Once in Charms, Harry slid into his seat with a numb sort of fatigue that was becoming routine. He wasn’t certain whether this was a good sign or bad, but he was getting more used to rebounding rapidly from emotional distress. Harry couldn’t help wonder if Professor Snape had ever been having a sort-of perfectly normal conversation with someone and found himself shoving said person up against the wall and screaming at them. Maybe this all was due to the effects of Obscura somehow.

No, no – Snape, anyway, had far too much control to do something so thoroughly stupid. Especially not after a declaration of – well, maybe not friendship, but certainly something like. Certainly some sort of understanding.

Gone, now, Harry realized with a sick sort of dread.

As when Malfoy had been attempting to talk him down, it took Harry awhile to realize that Ron was speaking to him, and in the same gentle, probing tone.

“Harry – what’d he say to you? All right, there?” Ron demanded.

“He said he’d burned the Invisibility Cloak,” Harry replied numbly, pillowing his head in his hands.

“He what?!” Ron squeaked – luckily, because Harry had a feeling if Ron were any less shocked and dismayed, he would’ve shouted.

“He didn’t actually do it, I don’t think,” Harry replied, running a hand through his hair absently.

“He told you that to rile you up? He deserves what he gets!”

Harry felt a spark of anger. “Malfoy deserves far better than what he’s getting from me,” he hissed quietly. “I know you like me, Ron, and I know you hate him, but think about this clearly. He said something insulting, mostly as a spiteful joke. I just had a fit at him in the corridor and screamed my head off. I think we were just admitting we were really getting on better – and then he said one nasty thing and I snapped. You’re right, Ron. I’m... losing my mind.”

“No, Harry, it’s always Malfoy that gets the sharp end of your temper – and why not, since he’s such a lousy bastard?” Ron inquired, looking just as solemn and worried as he had back in the facsimile Burrow. “It’s no wonder he sparks something in you, he’s–”

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong, Ron,” Harry said, “and I... I think I was about to hurt him.”

“But you stopped.”

“He stopped me.”

“You stopped yourself, Harry. Malfoy was too scared to move.”

“Malfoy was trying to talk me down,” Harry said firmly. “And... and I can’t explain how, but he stopped me.” Harry shivered reflexively, the surreality of the situation engulfing him like water closing over his head. “You’re okay with this because I’m the good guy, aren’t you, Ron?”

Ron eyed him warily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, Draco’s just the son of some Death Eater arsehole, right? So it’s okay if the Boy Who Lived kicks him around a bit, eh?” Harry couldn’t help seeing his father, seeing James, in his mind’s eye, lighting up with malevolent joy as Snape walked past, rather innocently engrossed in his term paper... as innocently as Snape did anything, anyway. God help me I become like James, he prayed fervently.

Ron’s brow furrowed as he stared at Harry. “You’ve got it backwards,” he said cryptically. “It’s far worse when it’s the Boy Who Lived who’s kicking people around.” He turned, affecting a manner that was almost Hermione-like, to the front of the room. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Harry grumbled, but he, too, turned his attention once more to the lesson. He turned it completely to the lesson, in fact, since he was practically flunking Charms – Draco had been unsettling him so badly in Potions every morning that he had been unfailingly distracted and morose in Charms. Today he took notes like Hermione, putting little comments in the margins of the teacher’s words and underlining anything Flitwick mentioned more than once.

Over and over again, he felt himself slam Draco up against the wall, the reverberations traveling up his arm, saw the fear glint in Draco’s eyes, felt the anger leave him abruptly, leading him to that moment of horrified realization when he knew what it was he’d been about to do. The sequence of events ended only to begin again, cycling through his mind any time Harry stopped writing, so he tried not to stop. He wrote what he remembered of the fairy tale, he wrote what Padma Patil and Lavender Brown were whispering about Justin Finch-Fletchley, he sketched Ron sitting at his desk and looking incredibly bored.

He needed to talk to Draco. He needed to make sure Draco was all right – physically, of course, but he also had to look in the other boy’s eyes, make sure that he could still see himself reflected in them, him, Harry, not a monster like Voldemort. He needed to look at Draco and make sure that Draco wasn’t furious with him.

Or afraid.

The moment Charms let out, Harry practically ran for Defense Against the Dark Arts. The lesson began, but Draco’s seat remained empty. Harry didn’t exactly blame Draco if he was opting out of the lesson by choice, but maybe he’d actually hurt the other boy; after a moment he raised his hand to go to the loo, but went to the Hospital Wing instead. There, Madam Pomfrey assured him that Draco was not there nor had he been since the Imperius incident over a week ago.

Harry was out of ideas; he wouldn’t have much of a chance of finding Draco through guessing randomly, and he’d miss the entire DADA lesson if he chanced fetching the Marauder’s Map from his trunk in the Gryffindor Tower.

At dinner, Draco was back, seating himself next to Harry with a determined silence that forcibly reminded Harry of – well, of himself at his most stubborn.

“All right, Malfoy?” Ron inquired.

Draco blinked at him in abject surprise, and he was not the only one. Luckily, he remembered his ‘manners’ and straightened, looking Ron in the eye. “Yes, Weasley. And you?”

“All right,” Ron replied, returning to his meal.

Okay, so the two of them looked like they were having some sort of staring contest rather than exchanging pleasantries, but it was a start, Harry decided, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Hermione’s gaze was flitting back and forth between Harry, Draco, and Ron. After a moment she flushed self-consciously. “Uhm, Draco?”

Draco looked, if anything, more startled than before.

“I’m sorry what I said the other day about never forgiving you. I ought to know better than to say never. Anyway, it was a foolish thing for me to say and a childish way for me to behave.” She darted a glance at Ron.

Well, Harry thought, this is certainly a weird way for them to compete. Gazing at Hermione’s dark pink blush, he reassessed his initial conclusion. No... I think Ron’s being civil has actually shamed her into apologizing!

Draco gaped quietly at Hermione, and then turned his grey eyes on Harry. Harry shook his head in consternation. He had no idea what had brought all this on, and was still having trouble meeting the Slytherin’s eye in the first place.

“That’s quite all right,” Draco said stiffly, inclining his head as though he were a king acknowledging some dame or duchess, but Harry supposed that was Draco’s version of polite, again. “We all say things we don’t mean once in awhile.” He glared significantly at Harry.

Harry took his cue. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t bruise you or anything?”

Draco surruptitiously shifted his right shoulder, then halted abruptly when he noted Harry looking. “Well, it’s–” he muttered, but Harry was already frowning at him.

“Why didn’t you go to the Hospital Wing?”

The pale-haired boy’s eyes narrowed. “And how d’you know I didn’t?”

“Because I went there, you twat, when you didn’t show at Defense!”

Draco blinked. “Why?”

“Because I thought I might’ve hurt you!” Harry returned hotly. “I mean, honestly! I was just – I just have some trouble keeping hold of my temper lately, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s just a stupid old cloak anyway–”

“Which reminds me,” Draco said, placing a small package wrapped in parchment paper and tied with a green bow on the table.

“That isn’t–” Hermione said.

“It is,” Draco countered, “so don’t open it here.”

Harry ripped a small tear in the parchment and peered through – sure enough, the rich velvety paisley of the Invisibility Cloak lay within. His breath hitched in a half-sob as he pulled the small package to his chest and hugged it to himself, the paper crinkling under the pressure. He looked up to grin at the other boy, relief burgeoning in his chest.

Draco returned his smile with interest, the slow, real smile that he had shown Harry only a handful of times. With surprise, Harry realized that Draco had been wondering if Harry would forgive him, and now had his answer.

Harry ducked his head in confusion and a faint embarrassment. He’d been the one who slammed Draco up against the wall, after all – he should be the one waiting on Draco’s say-so...

Ron saved Harry the trouble of stammering something he’d probably muddle by bringing up the day’s lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts, the one class the four of them had in common. Harry shot him a blatantly grateful glance and together the trio launched into a discussion as to whether this-or-that technique was useful or not, a discussion into which Draco was inescapably drawn. Draco and Hermione began to argue heatedly about the efficacy of the Spiritus negrum hex, which probably would have been an Unforgivable were it not so obscure.

“Oh, come now,” Hermione was saying, tossing her hair, “how the curse works isn’t really the issue, is it? It’s the moral ambiguity of the thing.”

Draco snorted. “The ‘moral ambiguity’. Why don’t you just say you suppose it’s evil?”

“All right,” Hermione agreed readily. “I suppose it’s evil.”

“No magic is evil,” Draco shot back. “That’s something you Gryffindors never seem to understand. Magic isn’t evil, it’s either used for evil ends or it isn’t.”

“Er,” Harry interjected, as he had a number of times.

“So it’s a case of the ends justifying the means, then,” Hermione said flatly. “And I’m Unsorted, now, Draco, thanks much.”

“Uhm, Hermione,” Ron attempted.

“D’you suppose the whole ends-justifying-means thing is some kind of magical phrase, like Wingardium Leviosa?” Draco wondered caustically. “It doesn’t prove your point. The ends often do justify the means. And your change of heart does not alter the fact that you were Sorted into a house of reckless dunderheads, does it?”

Harry and Ron shared an odd moment when they simultaneously gave in, green eyes meeting dark blue in resigned but tolerant amusement. Harry’s lips twitched and he shrugged, turning back to his dessert.

“It wouldn’t change the fact,” Hermione bit off, “except for: a, Gryffindor is not full of dunderheads, thanks much again – and b, I wasn’t Sorted Gryffindor in the first place.”

Draco paused only a heartbeat before replying, “so you don’t deny the reckless bit, though.”

Hermione startled them all by laughing, Draco most of all. The blonde boy literally flinched and shuddered, as though he’d been dumped in the lake. “Yes, well,” she replied with a grin, “I’d really have to be a dunderhead to deny that – don’t you think?”

Draco’s lips twitched uncertainly, and he poked listlessly at his apple tart.

Hermione sighed and stretched her arms above her head; Harry heard some joints pop back into place. “Ahh,” she said. “Well, I’ve homework, so I’ll see you all later. ‘Night.” She was halted in her departure by Neville, who was showing her a piece of scrap parchment with a rather desperate look on his face – most likely the aforementioned homework.

“So she was Sorted into Slytherin, then,” Draco finally managed, attacking his dessert with more vicious stabs than before. “She certainly knows how to maneuver, having the last word like that – and on a matter completely unrelated to the heart of the argument.”

Ron’s face twisted in disgust. “Slytherin?!” he barked. “No way Hermione was Sorted with your type, Malfoy.”

“There’s nothing the matter with being clever,” Harry said quietly.

Ron blinked at him in surprise, his eyes narrowing when they lit on Malfoy. “No, but Slytherins aren’t just clever, Harry, they’re sneaky and manipulative.”

Harry, whose left arm was touching Malfoy’s right, felt Draco stiffen. The temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees. “It’s another case of the end perhaps justifying the means,” Draco replied in cool, measured tones. “Manipulation can be to the good, you know.” Under Malfoy’s cultured voice, Harry could hear no trace of anger or any other sort of distress, but he could tell from the other boy’s rigid presence that he was anything but calm. The discrepancy was rather unsettling.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ron replied darkly.

“And here I thought your lot truly respected Professor Dumbledore,” Draco returned quietly, placing his fork down as though he had just noticed what he’d been doing with it.

Ron gaped. “That’s not the same.”

“Why not?” Draco inquired, still cool, still polite. Harry had to admire that, as he’d be yelling by now.

“Because it just isn’t!” Ron returned. “He’s doing it because he wants things to turn out right, because he cares about everyone here!”

“So his intentions are different than, say, the average Slytherin’s?”

Ron nodded earnestly. “Exactly.”

“So the techniques he uses are all right because it’s he who uses them?”

Harry saw the trap, and noted the exact moment that Ron did as well. The redhead paused.

“If Miss Granger were here,” Draco continued, “she would undoubtedly note that it is the technique itself – that of manipulation of others against their will – that is, in fact, evil. Which would lead us to conclude–”

“That Dumbledore is evil,” Ron finished.

“Which is not true, even by my own admission,” Draco continued.

“Which means – that the ends do justify the means,” Ron finished. He stared at Draco. “Where on earth did you learn to do that?”

Harry felt Draco relax slightly under Ron’s admiring gaze, breath leaving the other boy in a whoosh. “Harry tells me you play chess,” he said. “It’s like that.”

“I don’t think so,” Ron demurred.

“Anyway, I would’ve thought, with Harry and all, you could’ve learned to be a bit more tolerant of Slytherin qualities.”

Ron frowned at the seeming nonsequitur, and Draco paused, blinking in brief surprise that shifted with a twist of his lip.

“I mean, he’s relatively sneaky, isn’t he?” Draco finished, turning to stare at Harry.

Harry tried to convey later with his eyes, desperation gripping him. If Ron learned now, and from Draco...

Ron looked like he wasn’t certain how to take Draco’s comment about Harry. “I guess,” he finally hazarded.

Draco shrugged. “And you like him well enough.”

“Yeah,” Ron conceded with a grin in Harry’s direction. He stood. “Look, I’m getting off to the Tower before he convinces me that up is down and the Canons have a chance at the Cup, all right?” He nodded at Draco, a wary goodbye but a goodbye nonetheless, and disappeared the way of Hermione.

Draco looked thoughtful, his grey eyes stormy. “You didn’t tell them,” he said once Ron was out of hearing range. “They don’t know.”

“Of course they don’t,” Harry said. “I told you it was my greatest secret, not my greatest fun-fact. No one knows but you – well, and Dumbledore.”

Draco considered this. “Much as I enjoy the possibility of stopping your heart with well-dropped hints for awhile, I really suppose you ought to let them know. Granger was mis-Sorted; I think she’ll understand. And Weasley is – is good at chess,” he tacked on with a small smile. “He’ll work it through if you give him enough time, I should think.”

“You can stop being polite now, you know,” Harry said, “and start being nice.”

“Nice is too difficult. I can’t seem to manage it quite yet.” Draco frowned. “Last time I attempted ‘nice’, I told you I had burned your most prized possession.”

“There is that,” Harry replied. “Thanks, though.”

“For not hexing you when you so violently attacked me?”

“For talking to Ron and Hermione, for being polite,” he said.

“Polite? I mean, I certainly did try, but I think there’s something about the both of them that pushes me... in rather the wrong direction. Polite?” he repeated incredulously. “We spent the entire time arguing!”

Harry shrugged with a smile. “Yeah. It was brilliant. Although you were a lot nicer than you were polite, come to think of it.”

“You and your friends are a strange lot, Potter,” Draco said with a puzzled frown. “A strange, strange lot.”

“Yes,” said Harry, eyeing Draco speculatively. “And getting stranger.”