Chapter Text
“You’re late, Potter.”
Harry slipped the Marauder’s Map back into his pocket and stopped short. “Hello to you too.”
Draco didn’t look up from his parchment. “You’re twelve minutes late. I timed it.”
“You timed it?”
“I assumed you’d be irresponsible. I simply confirmed it.”
Harry dropped into the chair beside him. “I was at Qu-”
“Quidditch,” Draco cut in, voice sharp but carefully hushed. “I know. The entire castle knows. You fly like a show-off with a death wish. Shocking, really. Let me guess. You nearly died, everyone applauded, and now you expect sympathy.”
“Not sympathy,” Harry said cheerfully. “Admiration.”
Draco finally looked at him then, grey eyes sharp and unimpressed. “Ugh, you stink. Like a broom cupboard mixed with sweaty grass and… whatever bad decision led you here. Did you even bother to shower? Because I’m not sitting here tutoring with that.”
“I did shower.”
Draco sniffed, slow and deliberate. “Debatable.”
Harry leaned back, stretching his legs out under the table. “You could just be glad I showed up.”
Draco scoffed. “You showing up late is not a favour. It’s a pattern.”
“Wow. You’re grumpy today.”
“I am focused,” Draco snapped quietly. “Which you would understand if you took anything seriously.”
Harry grinned. “You are taking me seriously.”
Draco opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Wait. How’d you know I’d be here? I didn’t tell anyone."
Harry shrugged, letting his chair creak faintly as he leaned back more, shifting just enough to keep his pocket out of sight. “Lucky guess.”
Draco’s eyes sharpened. “Are you stalking me, Potter?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Draco repeated, scandalised.
Harry tipped his chair forward, grin widening. “You will get used to it.”
“You’re deranged.”
“And yet, here we are.”
Draco exhaled through his nose and turned back to the table. “I meant a tutoring arrangement, not… whatever this is. Now sit properly.”
Harry obeyed, sliding back slightly, and only then did the world around them seem to exhale.
The late afternoon silence of the library settled back into place, thick and watchful. Rows of towering shelves loomed on either side, heavy with ancient volumes that smelled of dust, ink, and quiet disapproval. Lantern light pooled across the long tables, catching on the precise lines of Draco’s notes and the pale gleam of his hair.
Harry blinked, suddenly aware of how quiet it was. The distant rustle of pages. The scratch of quills. The sense that the room itself was listening.
He rested his elbows on the table and leaned towards Draco. “You offered to help me with Potions,” he whispered. “I help you with Defence. This was your bright idea.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to sit practically glued to me,” Draco muttered as he dragged a stack of parchment closer to make an ineffective makeshift barricade. “There are four other chairs.”
“There are literally no other chairs,” Harry hissed back softly.
Draco gestured vaguely to the far end of the table. “Plenty of seats over there.”
“Why?” Harry leaned in more. “Is being a prat contagious?”
Draco swung his foot toward Harry, but the edge of the chair caught it first. He winced as it thunked against solid wood. A flush crept up his cheekbones, whether from sudden pain or embarrassment, Harry couldn’t tell.
Draco smirked anyway. “It must be. I caught it from you.”
Harry shook his head, amusement flickering across his face, and bent to drop his bag to the floor. Parchment, quills, half-broken ink bottles, and the sad remains of what had once been an organised notebook Hermione had tried to help him with promptly spilled out in an unrepentant heap.
Draco stared down at the mess with visible horror.
“Blimey,” he said flatly. “We haven’t even started and I already regret this.”
Harry rummaged through the chaos. “Alright,” he said, unbothered. “Let’s get started then.”
Draco sighed like someone accepting a deeply unfair fate. With the kind of theatrical flair only he could pull off, he reached behind him and hauled a thick tome from the shelf. A small cloud of dust puffed up as though the book had been holding its breath for centuries. He let it fall onto the table with a heavy thump that echoed a little too loudly.
Several heads turned.
Harry coughed, horrified. “Merlin’s armpits, what is this? A weapon?”
Draco looked slightly more pleased with Harry’s dismayed expression.
“This,” Draco said grandly, “is the definitive guide to planetary alignments and their effects on potion composition. Try not to fry your brain.”
Before Harry could react further, Draco grabbed five more hefty volumes from the shelves and added them to the table. The pile loomed over Harry like an ominous tower. Each heavy book sent faint swirls of old parchment fragments into the lantern light as Draco stacked them.
Harry cracked open the cover of the first book. “Seriously? This is overkill. The assignment’s only a foot and a half.”
He flipped a few pages and muttered under his breath as he set about calculating one of the potion ratios. There was no table of contents. The text was a sea of cramped handwriting, the author seemingly afraid to waste a single inch of parchment. Diagrams were squeezed into corners like afterthoughts, as though they’d only just remembered the reader might want to see what they were describing.
“This is unreadable.”
“That’s because you’re illiterate,” the corner of Draco’s mouth twitched in a half-smile, clearly enjoying Harry’s frustration.
Harry squinting closely at the cramped script. “Okay… so if I add three drachms of moonstone extract to-” Harry frowned. “I’m not… This makes sense- wait, no, that can’t be right.”
Draco jabbed his quill at a line. “Right there. Your calculation is wrong.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“Prove it.”
Draco stabbed the parchment again. “Exactly there.”
Harry leaned in so close his nose was practically touching the paper. “That’s not what it says.”
“Yes it is.”
“No, it’s-”
“And that, Potter,” Draco interrupted, folding his arms with a self-satisfied sniff, “is exactly why you’re rubbish at Potions.”
Harry muttered under his breath, “At least I can cast a simple Patronus.”
Draco’s second kick landed. And this time squarely on Harry’s ankle.
Harry yelped, his foot colliding with one of the table legs, sending a shiver through the ancient shelves beside them. A stray book tumbled to the floor with a loud thud.
Both boys froze.
From the top of a nearby bookshelf, a pale hand appeared, followed by Madam Pince’s sharp head like a furious gargoyle. Her lips were thin, her eyes blazing.
Harry mouthed: don’t move.
Draco’s eyes flicked to him: this is your fault.
Silence stretched, thick and tense. The library seemed to hold its breath. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Madam Pince’s head disappeared from sight, as if she had melted back into the shadows of the shelves.
Harry exhaled. Draco mirrored him, the tension in his shoulders easing for the briefest moment.
Then, suddenly, she reappeared directly behind them, her presence looming like a shadow dropped from the ceiling.
“Out.”
Harry and Draco jumped, stumbling back against the table. Harry’s heart raced and his mouth went dry. Draco stiffened, jaw tight, shoulders squared and chin raised.
“Madam Pince,” Draco began, voice sharp and clipped, hands raised slightly as if negotiating with a particularly unreasonable client. “We were just-”
“Out,” she repeated, her voice soft but unyielding.
“We didn’t- well, we weren’t trying to…” Harry flailed. “It’s just… Potions assignment. And.. and we were being careful, I swea-”
“Out. Now,” she said again, sharper this time, moving with ruthless efficiency. She confiscated their library books, stacking them under her arm like a predator gathering prey. “You may retrieve these tomorrow. Preferably when you’ve learned how to exist quietly.”
Harry and Draco didn’t argue further. They gathered what little remained of their things, Draco muttering under his breath the entire way to the doors.
Outside, the late afternoon light had softened, and a cool breeze stirred around them. The library’s silence seemed to linger in their steps. Harry glanced at Draco, and for a fleeting moment, the space between them felt almost suspended.