He could probably take Draco on, he mused with a little smile, though it faded when he lifted his juice to his mouth and felt the wrist he'd wrenched the day before complain. Bitterly.
A noise chimed in his head, warning him to look at the door parchment. Really, now that he could hear the magic-doorbell, as he'd taken to calling it, he thought the system quite ingenious.
Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley the parchment read. Setting his juice down on the low table in the living room, he jumped up to open the door. then he remembered that he'd better not. By then, Snape had cleared Harry to do certain simple spells without supervision, but he certainly wasn't allowed to do them in front of people who had yet to find out that his magic was back.
"Draco," he called, and the Slytherin boy appeared, smirking slightly.
"So you do still need me for something."
"Don't be a git."
Yawning as though bored, Draco cast a careless Abrire then wandered back into the Potions Lab.
"Come in, come in," Harry invited the two girls as the door swung open on its own. "Wow, it's pretty early in the day for a visit."
Ginny took up her usual place on the couch as Hermione explained, "Sprout had to end class early when one of those big Venus flytraps took a chunk out of Ron's hand."
"Ouch." Harry made a face. "He's all right?"
Hermione nodded. "Pomfrey's regrowing his fingers as we speak."
"Some sixth years got me out of Divination to see him," Ginny chimed in, "but Madame Pomfrey told us both to get out and let him rest. Anyway, he wanted us to tell you he'll be stuck up there for the rest of today, but that he'll come down tomorrow right after Quidditch practice."
Harry smiled at that, though he couldn't help wincing a bit as he shifted in his seat. Hermione's gaze was on him in a flash. "Your back's still sore? Maybe you should have Madame Pomfrey come down here and take a look at it."
"It's okay," Harry said, wishing she'd give it up. Ever since he'd started nightly magic practice with Snape, Hermione's visits had become one long question about his various aches and pains.
"It is not okay," she insisted now.
"Listen, Hermione--"
"Harry's fine," Draco interrupted in a cold tone as he strode out of the Potions Lab and slammed a flat-bottomed vial down on the table.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry weakly echoed. He wished he had something better to say, like Look, I've got my magic back but it needs a little work and Severus is a hard taskmaster, but he's only doing what's best for me... He really didn't want to have another fight with his father, though. For now, Ron was the only student allowed to know that Harry was a real wizard again.
Harry figured Draco was trying to help with that goal when he directed the conversation away from Harry's injuries. "What's this about fingers getting bitten off? I don't even know why we have a Care of Magical Creatures class. No proper Hogwarts-trained wizard would end up choosing to be a gamekeeper, for Merlin's sake. Talk about a low-class occupation--"
"Hagrid's ace as a teacher!" Harry defended his friend. He wasn't actually sure by that point if Draco was completely sincere about the insults or if he just wanted Harry to flare up over them. Either way, if he and Draco started arguing then Hermione would forget about his sore back, wouldn't she?
"Oh yeah, ace," Draco mocked. "Never mind that he almost got me killed on his first day--"
"You insulted Buckbeak after Hagrid specifically told us not to treat a hippogriff that way!"
"Yeah, well how did your good friend Ronald get injured then today, eh?"
"It happened in Herbology!"
Hermione cleared her throat and proved that she wasn't as easy to distract as Harry had hoped. Like a dog worrying a bone, she went right back to her previous line of thought. "I suppose you think that just because Professor Snape is a potions expert he can heal anything," she sternly told Harry. "But he's not a licensed medi-wizard. It's neither safe nor healthy for him to be so possessive of his son that he won't even let you get proper medical care!"
"It's not a case of not letting me," Harry thought to say. "I don't need any, that's all!"
Hermione's pointed stare sought out the place on his neck where last week, she'd seen a bruise. It hadn't been anything serious; Harry's shielding had wavered at the wrong moment and he'd caught the tail end of a curse, that was all.
"If you've been injured you need to see Madame Pomfrey!" she insisted.
"He hasn't been injured, for Merlin's sake!" Draco broke in. "He just er... slept wrong!"
"He slept wrong," Hermione drawled. "For two weeks running? Because that's how long he's not been able to sit up straight without practically groaning!"
Draco huffed a bit. "Um, I retransfigured his bed a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to get it right, since. You know, too hard, too soft, too long, too short."
"Yeah, like Goldilocks," Harry agreed, knowing Hermione would catch the reference.
If she noticed it, she didn't let on, instead glancing from one boy to the other. "And just why did your bed need retransfiguring in the first place?" she inquired with false sweetness, suddenly barking when Draco opened his mouth, "You just pipe down for once. Let Harry answer."
"Well..." Harry thought fast. Draco wasn't going to like this, but it was all he could come up with. "Draco here was the one who transfigured it in the first place, you know. There used to be a double bed in there. Anyway, the spell didn't hold, that's all."
Draco scowled at the slight to his magic, but didn't contradict the story.
As Hermione's gaze raked Draco up and down, Harry couldn't help but think she looked a little bit smug. That wasn't so nice. On the other hand, Draco had spent years rubbing in comments about how her type didn't belong at Hogwarts, so perhaps she was entitled to feel proud of her magic.
Seeking to move the conversation onto smoother ground perhaps, Ginny quietly asked how Harry was getting along in Herbology without access to a greenhouse. Grateful, Harry gave her a wide smile and prattled on about it for a while.
Hermione just listened, rarely taking her eyes of Harry until she was nudging Ginny to murmur that they'd be late for their next class if they didn't get started on the long climb out of the dungeons.
"I thought the house-elves you dedicate your valuable time to had taught you how to Apparate around the castle," Draco put in, his voice a touch nasty.
"Draco!" Harry turned to him and scowled. "That's low, taking our conversations and twisting them like that! I told you, I can have more than one friend!" And then to Hermione, "Sorry. We were... um, just joking around about that one day."
Draco gave a rather aristocratic shrug just as Hermione raised her nose. "You and Draco Malfoy were making fun of your fellow Gryffindors. Well, I like that!"
"It wasn't that way," Harry sighed.
"Come on," Ginny urged, pulling Hermione up to stand. "I don't know about you, but I have Potions next and I'm not about to arrive there late considering--"
She abruptly closed her mouth.
"Considering what?" Harry pressed.
Ginny gave him a pleading look that seemed to say, I'm trying to be a peacemaker here--.