Finally, the End-of-Term Feast had arrived.

The examinations were over and done with and they had survived, and Harry and Draco had packed up all of their things for the summer holidays.

Harry had received many well wishes for the break, as well as many thanks for his good teaching, and fun and interesting classes, which made it incredibly difficult not to break his new ceasefire with Draco under the weight of all of this praise. Although, he was sure Draco was tempted to brag as well — he didn't doubt that the students were showering him with praise as well. Harry could admit that Draco was well-liked and a good teacher, he just wasn't better than Harry.

Minerva opened the feast with the announcement that Ravenclaw had won the House Cup, and decorations of blue and bronze sprouted into existence to cover the Great Hall as loud cheers rose from the Ravenclaw table.

Minerva finished talking and the food appeared on the tables, and Harry looked out over the hall for a few moments, just taking in all of the students. He honestly couldn't quite believe it was completely the end of his first year teaching, and that his seventh years would be completely gone and graduated next year, with a whole new class of students. It was so strange to think about.

He looked over at Draco. "Can you believe it's seriously been a year already?"

"I know, it's strange, isn't it? It feels like it went by so fast. I think I'm going to miss them, you know."

"I know. I will too. It's so weird," Harry sighed glumly. "They act like nutters sometimes, and I'm positive they have some sort of secret society thing going on at this point that goes way over my head, but I'll miss them anyway."

Draco laughed. "Yeah, that's about right. But we'll get a new group of hyperactive, timid first years come September."

"And they'll probably make up some secret thing behind our backs too," Harry grumbled, reaching for a tureen of peas.

Draco laughed again. "That's just the way of things. I seem to recall you having a lot of secrets from the teachers when you were a student." He took the peas from Harry when he was done and took some for himself before putting them back.

"Hey, that was usually life and death, fighting evil, world-saving secrets!"

"Mhm. Like you wouldn't get into trouble no matter what," Draco said sarcastically

Harry huffed. "It's different."

Draco didn't even try not to sound patronising. "I'm sure."

~*~

Near the end of the meal, four of the sixth year prefects got up and approached the staff table. Two of them were Gryffindors, one was a Slytherin, and one was a Hufflepuff, and all four of them were in both Draco's Advanced Potionmaking class and Harry's Defence Against The Dark Arts class.

The Great Hall quieted down as they approached, as if in anticipation, or maybe just curiosity.

"Professor Potter, Professor Malfoy?" the Slytherin girl, Valeraine, asked.

"Er, yes?" Harry asked.

Draco merely nodded at her in acknowledgement, looking inquisitive.

"We wanted to talk to you about something." She took a deep breath, and then spoke more as if reciting something practised from memory. "It's only your first year, but we've all really liked your classes and appreciated your work. It's clear that you really care, and you've done a good job making classes interesting while still helping us feel prepared for exams and the real world. So we wanted to thank you."

"Oh. Er, thanks," Harry said awkwardly, not knowing quite how to respond. "I'm glad you liked our classes?"

The Gryffindor boy, Simon, spoke up before Draco could respond. "We wanted to give you something to show our appreciation, so the four of us got together and asked everybody who wanted to to just contribute a few Sickles if they could. So this is from everyone."

"Ah— You didn't have to get anything," Draco stuttered, uncharacteristically wrongfooted. "I mean, thank you, but it's fine."

The Gryffindor girl, Tanitha, was already taking something about the size of both fists out of the pocket of her robes, though, and setting it on the floor. "We wanted to!" she said, stepping back again and waving her wand at it.

It immediately expanded into something much larger — a trunk — and she smiled at her handiwork.

The Hufflepuff boy, Ciaran, spoke up. "We wanted to get something that would be useful to both of you. It has four levels, and they all expand and lock separately. We figure that way there's space for personal and classroom stuff for each of you on a separate level."

They were all smiling at Draco and Harry now, and Harry reflexively smiled back.

"Wow — thank you." This was a big gift. It was similar to Mad-Eye Moody's, though with fewer levels, but it still must have been expensive! Honestly, he wasn't sure if it was right to take it.

Draco seemed to be having the same dilemma from the look on his face when Harry glanced his way as he hesitantly thanked them as well.

Then something occurred to Harry and he frowned.

"Wait. It's for both of us?"

They all nodded eagerly, apparently not seeing the major issue involved with this proposal.

Draco clearly did, because he frowned as well, and then asked slowly, as if trying to see if he was missing something, "But there are two of us. How are we supposed to share one trunk?"

All of them looked quite confused at this.

"I mean I—" Ciaran started, looking like he was rather wondering if he was missing something himself. "I said it has the multiple levels and the locks... Everything can stay separate, there's plenty of space, it's basically like four trunks in one."

"Right," Draco persisted. "But we're two separate people. How are we both supposed to access it?"

Tanitha's eyebrows drew together. "Don't you two live together?"

Harry cocked his head and Draco's eye twitched as he stared at her.

"No," Draco responded carefully.

Simon interjected. "But you'll be seeing each other a lot," he stated firmly.

This time it was Harry who spoke, although his face still looked like he was trying to work out a particularly difficult arithmancy problem. "No, not that I was aware of."

He looked askance at Draco, who merely shrugged.

"We're not even really friends," Harry tried to explain. "We're just sort of like..."

"Competitive acquaintances," Draco filled in, helpfully.

"Yes, thank you. We're like competitive acquaintances."

"But!" Valeraine said desperately. "What about— What about— You're always around each other's classrooms, and you always sit together at meals, and you're always talking in the corridors! You two only seem to stick by each other!"

"Yeah, and what about Valentine's Day?" Ciaran added.

Harry and Draco looked at each other.

"What about Valentine's Day?" Harry asked.

"You two were all..." he made a vague gesture with his hands, "and then you were laughing, and you put your hand on his arm!" He pointed at Draco accusingly. "And you were drinking from the same goblet!"

"Were you taking notes?" Draco asked dryly.

"Draco," Harry said, gently chastising, looking over at him and trying not to smile.

"That! See?! That!" Simon interjected exasperatedly, pointing at Harry.

"What?!" Harry and Draco exclaimed at the same time.

"Your whole..." Simon, too, made a vague, frantic hand gesture. "And what about Professor Malfoy's birthday, with the whole personalised song!"

"I did that to bother him!" Harry protested. "It wasn't a very nice song! It got me two stinging hexes!"

Draco shot him a glare. "And they were well deserved."

"Merlin's beard!" Simon sighed and mopped his hands over his face.

Tanitha took over. "Well, what about Christmas? All the people who stayed said you two did practically nothing besides talk to each other, and at the feast neither of you were paying attention to anything besides each other, and you were whispering and putting hats on each other—"

"And don't forget the snow!" Valeraine interrupted. "People said they saw you two rolling around in the snow together and holding hands too! And others said they saw you all around Hogsmeade all afternoon!"

"Are your notes professionally bound?" Draco drawled sarcastically. "Am I going to end up seeing them for sale at Flourish and Blotts?"

Harry bit his lip, but couldn't help letting out a small huff of laughter at that, despite his growing discomfort.

Valeraine persisted, ignoring his rude remarks. "The last day before the holidays, Clara Hopkins said she went into Professor Potter's office," she accused, as if this were some grand scandal. "And Professor Malfoy was sitting on the desk saying something about 'What's mine is yours', and you were holding hands then as well!"

Draco looked quite sour at this point, and he took a deep, calming breath. "Miss Coppard. If you had put this much research into your essay about the finer effects of stirring direction, timing, and number of stirs instead, then you might have gotten passing marks the first time around."

"Draco." Harry said, in much the same way as the first time, placing a warning hand on his arm, and fiercely attempting to hold back his laughter, although part of him was beginning to feel just as agitated as Draco seemed.

"Are you actually having a laugh right now," Tanitha demanded, her tone very much indicating how stupid she thought they were as she pointed her whole hand accusingly toward Harry's hand on Draco's arm and stared pointedly at it.

"What?" Harry threw his hands up in exasperation, but something about the way she stared at him like that combined with the way they kept throwing all of this supposed 'evidence' at him was starting to make him feel rather cornered.

It just kept ringing distant bells of Dudley sneering 'Is Cedric your boyfriend?' at him, and picking at old memories he hadn't even known he'd still had of Margaret Thatcher on the telly, of Dudley's friends calling him a weak pansy when they pushed him down, of hearing talk of The Gay Plague.

It wasn't like anything the prefects had said was true. He wasn't in a relationship with Draco, and hadn't done any of those things, not the way they seemed to be interpreting them, and he didn't think he'd ever thought of Draco the same way he'd thought of Ginny, for instance. But truth had never mattered in the past either. Dudley had never really thought Cedric was his boyfriend.

And this, now, had an air of expectancy to it that sort of implied acceptance rather than condemnation, but that didn't mean it was genuine, and it still felt sort of cornering, because none of his previous experiences indicated anything along those lines. All previous experience told him that when it came to this territory, it was dangerous, and anything positive or neutral was probably some sort of trap, like the way Petunia and her friends all complimented each other with wide smiles, but the moment the company left, Petunia was livid her friends would ever say such things, apparently intended with some entirely second layer Harry couldn't parse from his place peering through the slats in the cupboard.

Harry gritted his teeth and tried to brush off the subject, but he feared the tension in him might have bled into his voice. In any case, he wasn't incredibly confident they would let this go so easily, but he could only hope.

"I think I would know if I'd been holding hands with Draco — that's not something I've ever considered doing."

"People saw it!" Tanitha insisted stubbornly, in an unfortunate embodiment of the folly of her house. Sometimes Gryffindors just really didn't know when to shut up and back down.

"I don't fancy men," he snapped sharply, before he'd even thought about it. He hadn't really intended to, he just wanted out of this conversation. Maybe they weren't trying to trap him, but it sort of felt that way, and this was a situation where he erred on the side of caution.

She looked a bit taken aback by his aggressiveness, and Draco gave him a quick glance before leaning forward toward the students and redirecting their attention.

"Look, I was Professor Potter's number one rival for all six years we attended Hogwarts together — you haven't any idea how much we hated each other. That sort of behaviour is just not in our nature, alright? Headmistress McGonagall had to lay down the law just to make us act civilised to each other, and antagonising each other is still the only way we can communicate."

Harry settled a little as the kids focused on Draco instead. He was still a bit tense, but they at least seemed willing to be diverted for now.

Draco sat back and crossed his arms, raising his nose haughtily as he continued, "And you really shouldn't underestimate it. One time I stayed up all night charming badges to say POTTER STINKS! when pressed."

Harry couldn't help but crack a small smile at that. It had been horrible at the time, but now it was sort of funny. "You stayed up all night just to make those? Merlin, that's embarrassing," he teased.

"It was more embarrassing to be you the next day when everyone was wearing them."

Harry snorted. "Wait— Didn't you have an Arithmancy test the next day?" Harry swore he remembered Hermione saying something about a test that day, and he was pretty sure Draco had been in Arithmancy too in fourth year. "Why would you stay up just for that? You're an idiot."

"Fuck's sake, how do you even—" someone grumbled at the Slytherin table, mostly audible with most of the Great Hall paying rapt attention to the scene at the staff table. "Why aren't they married?"

Harry's jaw clenched a bit again, but he graciously chose to ignore that.

Draco sniffed. "It seemed important at the time."

Harry scoffed. "Well, if you think that was bad, Ron and I polyjuiced ourselves into...Crabbe and Goyle once, and snuck into the Slytherin common room to try to get information out of you." He hesitated slightly on Crabbe's name, unsure how much that death had affected Draco, but ultimately he decided to continue bravely on. "We put a sleeping draught into cupcakes, and stuffed them into a cupboard when they passed out."

"When on earth did you do that? And how didn't I notice?" Draco seemed bowled over by the thought. "Well...I suppose they were never the most verbal..."

"Second year! I thought you were the Heir of Slytherin, but everybody was too busy suspecting me."

"You're the Parselmouth! You little sneak, you should've been sorted into Slytherin! How the hell did you get your hands on Polyjuice in second year?"

"Actually, the Sorting Hat told me it was an option. It told me I could be great there. And Hermione brewed it — how else?"

Whispers broke out all over the Great Hall.

"That witch is brilliant," Draco said with amazement. "Brewed Polyjuice herself! When we were twelve!"

"I know, right? I'll tell her the Hogwarts Potions Master complimented her brewing."

"Go ahead. Did the Hat really say you could be a Slytherin too? Surely— I mean— In the end, you're just too Gryffindor, aren't you?"

"No— Well, I don't know. I just kept repeating 'not Slytherin' until it sorted me into Gryffindor." Harry rolled his eyes at Draco's sour expression. "Don't look at me like that! That's where I thought all the bad wizards were. I obviously know better now, but I hardly knew anything about the wizarding world yet."

"Hmm, this makes me rethink a lot of things."

"Anyway, I'm not even a Parselmouth anymore; it wasn't in my blood to begin with. When Voldemort killed me and the—"

"Alright!" Minerva interrupted (which, in retrospect was probably a good idea, since Harry realised maybe he shouldn't be talking about Horcruxes in front of the students). "Whilst this conversation has been extremely enlightening, I think that's enough for now. You may continue it privately some other time. We'd all better head back to our quarters to get a good night's sleep before the journey home tomorrow."

And with that, to many people's disappointment, she finally put an end to the spectator sport that Harry and Draco's conversation had become.