Chapter 6

By the time Draco got back, Potter was already sitting on a table that was pushed to the wall, saying.

"I don't think I can do this."

"Okay," Draco said, but when she wanted to leave, Harry abruptly jumped to his feet.

"Would you mind if we took a walk while we speak instead?" and, he must have meant that because he was holding the door for Draco (completely unnecessarily too).

"Are you running away perhaps?" Draco could only ask, making Potter smile.

"I guess I'm literary trying to get out of the situation."

"We can do this another day," Draco suggested.

"No, let's leave the castle," Harry said. "Maybe we could go to the Lake."

"At this hour, in the pitch dark?"

"It's going to be fun," Potter said as only a Gryffindor would.

"I'll pass on that offer," Draco said.

"Why?"

"I'm not skinny dipping with you and the Giant Squid, in the middle of the night. Ever," Draco said, and when that made Potter laugh, she added. "I'm serious. If that's the only way you'd accept my apology, then I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do it."

"Or, we could forget apologies," Harry offered. "I'm sorry. You're sorry. Rather, I have some WWW products George gave me. We could sample it."

"Breaking at least a dozen school rules?"

"Now you sound like Hermione."

"When she's right, she's right, you know," Draco said, but Potter magically made a whole bag of individually wrapped magical toffees appear, and ate one.

"See?" he asked. "It's fun. Loads. I don't even know what it did, but I'm looking forward to finding it out."

"You have pointed ears," Draco informed him.

"Do I?" and Potter took two more of the sweets in one go. "And now? Whoa."

"Now you need a manicure spell," Draco huffed because Harry's nails grew to almost talons. "And you're eyes are weird."

"Maybe, but I have night vision!" the Boy-Who-Lived looked around the classroom as if he had never seen one. "It was the one with the orange wrapper. There're still five left. Take one."

Merlin only knows why Draco did, instead of shutting Harry down, but when she did, and her vision shifted, it was... interesting.

"I imagine this could get only better if it was really dark."

"That's a first," Potter smugly smiled. "You've just said I was right."

"I don't remember ever saying something like that."

"Well, I knew it was a waste to try them between four walls, but you didn't listen."

"Fine," Draco conceded. "Let's test them outside. But if we get caught, I won't cover for you."

"That's easy enough. Just don't get caught," Harry shrugged. "If this night vision thing lasts, we could even avoid Mrs. Norris."

"What, you don't have a toffee to make you invisible?"

"I don't know. Are you volunteering to try them all out?" Potter offered, before saying. "But technically, it's not like we're breaking the rules. Curfew can't really apply to eight years since we're legally adults by Wizarding Laws."

"I'll leave you to explain that to McGonagall," Draco didn't want to lose House Points or get detention, but she would have loved to see the Headmistress's stern expression telling her favorite student that not even Harry Potter was an exception to school rules, as long as he attended Hogwarts.

"I would, but nothing's going to happen," Harry seemed confident. "You're only bringing this up because I promised fun and you're terrified of having fun."

"Sounds like me," Draco sardonically noted. "After all, my Boggart is a good book next to the fireplace... Yikes!"

"No, really. It can be intimidating to have fun. You don't want to get used to high expectations, just in case other people aren't as fun as I am," Potter even stopped before they could take the stairs. "But that's okay. We can hang out some other time too."

"For someone who claims to be such an entertaining wizard, you say 'fun' too much, Potter," Draco didn't even have to think twice about what to say to that. "As if you're only trying to convince yourself too, that you can be, in fact, 'fun'."

"Is that a challenge, Malfoy?" Potter took another toffee and sprouted a Kneazle-like tail in a blink of a second (with even the fluff in the end) - impossible to ignore when Draco almost fell off the stairs seeing it.

In fact, she might have taken a toffee of the same color without Harry even offering one to her and might have been a little disappointed when she only got Demiguise-like eyebrows instead, but the way Potter was trying not to laugh at her, Draco took another one still.

"The purple one? We don't know what it does yet," Harry warned, but Draco wasn't intimidated.

And she was lucky, because she got blue hair, while the same color made Potter hick-up after every word he said until he cheated, and put a stop to it, but took another purple one, and that turned his already elongated nails neon-yellow.

"By the time we go outside, you can even enter the Forest, and the creatures there won't harm you," Draco said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, if you carry on like this, they'll accept you as one of their own."

"Yeah, I'm not sure how many are you supposed to take, or how long the effects will last," Potter said, but he just took another one, and grew tiny insect wings on his back, even if he just admitted that maybe they shouldn't overdo it.

By the time they reached the Lake, Draco had vampire incisors (fangs), possibly Occamy feathers in her hair, and her left eye was occasionally twitching that unfortunately didn't just go away if Draco used the usual spells to cancel it, while Potter refused to help stop it, finding it hilarious no doubt.

"I mean, you can stop winking at me, Draco, I get it already."

"Get what again?"

"You fancy me."

"Yes, because your new hair even a merperson could only envy just makes you that irresistible," Draco huffed.

"Well, I demand a rematch sometime later," Potter said. "Not all of us can get so lucky to get only cuter with every toffee as you."

"Ah, so you wish I was winking at you, is that it?" Draco laughed, but Harry didn't, so she quickly said. "I mean, come on, Potter, it's one thing that we aren't trying to actively kill each other at the moment and that I'm pretty sure we'd go up in flames on the first contact... like that."

Maybe she wasn't entirely clear, or Potter's hearing was impaired because of his pointed ears, but the next thing Draco knew was how Harry already closed the distance between them and kissed her as only a lion could - meaning that although it was just a kiss, it also wasn't.

Harry was on top of her with his full weight, as close as he could be while still fully clothed, and took control of the kiss that under different circumstances perhaps wouldn't be entirely unwelcomed.

"Stop," Draco said and was ready to charm off Potter from the top of her, but luckily, Harry was gone as soon as he initiated the kiss.

"Sorry, I got carried away," he said. "But it was just to show: neither of us is on fire just yet. The world is yet to end."

"We might as well be," Draco replied, but realized it sounded harsher than she meant it, so she added. "I mean... even if it was just a joke to you, I've barely transitioned, so it's not the same for me."

"I didn't think it through," Harry said. "I'm sorry for ruining your night."

"You didn't," Draco decided. "But please don't do it again. Or I'll curse you, despite trying to survive this year without getting killed by your friends for still bothering you."

"I won't," Potter took a handful of grass, and looked deep in thought, shutting up for the first time that night. Draco didn't know what to say either.

"You know, I've been raised by Muggles, so when you just said... I mean... I don't actually know... nevermind."

"You're wondering how magical transition works?" Draco helped him out.

"Maybe?" Harry asked.

"It can be different for everyone. As for me, I don't know if you noticed, but my parents are kind of rich," Draco said, making Harry smile, so she smiled faintly back. "So when I decided I wanted to take the potions, I could afford the best of the best, so it didn't have to be an especially long and painful process, and..."

"And?" Potter wasn't pushing but seemed genuinely curious when Draco hesitated to give him blackmail material.

"It probably won't affect my ability to have kids," Draco said.

"As in...?"

"Getting pregnant," Draco defiantly said, but when Potter's eyes grew large as plates, Draco was pretty sure her face was flaming red, and it didn't help that the sentence seemed to break Harry just as well.

"Oh. I didn't realize. I'm sorry. I mean... I didn't want to pry, either... Merlin, I'm sorry for saying all that... when I said you only put on a skirt... I had no idea, not that that's supposed to make everything better, just... "

"For the record, the only two people who know-know the last part are my mother and you," Draco warned him. "So if it's all the school will talk about tomorrow, I'll know who betrayed my trust."

"I won't tell anyone," Potter said, but seemed as uncomfortable as Draco felt, so Draco rather ignored him, and took another toffee - this time, she grew dragon scales on her hands and leg, and she thought Harry was right, and she was lucky to pick the cool ones because it actually looked nice.

"It's not like some people can't guess, or that I'd demand an Unbreakable Vow from everyone I'll date in the future, so I imagine it will eventually come out anyway," Draco told him. "But for now, I want to keep it private if I can."

"I understand," luckily, the Wizard-Who-Lived-Twice got over Draco's announcement because he canceled all the effects of his previous toffees and took so many at once that Draco was worried for one second that his head was going to fall off, but he lived.

And, turned pixie blue, with house-elf-like large eyes, sporting a series of horns that reminded Draco of a tiara, while getting long grey whiskers that might have meant to emulate dragon characteristics, but essentially made Potter look positively ridiculous as if a kid drew him.

"Wait, wait, I forgot to take the night-vision ones," Harry said when Draco couldn't even contain her laughter to polite levels. "I can't see whether you're laughing or not."

In fact, as he spoke and the whiskers moved, Draco was too busy trying to remember how to breathe rather than tell Potter all about how she couldn't stop laughing.

"I'm going to also tell you a secret," Harry said, (literary) out of the blue.

"I think I'm better off not knowing, lest your fans ambush me for information."

"It's only fair," Harry said, staring somewhere far in the distance. "I grew up with relatives who intended to raise me a Muggle, so I was punished when I did magic or anything they didn't consider 'normal' behavior."

"I didn't know that," Draco could only appreciate the gesture, hearing that. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

It was easy to see why Potter took any sort of criticism so badly, but what was rather surprising from his tale was actually how Draco felt for him. She had Lucius Malfoy as a father, but she could at least claim she was never penalized for doing magic.

"Oh, I'm long over that part," Harry said with a dry chuckle. "But I was only informed at the end of the war that I had Voldemort in my head since I was one, and almost until he died."

"You mean like a form of Legilimency or...?"

"No. Something worse than that," Harry sighed. "So now that he's gone, I should be relieved, right? But I only caught myself doing one thing lately. I'm trying to act 'normal'. So the Dark Lord achieved what my Muggle relatives couldn't. Even dead, he managed to break me. Since I can no longer trust myself because of him, I'm just pretending. Pretending that everything's fine when I'm certainly not."

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Draco could only say after a beat of silence. Whatever she thought Potter was going to tell her, she didn't think it would take such a sharp turn so fast. "You've just probably eaten too much candy at once, and coming down from it. You'll feel better by tomorrow morning."

"Will I?" Harry scoffed, but he stood as if trying to wrap up the conversation. "Maybe we should head back."

Draco followed him, in total silence, because she didn't know what to say, and Harry wasn't speaking... until Potter was about to leave her just in front of the entrance of the Slytherin Common Room, where he so gallantly escorted her back, and Draco only managed to stop him from disappearing by accidentally grabbing his sleeve.

"For the record, I think... it's a good thing that you've noticed."

"Noticed what?" Harry asked. They both canceled all the WWW tricks on their way back to the castle, except for the pixie color on Harry that seemed almost as stubborn as Draco's winking problem before.

"That you caught yourself when you've resorted to a coping strategy from your childhood that wasn't healthy for you, and you even figured out why. Because if you think about it, if you know what you fear, and why, you can always just choose to be annoyingly Gryffindor about it, and face it."

"Maybe I'm less of a lion than you might think," Potter said, making Draco laugh.

"Yeah because all the times you ran head-first to mortal danger was just a Slytherin tactic to make people think you were a hero. Or, don't tell me, you're supposed to be a Ravenclaw, and Dumbledore lured you to the Chamber of Secrets by leaving you a trail of highly interesting books for you to follow..."

"Dumbledore wasn't even in the school by then, thanks to your father."

"Oh no, I got it then," Draco went on. "As a Hupplepuff, you thought the Dark Lord was a misunderstood soul, and only meant to invite you for a cup of tea with biscuits when he called you to die, and you complied."

"Now you're just insulting Hupplepuffs," Potter said, so Draco stopped.

"I'm sorry, I only wished to insult your intelligence," Draco said without thinking how that could have sounded, and for a brief moment she thought she managed to hurt Harry, so she added. "I mean, as a friend, who only does it so you realize when you're being ridiculous."

"Is that what we are? Friends?" luckily the Gryffindor hero's attention was captured by the last part.

"I'd offer you a handshake, but I don't think I'd ever live it down if you turned me down twice," Draco contemplated. After all, she was pretty sure they both trusted each other with something extremely personal, wasn't that what friends did?

"Maybe a pinky promise then? I think blood oaths are considered dated in this day and age, and I'd rather not push my luck by ambushing you with a hug," Potter might have been trying to be funny, but when his blue color disappeared, his smile also dropped, and his complexion rather resembled a ghost.

"Are you good?" Draco asked.

"I think I'm going to be sick, so I better leave now."

"I'll try to not take it as an offense," Draco pointed out. "That just by talking about hugging me, you got sick."

And for once in history, she thought she had the last word with Harry, until the next day they were in class, and Potter passed her a note.

It said it was a "coupon for a free friendly interaction with Harry James Potter", and Draco was supposed to tick one of the following boxes: "hug", "handshake", "enthusiastic greeting but only keeping a certain distance, preferably from the furthest possible side of the Great Hall", Harry guessing that Draco would normally pick the last one.

Surprising even herself, Draco made another box and put a large "X" on the new option she created: "breaking a bunch of school rules together, just having some plain old 'fun'(*but still NOT as a date)", and almost carelessly sent the note back.

She couldn't have anticipated Granger Accioing the note, and even reading it before passing it to Potter, but also giving Potter a look of disbelief. Draco hoped it was because of the rule-breaking part, but somehow knew it wasn't.

It was too late to realize that specifying it as "still not a date", in the wrong hands, would pretty much read as "not a date yet", or as if something like that had already happened between them. And not something that they talked about, and decided couldn't happen again.

Draco was mortified just thinking about what Hermione could have assumed (or would tell everyone later), so she left class a few minutes early, wishing she could truly have a toffee to turn her invisible for the rest of the day.