"Mr. Potter you are late and you have arrived without your textbook for the third time in a row. Where is your textbook?" asked Slughorn.

"I don't know I think I left it somewhere or something," Harry replied lazily without bothering to look up. He was trying his hardest to get a reaction out of the teacher, out of any of the teachers, but the old man just nodded and let it go. He walked to the store cupboard and took out a textbook and gave it to Harry without any further comment.

Halfway through the class Harry was leaning back on his chair and ignoring his half-finished potion when he heard Slughorn speaking across the room. "Mr. Malfoy could you stop doodling on your parchment at once and take out your text book!"

"I haven't got it, I lost it," Malfoy replied without looking up from the piece of parchment. Slughorn was annoyed at the boys non-fazed reply and snatched the parchment off the desk before he ripped it up and threw it on the fire beneath Blaise Zabini's cauldron. Malfoy hadn't even bothered to light his yet. "That will be a detention for not bringing you textbook to lesson. I expect you to be here tonight at eight or else."

Malfoy just shrugged looking bored and for a second Harry wondered if Slughorn was going to completely lose it. Harry was angry with the man because he had done the same thing and yet got into no trouble whatsoever for it. He hated the whole hero thing that people had going on and the way they wouldn't blame him for anything. He couldn't do anything wrong it seemed as Harry closed his eyes and fell asleep for a while, knowing he wouldn't be woken until the lesson ended.

When he awoke Hermione was smiling at him and Slughorn was standing over him. Instead of getting a shouting at for falling asleep in class, like any other student would have done, Slughorn asked, "Harry, m'boy, if you ever feel too tired again then no teacher will hesitate to let you go and lie down for a while. Perhaps it will be best if you did that now in fact..."

"No!" Harry said furiously, "I was just bored senseless."

"Ha, Harry just like your father when he used to make cheeky comments about my class enthralment levels. Now if you really are fine then you must hurry along because we wouldn't want you to be late now."

This year Professor McGonagall had decided the only way for everyone to get over the ridiculous rivalry between houses was by putting the two biggest enemies together; Slytherin and Gryffindor. They had Charms now with Professor Flitwick and of course the students from their Year from Slytherin House. Harry sat down and again paid no attention to the lesson but instead looked in a bored manner around at the people in the room with him.

Seamus Finnegan was talking to Dean Thomas who had finally got his best friend into the muggle sport of football. Now in the new eight year dormitory rooms – all the eight years were in a special tower with a shared common room and then they shared rooms with someone else – the one belonging to them was plastered in millions of photos of different football players. It had been a great disappointment to Dean that Harry hadn't known anything about football even though he was raised as a muggle so it was nice there was someone he could now have a proper conversation about the sport with.

Hermione and Ron sat at the table in front of him and from the angle he was at he could see them holding hands. Ron and Hermione's relationship had blossomed over the summer to become what it was now. After that kiss during the final battle they had realized just how badly they were meant to be and now were doing everything in their power to keep it that way. It was weird for Harry to have both his best friends dating each other and sometimes he felt a little left out. However he couldn't deny they were happy and that was all he had ever wanted.

Neville sat in the seat next to him and like himself he was not listening to Flitwick talk about levitation. Neville had become fascinated with new species of plants over the summer and on his desk he had a few glass vials containing samples. He seemed to be labelling them with their names and then endless numbers before putting them back in his bag and pulling out a few new vials. He saw less of Neville at the moment as the boy spent a lot of his time down by the greenhouses with Professor Sprout. There was no doubt in Harry's mind that Neville would become the Herbology teacher when Professor Sprout retired.

The final two Gryffindors in the room were Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, two of the most annoying people Harry had ever met. Lavender spent a lot of the lesson doing her make up in a small mirror, turning more and more orange by the second. She was the sort of girl who aimed to marry rich after school and so had no interest in her own education. Parvati was obsessed with boys and since coming back this year had already slept with a high percentage of the guys in the year. She was not as vain as Lavender was but she was certainly just as stupid.

Then there were the Slytherins. Pansy Parkinson sat next to Millicent Bulstrode at the front of the room and they seemed to be writing a list. Everyone knew about their lists as they were infamous through out the whole school. They would either be about who the girls aimed to shag before a certain time – usually the end of the term – or sometimes about setting other people up. However Harry knew that secretly Pansy was very intelligent after being her partner once for Herbology. The girl just chose to act dumb because as a pureblood girl all she was expected to do was marry another pureblood and then produce hundreds of heirs. Harry reflected as he sat there that all he knew about Millicent really was that she had a cat.

There were two other Slytherin girls, Daphne Greengrass and a girl who he thought was called Tracey Davis. Daphne spent a lot of time with her younger sister, Astoria, and seemed to constantly be able to smell something unpleasant from the look on her face. Daphne was a very plain girl with not much to give, no incredible amounts of beauty or intelligence. Tracey seemed ever so quiet and not at all stuck-up or cocky like everyone else in her house. Harry had also been partners with Tracey once and had only heard her speak thrice.

Crabbe and Goyle sat at the desk behind them actually taking notes on what Flitwick was saying. He could see from here that they were having trouble writing without lines and that each letter they wrote was an effort. Crabbe had got a lot thinner over the summer and taller as well, whereas Goyle had lost a lot of his bulk. They now looked a lot less like each other and seemed to care less where their once ring-leader was. He had admiration for them as they had gotten away from everything their parents had been doing and he knew they spent the summer helping rebuild places.

Finally there was just Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy. Blaise had changed a lot over the summer and now looked a lot like a man, but a lot happier too. His family had never committed to either side officially, even though they were old purebloods, but now they could declare what they really thought. From the time he had spent with Blaise up in the tower playing chess Harry knew that under different circumstances they could have been friends. And Draco? Draco had given up on the world, it seemed to Harry when he took a good look at the boy.

He was in trouble all the time with the teachers as none of them had forgiven him for what he had done to Dumbledore, despite it not being his fault. But every time he got put in detention he didn't scowl or protest or even look bored. He just accepted it and then carried on as if it had never happened without looking up normally. It wasn't that he didn't care that he was getting in trouble; it was that he didn't care at all any more.

Suddenly Harry realized that everyone was levitating things round the room and so he took out his own wand. Even though he was blatantly doing nothing he realized that he was going to get away with it. Then something heavy hit into the back of his head hard and he yelled, "OH FUCK SHIT!"

Anyone else would have been marched down to the Headmistress faster than they could blink. But Flitwick just came over and after inspecting the non-existent damage walked away without saying anything. The anger that had been bubbling gently inside of Harry suddenly exploded without any explanation. "FOR FUCKS SAKE WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TREAT ME NORMALLY YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER WANKER!"

Flitwick looked shocked and then walked over towards Harry and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Harry, maybe you need to go and lie down and–"

"No! You're such a complete and utter wanker that you can't even just give me a fucking detention like you would anyone else. You're stupid to think that you can continue treating me like – OW! FUCK MALFOY WHAT WAS THAT FOR?"

"I was just treating you how you wanted, Potter, the same as I would treat anyone else. You were being stupid to a teacher so I punched you to let you know that your behaviour is childish and immature. Now if you don't mind I would like to continue with my work without your annoying voice interrupting."

"Mr. Malfoy, you cannot just go round punching people!" shrieked Flitwick going very red in the face. But before he could start shouting more, give him detention of march him off to the see the Headmistress Harry had flicked his wand and obliviated that memory from the teachers mind. Everyone watched as Flitwick looked around and then walked back up to the front. Then he said, "I don't know why you are all standing there but I shall ask you to all get on with you work please."

Harry sat back down next to Neville ignoring the looks he was getting from his friends and the rest of the class. He just looked across to Draco who was doodling again on a piece of paper as if nothing had just happened. When the lesson ended Harry hurried out of the classroom with everyone else and then waited for Ron and Hermione. When everyone had come out except them and Malfoy he walked back in to see what was going on. Clearly Flitwick had left as well through the back door to his own rooms and now Ron had Malfoy pressed against a desk.

"Did you really think that I was going to let you hit my best friend and the one who saved us all? You are much more stupid than I thought and now you will pay for it! Furnuncu–"

"NO! Wait a minute! I asked for the slap he just happened to be the only one around man enough to give it to me. Let him up off the table now! Now leave both of you, I need to have a little word with Malfoy here."

Ron and Hermione looked hesitant as they left the classroom shutting the door gently behind them. Harry waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps and then turned to Draco who had his arms crossed and an expectant look on his handsome face. "I'm sorry my friends were jerks but sometimes they don't get when it's best to just leave things alone."

"I'd worked that out by myself. Now surely that wasn't the only thing you waited to tell me, was it Potter? What else has got you all tensed up and worried?"

"Huh?" Harry asked confused. He really had just been planning on saying that and then leaving. "I'm not tense and worried I just feel bad because my friends were going to curse you badly."

"For a start they never did curse me so no one is in trouble over that and secondly you were the one who...helped me. Now Potter, I may be out of things a lot nowadays but I know when someone is tense and worried and you are the personification of tense. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, though thinking about it I can probably guess what had got you angry. I know how you feel, Potter."

"I am rather fascinated to know now how the son of a death eater – an acquitted death eater himself – seems to think he knows how I – the boy who defeated Voldemort – feels. Now maybe I am missing something here but I do not see any sort of connection between you and me."

"Both of us have been the one to cause someone's death even if we didn't say the killing curse. Both of us wonder what our parents think of us on a daily basis and both of us will never know. Both of us are orphans. Both of us are severely pissed off with the people we call friends right now. Both our godfathers are dead. Both of us are treated in accordance with our names and no one listens to how we just wanted to be treated normally."

Harry didn't want to admit to it but in his heart he knew that Draco was right annoyingly so. Then he looked at Draco and said, "Why do you not care about anything any more, Malfoy?"

"Everything I care about gets taken away from me and hardly ever does the person care back. So I gave up," Draco replied quietly.

"I'm sorry. You're right you know, I am very tense all the time but I have no way or relieving this tension without shouting at people loudly. Eurghh all of this is driving me crazy maybe it would be better if I just upped and left right now!"

"What about Quidditch?" Draco asked.

"What about Quidditch, Malfoy? You know that we can't play it any more as we are eighth years – another thing that isn't helping."

"Well why don't you go and play with someone not as a team thing just for yourself, for pleasure?"

"Maybe because there is no one to play with any more. Hermione is terrible at Quidditch, always has been always will be, and she is desperately studying already for our NEWTS. Ron has been told by his mum that he can't get on a broom again until he grades are up – she even took it from him. Ginny tries to get with me every time that I go near her even though I've made it so obvious that I am not interested. There is no one left except young ones and they just wouldn't give me the competition I need."

"What about me?" Draco asked quieter than ever so Harry had to lean in slightly to catch it. "We could play a seekers game, with no rules just you have to catch the snitch. And to make it more competitive the person who loses has to do whatever the other ones wants within reason."

"I don't know, Malfoy, how do I know you're not going to make me do something that ruins my reputation forever?"

"You don't but that Potter is where the whole element of dare comes into the game, adding to the excitement. Anyway I think we could make it so that the task cannot be reputation killing, dangerous, disgusting or highly inappropriate – you know what I mean. So are you on Gryffindork or are you just a little too chicken?" Draco finished with his natural smirk curling around his lips.