Harry, but Harry could see he'd gotten another of those toothy smiles from Malfoy. "I know," Malfoy said, referring to his impossibility. "Nice of you to say so."

Harry was silent for a moment as he chewed on his lower lip. Training himself out of his habit was too much hard work, and he didn't think that much hard work was worth trading for Hermione's stifling lectures about chapped lips. "Why didn't you eat today? Did you just forget?"

"Guess so. Was too focussed with beat- with passing the exams today."

"Too obsessed with beating me, you mean," Harry said cautiously. He looked across at Malfoy, seeing the other's back tense.

"If you like," Malfoy said, his voice deceptively light, his uneasiness betrayed by his uptight posture.

"Don't worry. Me too," Harry admitted, without thinking.

"You two?" Malfoy turned to look at Harry curiously. "You didn't eat either?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm more used to it than you. I guess I was too worried about losing face in front of my housemates." He grinned ruefully. "I stayed up all night practising my hexes. Getting less marks than you is pretty much a mood killer - so much as one tiny mark less and no one gets any sleep at all."

"Ditto." Malfoy seemed lost in thought for a moment. "Pretty insane, huh? It would be so much easier-"

"Without the competition, yeah. But it's expected." Harry looked out the windows, where the faint smudge of the moon flittered across the glass, shattered pieces of distorted light. "It can't be much different for you."

Malfoy laughed, humourlessly. "Except when I fail, I get to disappoint my parents. You're at least saved that discomfort."

"You're kidding, right?" Harry tilted his head to one side. "Professor Lupin and Sir- Well, Professor Lupin was a good friend of my dads." Harry's tone was filled with a curious longing that Malfoy could hear, and the blond boy listened intently despite himself. "I once disappointed him and--" Harry spread his arms. "It was the worst feeling in the world."

"How did you disappoint him?" Malfoy leaned back against one of the desks. "Wait, bet it's got to have something to do with that time your head appeared in Hogsmeade. He was in a bad mood all that week."

Harry ducked his head sheepishly, the hangdog expression telling Malfoy everything.

"It was, wasn't it! I knew it." Malfoy looked smug. "Hey, how did you do that anyway?"

Harry looked up mischievously, and waggled his fingers in Malfoy's general direction. "Magic."

Malfoy looked disgusted. "Idiot, I know that much."

"It might have just been a Muggle technique," Harry said lightly, turning his attention to the books on Snape's desk, in disarray.

Malfoy snorted. "Yeah, right. I can just see that now."

"Muggles aren't all that bad," Harry said softly.

"Just like wizards, huh?" Malfoy sounded bored. "Save me the lecture, Potter, I get enough of it from other people."

Harry held up his hands in apology. "Sor-ry," he said, drawing out the syllables.

"Hey, I don't really mind. As long as you're not complaining..." Malfoy trailed off suggestively, a grin finally on his face, and Harry couldn't help it - he smiled too, sharing one of those bleak moments of happiness that are too often found few and far between.

"I was not complaining," Harry said lightly.

They both knew he wasn't as mad as he might have been earlier in the night, the tone was too light and dizzy to suggest anything but amusement at the situation.

"Bite me, invisible boy."

"I thought I told you I don't do that."

Malfoy laughed, held his side for a while, and it took a long moment for them both to calm down and stop laughing. Malfoy seemed to be going through some internal struggle, stuck between shock that he had so much in common with Harry and how much hate he still had, bunched up inside, now with no sensible direction to go. "Don't think this changes anything outside, Potter. I may be able to hold an actual conversation, but that doesn't make me human. I've hated you for too long, and not even one reasonable - or even fun - conversation can change that."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "An I suppose we're okay with that?"

Malfoy smiled once. "We have to be."

"I think I'll reserve judgment on that," Harry said lightly, his tone gentler than the turmoil in his eyes as he held Malfoy's gaze staunchly. His will met Malfoy's, flared, and Harry felt the heat melt, fizzling away at the edges. Still there, tangible and electric, but dissipating. However long it took, however many of these small encounters it needed, Harry found himself willing to go for it. Somewhere at the end of all their enmity, there was a chance - a chance - for something greater than the conflict, and for now the idea of that would have to do.

"You do that," Malfoy said softly, a hint of a smile as he acquiesced to the silent promise of an eventual end to the hostility.

Harry smiled to himself, whistling under his breath as he started on the mortars and pestles stacked in the corner. Not everything was eventual, no matter how much Snape or Ron or Voldemort pretended.

-----

Draco let his finger trail over the galleons in his pocket, looking forward to the end-of-year trip to Hogsmeade. School didn't end for another two days, because of a mix up in term dates and exam times, and Draco was glad of the reprieve. Two days to relax, not under the supervision of his father, sounded pretty darn close to perfection to him.

"Fifteen... Sixteen..." He looked up edgily. "Wonder how many Fizzing Whizbees I can get for that..." He grinned inwardly, knowing the blinding grin that threatened to consume his face like wildfire would attract too many awkward questions, questions that Draco wasn't exactly sure he could answer.

Occupied by his thoughts, Draco was startled back to reality by someone jostling his elbow in the crowd, and he looked up angrily to see Harry Potter sheepishly looking at him, flanked by his cronies, Granger and the Weasel.

"Don't shove me," Draco managed, the grin that had been threatening all morning breaking through, shining like first sun on snowdrops, bright and a welcome sight.

Potter grinned back. "Don't complain," he returned, inclining his head in a soft nod and gesturing for his friends to follow him away to another part of the path.

Draco couldn't help but overhear Potter's friends as they wound away from him through the crowd.

"What was that about?" The Weasel asked, scratching his head in confusion.

"Hope, I think," Potter replied lightly, stalking away and not looking back.

Draco muffled the grin, and started on the path to Hogsmeade, letting the noise wash over him like the soft caress of the sea. If that was what hope sounded like, it sounded pretty damn worth trying for.

-----

Calling all angels

Calling all angels

Walk me through this one

Don't leave me alone

Calling all angels

Calling all angels

We're trying

We're hoping

But we're not sure why