When Harry dreamed, he no longer dreamed of darkness, and endless corridors, and eyes like glowing coals, and snakes and torture. Now he dreamed of Draco, or he knew it was Draco, only the one he faced looked nothing like the other boy. His hair was dark, and fell to his shoulders – he looked almost like Snape as a young man, really, only a whole lot healthier, more vital. Harry cut him into little pieces and buried him in various spots around Hogwarts, with the help of Hagrid the gamekeeper. The dream held an anxiety, the anxiety of being discovered rather than that of committing such a terrible crime – and when Dumbledore saw Harry, he knew that the old man understood what it was that he had done, and was terribly disappointed in him.Draco was behind Harry, reproaching him solemnly: you won’t be rid of me that way, it’s not so easy, and then Harry was awake and upset and vowing never ever to eat pumpkin pasties before bedtime, no matter that Ron had given them in way of a peace offering after asking again if there was anything Harry wanted to talk about.

What do I say? Harry wondered. The secrets he was keeping from his two best friends had layered on one another so that even if he did decide to reveal all, the words and concepts would be an indecipherable hodgepodge of events and feelings. It hardly made sense to him anymore, especially his shifting relationship with Snape and with Draco. He was certain that Ron would overreact, would not even try to understand, and that Hermione would be hopelessly logical about it all.

Shrugging into clean robes, Harry moved down to the Great Hall with the small red book in his hands and the monocle around his neck. He wanted to examine the story one more time, no matter how it had unsettled him. Harry set himself down at the Gryffindor table, this time – Seamus grinned at Harry as he entered the Great Hall and sat across from him. “What’ve you got there, Harry?”

Harry shrugged. “Book of poetry. Fairy tale. Or secret of the ages. I haven’t yet decided which.”

This was ambiguous enough to stop any conversation, unless the boy one was conversing with happened to be Seamus Finnegan. “What’s that mean, then?” he demanded.

Harry was saved from answering by the entrance of Neville, who smiled warmly at Harry and Seamus. “I’m so glad your punishment’s over, Harry,” Neville said in that quiet, solemn way he had. “It was awful, you having to do whatever Draco Malfoy told you to.”

“Could’ve been worse,” Harry admitted. “To tell you the truth, I was expecting it to be. Either Malfoy’s a better person than I ever imagined, or he had a hunch that McGonagall would punish him the same way.”

“Same way?” Seamus inquired.

Harry shook his head, feeling his dark hair shift around at the vehement motion. “I can’t believe Ron didn’t tell you. Malfoy’s to obey me, now. For trying that Cruciatus Curse.”

“Whoa, Harry, that’s brilliant!” Seamus exclaimed, clapping him on the shoulder. “Well, what’ll it be first? Oh, man, you ought to write to the twins! Bet they’d have some ideas, they would.”

This hadn’t occurred to Harry, who ducked his head and examined his book. It was a lot harder saying that he didn’t want to order Draco than it had been yesterday. He supposed it had something to do with sitting at the Gryffindor table again, Neville and Seamus staring at him excitedly, waiting for the great Harry Potter to make his next pronouncement from on high...

Harry snorted, deciding it was trouble when his internal voice gained an aristocratic drawl. “I won’t ask them,” Harry said firmly. “It’s bad enough.”

Seamus gaped, but Neville looked surprisingly relieved. “That’s good, Harry,” the round-faced boy said appreciatively. “Malfoy’s done a lot of nasty things, but the last thing you need to do is make it all worse.”

Seamus transferred his gaze from Harry to Neville and back. “What the bloody hell are you lot talking about?”

Hermione slid into the seat next to Harry. “All right, Harry? Seamus – Neville.”

They all made polite murmurs.

“Did the monocle work?” she inquired, dimpling.

“Yeah. You really ought to see this,” Harry said, lifting the chain from his neck and settling it around Hermione’s. Then he passed the book over to the bushy-haired girl. Hermione read the tale once, rapidly, then again with greater concentration. As she worked her way through it, students began to filter into the Great Hall with more regularity, until about half of Hogwarts had gathered there; Lilac sat on Hermione’s left and ducked under the older girl’s arm. Hermione made room for the smaller girl almost absently, running her fingers through Lilac’s loose hair as she finished reading.

Harry grinned, then perked up as a low murmur began to rise around the Gryffindor table. He looked up from Hermione’s furrowed brow and solemn features to realize that Draco Malfoy was sitting to his right.

“Draco,” he said, stupidly. He noticed that Neville was blinking at the pale-haired Slytherin in the same way he did at Snape, although to a lesser degree. Come to think of it, the same could be said for Seamus, who was eyeing Draco with what looked like disgust.

“Good morning, Master,” Draco replied smoothly, politely. “Is there anything you need? Coffee? Tea?” While Harry gaped, Draco examined him with a critical eye. “A freshening charm? Your hair combed? Your robes pressed?”

“Draco Malfoy,” Hermione said, eyeing him in return. “Stop being such a git.”

Draco blinked at her innocently. “A git? I’m merely doing my best to serve my master, meet his needs. Am I meeting your needs, Harry?”

Ron slid in next to Seamus, directly across from Harry. “Ugh, what a sight first thing in the morning,” he muttered, gazing at Draco, then Harry. “All right, Harry?”

“Er...” Harry replied, because it was a bit too much stimulus for him first-thing.

“You could at least let me do something about the hair. It sticks up in the back like nobody’s business. Do you sleep on your back, Master?”

Harry flushed. “S’ none of your business how I sleep, Malfoy, and for god’s sake stop calling me that.”

“Certainly. I shall never call you ‘that’ again. Not that I ever did, Master.”

“Draco – obey what you think I mean and not what I say,” Harry immediately ordered. “And don’t call me Master, you know I hate that–”

“I know you hate using the word,” Draco corrected.

“And I told you it reminds me of Voldemort!” Harry retorted sharply, noting several Gryffindors startle out of the corner of his eye. “Can you see, then, why I might not want to be called that, either?”

“Yeah – well – sorry,” Draco said, not sounding sorry at all. He muttered a charm under his breath.

Ron, Hermione, Seamus, and Neville’s jaws dropped and they stared at Harry.

“What was that?” Harry inquired in a tone of voice that sounded far calmer than he felt.

“Just your hair,” Draco replied coolly.

“I didn’t ask you to do that!”

“You didn’t tell me I couldn’t!” Draco retorted. “Honestly, Harry, if I’m going to be seen as your whipping-boy for the next week, I cannot have you degrading me by your very appearance. Oh, and it would be nice if you could wash before you come down next time. Goodness, one supposes you might have figured all of that out by this time, you know.”

“Harry washes every day!” Ron retorted hotly.

Harry buried his head in his hands, knowing just how Draco would reply; the blond boy did not disappoint.

“Really, Weasel? Is that so? How are you so certain, I wonder? Highly interested in Harry’s comings and goings, are you? Or just his comings?”

Hermione and Ron both looked puzzled, but Seamus and oddly, Neville, were both turning bright red. Harry felt scarlet enough to make up for the lack of blushing in his two best friends. “Draco,” he warned.

“Yes, Ma...er, Harry? Potter?”

“Harry’s fine,” Harry said tiredly. “You’re going to make this hard on me, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes, very,” Draco replied. “It’s what you should’ve done to me in the first place, you unimaginative snot.” Looking at Harry’s forbidding expression, Draco’s smirk softened, if only slightly. “Oh, come now, Harry. Weasley didn’t even get it. He’s as thick as a stump, that one.”

Ron began to redden now, too, although from anger rather than embarrassment.

“I was planning on being nice to you,” Harry said from between clenched teeth. “Why d’you have to be so difficult all the time?”

Draco frowned, but didn’t reply.

“Answer me, Draco.”

“Sod off.”

“I ordered you to answer me!”

“I just did.”

“I want a real answer, and you know it! I already ordered you to do as you believe I mean. Do I have to repeat myself?”

“No, it’s just–” He gazed around the table. “I would rather answer that later.”

Harry gazed about, realizing they had a captive audience hanging on every word. Ron’s mouth was hanging slightly open. Odd – he’d almost forgotten anyone else was even there. Being angry with Draco seemed to have that effect on him. “Whisper it, then.”

Draco bit his lower lip in anxiety before giving in. He leaned towards Harry and cupped a hand around Harry’s ear. “Why I Have to be Difficult, by Draco Malfoy,” he whispered, as though reciting a grade-school paper about the Prime Minister or his summer in the States. “There are several popular theories. One: I was abused terribly as a child. Two: I am so insecure that I only gain a modicum of power by taunting others. Three: I enjoy seeing you squirm...”

Harry pushed him away with a laugh.

“All right, all right, so it’s mostly the third one,” Draco admitted.

Hermione was eyeing the two of them thoughtfully. “Well, sorry for the cliché, Draco, but it appears that the shoe is on the other foot.”

When Harry nodded wisely, Draco frowned. “What in Merlin’s name does that mean?”

“Unimportant,” Hermione said, then opened her mouth to continue – but Draco interrupted.

“You said it, which should’ve given that away,” he replied.

Harry was becoming Less Amused.

“What is important,” Hermione went on, unperturbed, “is that I have an excellent command for Mister Malfoy.” She leaned over and whispered in Harry’s other ear.

Harry felt a slow grin overtake his features. “Excellent, Hermione. Draco: be good.”

“Be good?”

“No, Harry, tell him be nice,” Hermione corrected. “I think he is good, in his own startlingly twisted little way. Nice is something else altogether.”

“You think I’m good?” Draco managed, sounding beyond insulted.

Hermione leaned forward on her elbows, looking around Harry to catch Draco’s eye. “You did some good things for Harry last week. You know it and I know it. Harry may not know it, but that’s part of what makes them good deeds. Go on, Harry. Tell him to be nice.”

“B-be nice, okay, Draco?” Harry asked.

“Oh, Potter, you couldn’t command if your life depended on it. That was a question.”

“Be nice, then, you twisted bastard,” Harry replied.

Draco looked at him, then looked at Hermione, then looked in general defeated. “Give me a moment. This’ll take some doing.”

Ron snorted in disbelief. “The floor suddenly seems awfully cold. I suppose that must be because Hell froze over...”

Harry kicked Ron under the table, remembering how Draco had gone so easy on him at first, although it hadn’t seemed like it at the time. He placed a hand over Draco’s wrist and smiled encouragingly. “I understand this’ll probably be hard for you,” he said. “We can try it like the whole Master thing... try for politeness in public, and niceness in private. How’s that?”

“Better than most relationships,” Nearly Headless Nick commended as he floated by, and breakfast began.

“Why’d you do that?” Harry demanded once they had started their potion. “Imitating Hermione is not polite, not one bit!”

“Ah, forgive me. I wasn’t meaning to imitate Miss Granger, it’s just that she does have the most perfect way of asking a question in class. She blends just the right bit of deference with polite inquiry. In order to do it properly, I was thinking of her. I had no intention of poking fun at her.”

Harry shook his head in consternation, attention moving back to their cauldron. He was beginning to realize that Draco could be just as nasty being polite as being his usual, snarky self. In fact, he was beginning to think it was something of a Malfoy art, incorporating a sneer or even a blank look of innocence into a comment, thereby changing its meaning entirely. Hermione was right – being nice was going to be a lot harder for Draco than this exaggerated, barbed civility.

Draco held the door open for Hermione and Yolande as they exited, and this time both girls tittered a bit before easing out the door.

Draco packed Harry’s books into his bag and picked it up.

“What are you doing?”

“Carrying your things,” Draco replied. There was a well, of course, you idiot, inherent in the tone.

“You don’t have to do that. You have your own stuff. How’re you gonna carry it all?”

“I can–”

“That was rhetorical.”

Draco’s jaw slid shut. “Well – what do you want me to do, then? Sir? Harry?”

Harry sighed, slumping, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Come on, then,” he said tiredly, and herded Draco out of the door.

Once they were in the hall, away from Snape, Draco’s attitude altered subtly, and Harry realized that he was going to get Draco’s version of nice. “I’m sorry for trying to cast Crucio on you at all, you know,” he said without preamble.

“You have to really mean it for it to work,” Harry replied carefully. “I’m not sure you could’ve managed.”

“Oh, no, Father has had me practice on rabbits and mice and things,” Draco added casually.

“It never hit,” Harry said, thoroughly uncomfortable by now.

“And you got in trouble for trying to defend yourself.”

Harry turned to him, stopping their progress. “Is that how you really think of it?”

Draco eyed him oddly. “Well – yeah, of course. You could’ve countered with Crucio – and instead, you just wanted me to – to stop. Besides – what should you have done after a Crucio?”

“Gotten Lupin,” Harry immediately replied. “Tried a Petrificus again...”

“No and no. My curse would’ve hit you in the back if you’d gone to get teacher. And I would’ve dodged the Petrificus and tried Crucio again. You did the only thing you could have done.”

“I was angry! I wasn’t thinking strategy, I wasn’t thinking right or wrong, I was just thinking I hate Draco Malfoy, I hate Draco Malfoy – that’s all there was room for.”

“You don’t hate me,” Draco said dismissively. “At least not most of the time.”

Harry began walking again, trying to find an answer suitable to such a statement, and coming up blank. “Er – no,” he finally replied.

Draco smiled at him, that genuinely pleased smile of his, and shrugged.

“Do you – d’you hate me?” Harry inquired. “Still,” he tacked on.

Draco eyed him thoughtfully. “What do you think?”

“I’m not sure, that’s why I asked,” Harry snapped. He sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m – I mean, I’m sure a lot of people are going to think I’m delighted you’ll do whatever I say, but–” He shrugged helplessly. “And I know you think I’m some sort of bloody choirboy, Malfoy, but even I sort of thought I’d enjoy this... more than I am.”

“You’re babbling, you know,” Draco commented lightly.

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to say I wish you didn’t have this punishment.”

“Then say, ‘I order you to not follow my orders after this order.’”

Harry choked.

“Seriously.”

“Somehow I doubt McGonagall would be satisfied with that,” Harry demurred. “Besides – I want my cloak back.”

“Your cloak?” Draco looked startled. “No can do, Potter; I burned it.”

“B-burned it?!” Harry shouted, and before he knew what he was doing, he had shoved Draco up against the rough walls of the hallway, attracting the attention of several of the students who were passing by. “How... DARE... you...” Harry spat, scarcely aware of anything that was going on around him, except Draco’s pale features before him, Draco’s shoulders under his hands. “You bastard!” he shouted. “You selfish, disgusting bastard! You held that thing lovingly, you talked like it was the most precious thing you’d ever seen, and you BURNED IT so I wouldn’t get ahold of it! That was my father’s, my father’s cloak, the last thing of his I’ve ever...”

A voice was speaking, low and calming, and it took a moment for Harry to realize it was Draco’s.

“Harry,” the voice was saying, “Harry, breathe. Breathe. I never did burn it. I was baiting you; you know, like I usually do? Come on, Harry...”

The words were just beginning to slip from Harry’s hindbrain into his cognitive centers when Draco gave up.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Draco whispered.

Then Harry felt that pull on his emotions, as though his anger had suddenly been denied him, and he dropped like a stone. Draco dropped with him, and for a moment they sat there, both gasping.

Then Ron was at Harry’s side, pulling Harry to his feet, demanding to know if Harry was okay. “What did you do to him, you jerk?!” Ron growled, making ineffective shooing motions at the students who had gathered to watch the altercation.

“Ron...” Harry attempted, “Ron, s’all right...”

Draco, meanwhile, was babbling. “It’s my fault, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve said–”

“Damn right it’s your fault!” Ron shouted. “I don’t care if you’re supposed to be obeying Harry, if you know what’s good for you you’ll get out of here, now.”

“I’ll only leave if Harry says,” Draco replied with a childish stubbornness.

“Just – go,” Harry gasped, leaning heavily on Ron.

Draco’s chatter stopped abruptly and he gazed at Harry for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then, “all right,” he said levelly, and disappeared off down the hall.