"I want a truce."

Draco Malfoy looks Harry Potter up and down at this announcement. When Harry does not laugh or show any sign of faltering, Draco blanks. "Wait, you're serious. Why are you serious?"

Harry holds up his hand -- the hand with writing on it, which must be a pointed choice, thinks Draco, because he wants me to pity him. He's counting on it. "I'm in a bit of a pickle, Draco."

And the using of his first name! "If you're trying to manipulate me," says Draco, sternly, "you're not being very subtle about it."

Harry cracks a smile. "You could say that again," says Harry, chuckling.

"No wonder you're not a Slytherin."

"The Hat tried its best on that front," mutters Harry.

What an interesting thing to say. "Care to elaborate?"

"No," says Harry, sweetly. "Anyway, that's not the pickle I'm in."

Draco will let him change the topic, but that doesn't mean he's forgetting it. The words imprint into his mind: Harry Potter was considered to be Sorted into Slytherin. "You and this pickle. Tell me about it."

"Well, I have nightmares."

"Really." He'd imagine. He considers Harry's tale of watching Cedric die, of getting tortured and thinks, oddly sympathetic, that he would get nightmares, too.

"And I don't get them sometimes."

"Are you going to explain how this is relevant, or am I going to have to choke it out of you."

"Kinky," mutters Harry and Draco flushes bright red, not believing that he heard that be uttered. "Anyway. I don't get nightmares when I touch you. Er -- your hands, that is."

Draco feels senile. "When you touch me?"

"Your hands! When I touch your hands!" Harry sighs, running his hands down his face, his face flushed a little, too. "I think I'm cursed. Like, extra cursed, not normal, Boy Who Lived cursed."

"You're cursed so that when you touch my hands, you don't have nightmares? That's not like any curse I've heard of."

Harry shrugs. "Hermione's looking into it."

"Ah, yes, the nerd."

Harry smiles fondly. "Yeah. The nerd."

Draco rolls his eyes at such endearment, then considers what Harry had said. "So you want me to touch your hand every day, I assume? To stop your nightmares?"

"Yes," says Harry. He takes a deep breath. "And in exchange, we won't insult or demean each other -- or each other's friends -- anymore."

"What do I get out of that?"

"I'd thought losing my ire was enough."

"I don't think you feel anything remotely close to ire towards me, no." Draco takes one step forward and Harry takes two steps back.

"What a strange sentiment," says Harry, but without much confidence.

"Here you are, asking me to hold your hand every day--"

"I didn't say hold--"

"-- and doing so without your dearest little friends of yours by your side. Would you ask that of someone you hate?" Draco stares him down, then laughs. "No, I don't think so."

Harry drops the act. "I think you're arrogant and self obsessed. But you're just a person -- you're no undefeatable, unkillable monster. I don't like you, You're not terrible enough to hate."

Draco says his implied thought aloud. "You mean I'm no He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

Harry sighs. "You can say his name, you know."

"I know," says Draco. He thinks of his father. The inflamed, burning Dark Mark. "But I don't think I should." Should and can -- two very different things.

"Fear of the name increases fear of the thing itself."

"You sound like Dumbledore," mutters Draco. "And, anyway, I don't think that's true."

Harry cocks his head. "No?" he says. "What do you think, then?"

Draco's thought about this before. "I think fear of the name is an indicator of the fear of the thing. It is proof. Not anything more."

Harry considers this. "I suppose you could say that."

Draco rolls his shoulders. "Regardless, about your offer."

Harry straightens his back. "Right."

"Since you do not hate me, I think it's right to clarify that I don't hate you, either." These words slip out of Draco before he has time to stop them.

Harry stands a little taller. "I'm glad to hear it," Harry says, genuinely.

"And it is not... unreasonable, I presume, to not insult you... as much fun as it is."

Harry smiles weakly. "Maybe it's fun for you."

Draco tilts his head. "Not for you, though?"

"I don't have much fun. Mostly, with you, I just get angry. And protective."

"Angry and protective," says Draco, quietly. "Who knew you're such a Hufflepuff at heart?"

"Not according to the Hat," says Harry.

"Not according to the Hat," repeats Draco.

Harry snorts and runs his hands through his hair. "So what do you think?" he prompts. "Yes or no with the holding hands thing, too?"

"So you admit we'll be holding hands."

Harry sighs, but it's endeared. "Right. We'll be holding hands every day, like gay people do."

"Like gay people do." Draco bursts out into laughter and Harry does too, nearing hysterical with it.

Draco thinks about Pansy, and what she'd say. He thinks about his father. Both would criticize him, would reprimand him not only for considering the deal, but for laughing with a man that is destined to be an enemy. They cannot be friends. They cannot even have a truce. They are on the opposite sides of a war -- they stand with a chasm between them so wide it could swallow them whole.

There is nothing worth pursuing here. Any step forward with Harry's hand in Draco's is a step toward disaster. Draco must do anything it takes to survive, and that entails walking away now and saying no. No, I will not truce with you. No, I will not laugh with you.

But something takes over Draco then, something he, at the time, does not dare to consider.

He holds out his hand for Harry to take, and Harry does.

"Okay," says Draco, shaking it. "A truce."

"A truce," Harry repeats, a smile gracing his face.

A truce.