His heart weighed heavy as Draco took ingredients from his Godfather’s supply closet that he knew were off limits to students. It didn’t matter though. The blonde would do anything necessary to get back at that monster of a pug. If that meant brewing a potion so connected to Dark Wizards that there wasn’t even a book on it in the school library, so be it. He clutched a hand-scrawled list in one fist while his wand danced in the other, summoning what he needed. Yes, the pug-faced bint was going down.

Draco wondered if Slughorn even knew of some of the ingredients his Godfather still kept in this storage space. The portly man would probably blanch at the toxic vial of vampire venom, faint at the sight of fifty pickled-pixies, frozen with screams on their faces. Oh yes, Snape had some of the rarest ingredients in the private section of his supply closet. Too bad his Godson had figured out the password two years ago.

Smirking to himself, the Slytherin tucked some unicorn tears into his robes and finally turned to leave, ingredients clanking together under the black fabric. He hoped Leyton didn’t mind hiding the cauldron, since he and Luca were much more protective of their stuff and thus had less chance of a nosy student investigating. Something about twin tornadoes and their rage… Draco shrugged out of his thoughts and almost ran into another student.

”Potter?!” he yelped, jumping back and causing his supplies to clank together again. He winced at the sound. Now Boy Wonder was going to question his actions. That was so not what he needed. ”What the bloody hell are you doing down here? Don’t you know the dungeons aren’t part of your territory? Bloody lions think they own this damn castle…”

Another week, another trip into the dungeons against his will to pretend that Harry was going to find Snape and ask for his advice on how to deal with Dumbledore. He was quickly running out of places down her that he was allowed to be and repeating his steps. If that kept up, there would be rumors going around that he was up to something. Or maybe everyone would just assume he was looking for his girlfriend now. Hell, maybe he should just go find Sky now anytime he got sent down here by Ron or Hermione.

Before he had fully worked that out or decided where the amazing witch would be, he wandered past the potions storeroom and saw a familiar head of blonde hair in there, working away. While his girlfriend would be a lot more fun to pass the time with, he needed to talk to his old nemesis as well, especially if Malfoy intended to reignite their rivalry as he seemed to.

Still, Harry’s days of cursing Malfoy, or anyone else probably, from behind were over, so he stood blocking the doorway back into the main dungeons with an angry scowl marring his face. As soon as the blonde started to turn, Harry opened his mouth and almost shouted. “Next time you have a bloody problem with something I’m doing, come and talk to me like a man instead of trying to kill me and making a quidditch match unfair for both sides!”

Then it occurred to Harry how nervous the blonde looked, as well as that he had been digging on the wrong side of the room. One side was the cupboard that was open to students, carrying ingredients that they wouldn’t necessarily buy themselves, or might have run out of, but still needed for everyday potions. The other side had belonged only to Snape last Harry checked, and he was pretty sure the old Potions master had password protected it after certain Gryffindors got into the habit of stealing from him to make slightly illegal brews. Since Slughorn seemed to keep everything in his office, the raven haired boy assumed it was still the same way now.

“Not that I don’t trust you,” he began to the blonde icily, “but what in the name of Merlin’s left nipple are you doing digging through Snape’s private stuff? One, he loves everything you have ever done in your entire life and would probably just give you anything you asked for. Two, I do not trust that whatever you are making isn’t something nasty aimed at me or Sky. So three, neither of us is going anywhere until you answer me and I am satisfied that you aren’t lying.” With that Harry glared and dug in his heels, ready for a fight or for whatever else came.

Potter looked absolutely furious. Draco found that he really didn’t want to deal with the boy at that moment, especially when he complained about the quidditch match and then started calling him on his current actions. Why couldn’t the damn lion just keep his nose out of everything and not worry about Draco’s actions? Oh. Right. Because Draco was being a prick to Sky as far as Potter knew and he guessed the girl hadn’t exactly told her boyfriend that she’d made plans to hunt down her number one enemy with her ex-boyfriend. That would probably make Wonder Boy a bit reluctant to let Draco go about his business.

The blonde sighed, his glare fading so that he looked at Potter with honest grey eyes. ”Look, Potter, he wouldn’t give me the stuff for this potion. At least, not without asking questions. And no one can know what I’m up to because it’s not just me who is up to something.” He let out a large sigh then, lowering his voice and motioning to the door. ”Look, close the damn door and ward it so we can’t be overheard. This is sensitive material I’m going to tell you and unless you want Skyler getting hurt worse than she already has, it needs to be kept quiet.”

He quickly tugged Potter into the room and put up his own muffling spell before realizing that he should probably explain that he wasn’t threatening the fail snake. Er… he really needed to find a new nickname for her. She seemed to utterly despise that one anymore. He sighed again, running a nervous hand through his hair. ”Okay, so I was prick. I know that. I already told Skyler how much of an arse I am and she seems to have accepted that, so now I guess it’s up to you to accept it or not, but it won’t change anything. She’s still working on this with me and Leyton. We’re going to teach the dog a new trick. It’s call behave or be put to sleep.”

His eyes took on an evil glint as he thought about actually killing the girl who so desperately wanted to marry him some day. Merlin, did he hate her. ”The only thing is, until we actually get this potion brewing and I lead her to the trap, Parkinson will be out on the prowl. If she gets wind of anything, she’ll order another attack on the fa- on Sky. And I refuse to have that happen. No more pain is going to come to her because of me.”

Draco only hoped that Potter would leave him be now that he knew the potion was something horrid for Parkinson, and that he still planned to protect the fail snake from any danger. He was being nice to Potter. The world was probably about to explode. But who cared really, right? Draco was doing a lot of stuff this year that would confuse people who thought they knew him.

Rather than relaxing himself when Draco’s look got less angry, Harry got tenser. He had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t trust the blonde enough to let his guard down for even a second. When you give that with a Malfoy, you ended up getting hurt, and there was no one down here to step in and stop it or put him back together if he relaxed and then Malfoy really lost it on him.

Still, when Draco told him to step into the room and close the door he did so. He could handle the Slytherin in a fair fight, and he liked his chances well enough in a trap as well from past experience. He still wasn’t going to ward the door until Malfoy mentioned that what he was doing would prevent Sky’s future pain instead of causing it. He put a ward he had invented on the door, slowly and carefully as he listened to Malfoy talk. It was far more than was needed for what they were doing, but Harry kind of wanted to show off what he had taught himself this summer, and let Malfoy know that he wouldn’t be able to attack anything or anyone that Harry didn’t want him to.

By the time he had finished and turned to face Malfoy, the blonde had shut up and Harry was doing his best not to grin like a psychopath. He wasn’t sure if he actually trusted his old enemy’s word or not, but if Sky was willing to forgive him, Harry would go along with it and not make any waves. He would just keep a close eye on the snake Prince to make sure he was keeping in line. Besides, the chance to punish the idiot dog of a witch Parkinson was worth anything that had to come along with it, even trusting a Malfoy and a Lestrange briefly.

“I want in,” he said, voice still all stone and ice and face hard as a rock. Malfoy would be a fool to argue with him. “If you’re going to teach that thing to behave, I want to be there.” Harry technically wanted to do a lot more than just be there, but that didn’t need said for now, especially when he didn’t yet know just what tricks the Head Girl was going to teach him. He just knew he wanted to use those tricks to make the pug beg.

Of course he wanted in. Why would Potter just accept what Draco said and go about his business as usual? Bloody prat. The blonde groaned, running a hand through his hair in slight frustration and closing his eyes for a moment before staring back at Potter. Well, he knew the idiot wasn’t going to back down. He never did. That meant there was only one option for him. Draco’s lips curled in a sadistic smile as he looked the Gryffindor up and down for a moment.

”Alright, Potter. If you want in, you’re going to help. You seem to have a way of avoiding trouble when you’re out of bed. I don’t know how, and I don’t want to know how, but you are going to use that ability to make sure we aren’t… interrupted.” He was sure the boy would probably have some argument or another against this idea, but he wasn’t exactly worried about that. Potter would probably just end doing his own damage to the pug, which was really okay with Draco. As long as he got to do what he wanted, he didn’t care what the others did.

The whole plan did require him to get out of the storage closet without getting caught by anyone else though. ”Say. You wouldn’t happen to be able to use those mysterious powers of yours to know whether I can make it safely back to the Slytherin dorms at the moment would you? I need to get these ingredients up to my cousin’s room without anyone figuring out what I’m up to or we aren’t going to even get this damn plan off the ground.”

Draco motioned for Potter to take down his crazy wards so that they could get a move on. If he didn’t get the potions started soon, he’d delay the plan longer than a week, and that simply wouldn’t work well at all. He was hungry for revenge. Delaying it was simply not an option.

Harry had expected Draco to do something like the groan that met his proclamation. What he had not expected, even a little, was for the blonde to almost immediately reconsider and declare it alright with him. Of course it helped that Harry had a skill that Malfoy desperately needed for what he was trying to pull off and that absolutely couldn’t be duplicated, but that had never been enough to make them see eye to eye and work together in the past. Maybe his time dating Sky had done the Slytherin prince some good.

Still, asking Harry to get him back to his dorm now was a little bit much, mostly because he had no idea how to get out the Marauder’s Map now without making it obvious to Malfoy what was going on. That was not an option. For one thing, if Malfoy knew how Harry was doing it, he wouldn’t need him going forward, and the chance to see whether he was really capable of the kind of violence needed to win a war would be gone. Secondly, nothing good could come from Malfoy knowing the map existed. He hemmed and hawed for a while, but finally reasoned that there was no way out of it.

“Fine,” he said, taking down his wards and turning towards the corner and using his body to block the map from the moment he pulled it out of his pocket, so that Malfoy wouldn’t be able to tell what he was doing. He muttered the password to unlocking the map as quietly as he could, because that was just one more thing that he didn’t need anyone else to know, especially anyone who he wasn’t sure whether he would ever be able to trust or not.

He scanned the map quickly, seeking out a few key figures. Snape was up in his classroom, seemingly pacing between the desks. McGonagall seemed to be sitting in the teacher’s lounge. Filch was up in one of the towers, and Mrs. Norris was just outside of the library. Dumbeldore was in his office, probably doing something incredibly evil and figuring out how to blame it on someone else.

“If you’re gonna go, it needs to be now,” he muttered, eyes still on the map. “There are no adults within three floors of here and no one at all in the next two passages. Head straight to your common room and you should be alright.”

Whatever Potter did to tell where people were and how he could sneak about, he obviously wanted to keep it a secret. That was fine with Draco. He just wanted the boy to use his ability to help him with this little task. Getting back to the Slytherin dorms without suspicion would be very important, and if Potter helped him with that it would prove that the two could actually work together. It seemed odd to even consider the two of them getting along, but then again, a lot of aspects of this year seemed odd, and they’d already happened. Why was this any odder?

The raven-haired boy finally turned around and told Draco to make his move or risk getting caught, so the blonde gave him a curt nod and took off. He knew the boy would acknowledge that gesture as a ‘thanks’. The two of them would probably communicate more in gestures than words anyway. Less noticeable.

He smirked as he made his way quickly toward the snake pit. This was going to be good. He’d brew a few horrible potions, force her to drink them, get that dagger for the fail snake… And Leyton would do his worst as well. Of course, Potter would take a few shots, he was sure. It didn’t matter. As long as he got to have a hand in her downfall, anyone else could join in. Draco was ready to beat the pug into a timid little beast, and now he had the team to help him do it.

He entered the common room with a cold smirk. This year just kept getting more and more interesting.