"Prat."
The Slytherin boy smiled. "You're welcome."
"Oh. Right, thanks," Harry thought to add.
Draco, it seemed, wasn't through being superior. "I must admit it was quite a show you put on trying to make things fit. Why in Merlin's name didn't you just shrink them?"
Harry stiffened. "You've seen my spell lexicon. Was that one in there?"
A bit nonplussed, Draco raised an eyebrow. "You mean you can't? That's odd. Hmm, do you suppose some spells require only surface magic, then?"
"Could be," Harry admitted. "Though I shrank things by accident when I lived with the Dursleys, so I suppose that particular spell has to be drawing on dark power. The trouble is, I can't seem to figure out the Parseltongue for it." Harry shrugged. He had his new magic fairly well in hand, but that didn't mean that he could do anything he pleased. Like Draco's insane see through the wall request, or any number of spells that seemed to defy translation. Magic, even Harry's, still had its limits.
"You poor thing you," Draco drolled with a marked lack of sincerity. "Such a terrible pity. You must just weep in your soup over being so very weak and helpless, barely a wizard at all--"
Harry lightly shoved his brother. "Oh, just shut up about it and teach me the wizardspace spell."
"I only know the simplest variant," the Slytherin admitted, grinning --no doubt at the fact that even so, he knew more than Harry did. "I can't spell a whole wall like Severus can, and I certainly can't help you with the snake language. You do realise that it sounds rather gruesome, don't you? At least it does to me, even after all the hissing you've been doing lately... Anyway, though, let's work on wizardspace tomorrow when Severus is home. You know, in case you turn yourself into the twelfth dimension or something."
Harry grimaced a bit as he remembered the schedule his father had laid out. "Tomorrow'll actually be my last free Saturday. After this I get nothing but Potions lessons, unless I can persuade Severus to let me go on the occasional Hogsmeade visit."
"My heart bleeds," Draco dryly put in. "Considering the likelihood I'll get a Hogsmeade Saturday."
"I'll bring you some things," Harry promised.
Draco's eyes were a bit bleak, but he tried to make light of it. "All right. Well, you know me. I like emeralds and diamonds. Oh, and racing brooms--"
"And every-flavour gelato," Harry joked.
"They have that?"
"Just kidding." Harry flashed his brother a slight smile, enjoying the puzzled look he got in return, then set to packing all his things neatly away in the trunk... even though this was just Friday, and he wasn't going back to Gryffindor until Sunday night.
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"Well, there's one good thing about your returning to a normal schedule," Draco said later that day as they were finishing the afternoon tea he'd declared he just had to have. "With you eating in the Great Hall and me tending the home fires, we'll be able to compare notes and see how many meals Severus is really skipping."
"Good thinking, except I found out he snacks a lot with the headmaster."
Whatever Draco might have replied to that was cut short by the abrupt appearance of flames in the Floo, followed by a scrolled parchment popping into existence and rolling out onto the hearth.
"Steyne again?" Harry wondered, setting down his biscuit as he went to kneel in front of the letter.
"Relax, I recognise the ribbon. Pansy used the same kind last week when she Flooed a letter through."
Harry personally wouldn't have pegged Parkinson for the pink type. "Uh, you didn't mention a letter from her," he hinted.
"I don't mention half my letters," Draco drawled, though he relented enough to add, "She sounded like she might be ready to listen to me, though. Said a contingent of Slytherins were starting to question some things--ha, if I know Pansy, probably the fact that the Dark Lord's a half-blood. But you have to start where people are, I hope you realise... what's wrong?"
"How could she Floo you a letter?"
Draco stared at him. "Very easily, I should think. Listen, she couldn't Floo through a dagger spelled to stab any of us, or anything overtly harmful. Still, Severus and I check letters over carefully because a really subtle hex or curse might slip by the wards. Though you're in no danger at all, of course. Sacrificial magic really is quite something."
"I'm not stupid. I meant, where could she have Flooed it from? I didn't think many fireplaces in the castle were hooked to the network."
"Well, I don't suppose she used the headmaster's connection," Draco gibed. "But there are some others. Umbridge let the Inquisitorial Squad use them." Catching the look on Harry's face, he added, "Look, all that... it seemed like a big game to us, like one more round of Gryffindor versus Slytherin--"
"Some game," Harry muttered.
"I thought we were beyond all that."
"It wasn't a game, Draco!"
"I know that! I said it seemed like a game, all right? It was stupid and bloody dangerous and I was fifteen and an idiot just like you said! So can I read my letter?"
Harry breathed in once, twice, three times and got himself under control. "Yeah, all right. But check it out first. Just in case."
Draco did. "Definitely from Pansy," he pronounced after the letter had passed his complete gamut of identity spells.
"And you're sure it's not set up to hex you at all?" Harry asked in a doubtful tone. "I mean, you did put her in St. Mungo's. Don't you think she wants to get even?"
"It's clean as a whistle," the other boy insisted as he grabbed the scroll to unroll it. Considering he'd declined to ever lay hands on his mother's letter, Harry raised a brow. Then again, since Dubby had snapped his fingers to wink Narcissa's letter out of existence the minute he'd had that reply in hand to deliver to Walpurgis Black.... Harry sighed, remembering the scene that had caused. Clearly put out at having his mother's letter destroyed, Draco had tried to throttle the elf; Harry'd had to hold him back until Dubby was gone.
Severus had taken points from Slytherin.
"Well?" Harry asked now.
The Slytherin boy looked up, his eyes startled, then furrowed his brow as he cast Tempus to check the time.
"What does she say?"
"I think she might be going sweet on me again, actually." Draco shrugged and didn't meet Harry's eyes. "This is a bit... hmm. I don't know that romantic is quite the word to use, but it's definitely not hostile." The smile he'd been trying to hide cracked through his faÃade. "That last letter of hers was the same."
Well, that explained the dream, Harry supposed. "But what does she say about Slytherin, Draco?"
"Not too much," Draco claimed, but by then his eyes were so shifty that Harry knew something was going on. "Say, you know that potion I've got simmering? It needs fifty stirs clockwise and twenty counter-clockwise, but I'm of a mind to reply to Pansy straight away. Um, can you go tend the potion for me? You won't be brewing unsupervised, you'll just be stirring and it's a really stable mix, nothing will go wrong--"
"Sure," Harry answered in an even, steady voice. He casually strolled off in the direction of the Potions lab, even went in, then stopped and listened as intently as he could. No sound of parchment unrolling, no scratch of quill... just the quiet, almost inaudible creak of a trunk being opened.
Edging quietly into his bedroom, Harry took in the scene before him and chided, "Draco!"
The Slytherin boy spun around, Harry's invisibility cloak clutched in his hands.
Harry wasted no time in snatching it from him and bundling it back into his trunk. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Uh, nothing," Draco babbled. "I mean, I was just going to borrow it for a bit. Really. I'm feeling, er, shy, you know, with Pansy getting all hot and bothered in the letter, and I wanted some privacy so I could reply, you know. Oh, come on! Didn't you ever sit on your bed with the curtains closed and think of that Patil girl you went to the ball with?"