(A/N): Good God, it has been so long since I've had any thought bunnies for this story. I was honestly beginning to think it was going to be left unfinished!

BUT!

Thanks to a lovely song by The Whomping Willows, called "In Which Draco and Harry Secretly Want To Make Out" (I'm not joking. It's a real song. I love Wizard Rock lol), my fuzzy little plot bunnies have returned!

Okay, so! I want to thank all my reviewers and APOLOGIZE for my tremendous absence. : throws triple doses of chocolate-covered Draco-and-Harrys to her reviewers : You guys are totally awesome, and I am SO sorry for the ridiculous delay. No more!

Manini, you're still special: waves :

Anyway, FINALLY, here we go. Chapter 5.

Confrontation

"It's going to happen, isn't it," Harry said softly to Hermione.

It was Friday afternoon. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were in the common room for their final break of the day, and Harry, who had been silent for much of the hour, had suddenly voiced his almost-question with misery in his voice and a dull gloss over his eyes as he raised them to Hermione's face. She knew then that his thoughts had been occupied with Malfoy.

"I don't know," she said gently, truthfully. "Do you want it to?"

"Hermione, that was a stupid question," Ron said complacently, looking as though he realized that this was probably the first and only time he would get to say those words to her and relishing it.

"Sympathetic, Ron," snapped Hermione, throwing him a withering glance before returning her attention to Harry. When he was silent she prompted him gently by touching his arm.

"I don't know," he told her, shaking his head. "Yes and no. Every five seconds I'm weighing the pros and cons and playing out every possible scenario that could happen. It's complicated."

"Must be," said Hermione thoughtfully. "Well, my best piece of advice would be to wait. Make sure you know what you want before you do anything rash. And who knows, maybe he'll come to you first. I think everyone in the Great Hall has noticed how he stares at you during breakfast."

Ron snorted; even Harry had to grin at that one. He hated himself for the schoolgirl flush that blossomed slowly across his face, but he knew she was right: the burn of Draco's gaze was still fresh, everywhere on him. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Suppose you're right. What've we got next?"

"Um." Ron grinned sheepishly at him. "A class?"

"Charms," Hermione answered over him, rolling her eyes. She checked her watch. "Speaking of, we should get our things together. It's a quarter till."

Groaning, Harry heaved himself off the comfortable, squashy armchair, pulled Ron up by one of his skinny wrists. "My stuff's in our dorm," he told Hermione by way of explanation. "And I know for a fact Ron's is, too. I saw you trying to hide your book this morning," he added to the redhead, who immediately turned a luminescent scarlet.

"I – it wasn't me. I lost the book," he excused himself lamely, then crumpled under Hermione's blaze of a stare. "Okay, okay, I'm going to get it."

Satisfied, Hermione leaned down to check the bag at her feet for her notes and Charms book. When she found them she settled them at the top of her pack for easier access, then sat back to wait on the boys, her thoughts on Harry. He had tried to forget about what had happened, she knew, but clearly, his attempts weren't working. She didn't understand why he couldn't admit to himself what was so glaringly obvious to the rest of them: that he and Draco had something for each other, and more than just mad lust by the looks of it.

XXX

They arrived at Charms five minutes early; the room was only half-full, and Professor Flitwick was over in a corner, preparing his notes. Much to Harry's displeasure Malfoy was perched on a seat in the front row, gazing unfathomably over at him and twirling his wand with deft ease between his fingers.

Ron glanced up and caught the exchange of eye contact between Harry and Malfoy. Sensing Harry's unease, he deliberately stepped in front of him, blocking Draco's view, and said calmly, "Let's sit behind him, shall we? That way everyone in the room will notice if he tries to make googly eyes at you during class."

Harry snorted appreciatively and let himself be led around to the back of the room. As he slid into a seat and began arranging his things on his desk Hermione appeared at Ron's elbow, whispered, "Nicely done, Ronald," in a barely audible voice. Proud, Ron turned to thank her, but she had gone, taking the seat just to Harry's left.

With exactly thirty seconds to spare, Dean and Seamus came ambling into the classroom, laughing together about something. Quite unconcerned about their near miss, they slid into the seats in front of Harry and Ron, turned around, greeted them.

"Harry," Dean crooned, grinning. "Draco's staring at you."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," challenged Harry, rolling his emerald eyes. "It's routine and that, but it's getting sort of annoying, you know?"

Seamus, who had swapped winks with Ron upon sitting down, leaned over Harry's desk, his face alive with mischief. "Not going to end up in the Slytherin common room tomorrow morning, are you, Harry?"

Harry threw his quill at him; Seamus ducked, laughing, and swung around to face front again.

"All right, boys, that's quite enough," squeaked Professor Flitwick from the front of the class. "Now, today, we're going to be reviewing Summoning and Hovering Charms, so books away, if you please, and find yourselves a partner."

Harry and Ron swapped a grin. Both were adept at these two spells; not much energy would be wasted in class today, energy that could be spent enjoying their Friday evening.

"I love O.W.L. year Charms," Ron said as he and Harry stowed their books and rose from their seats. "All we've done so far is go over a load of stuff we already know."

"You love it now," Hermione said briskly, her eyes following Professor Flitwick's wand as he charmed the dozens of desks out of the way, positioning them neatly against the far wall. "But I've heard from several sixth years that by the end of Christmas holidays this class is going to have more homework than Transfiguration. I can't wait, of course," she added, rolling up her sleeves.

Dean, Seamus, Ron, and Harry exchanged exasperated, but amused, looks. By now they were far too used to Hermione's extreme studiousness to really be shocked when she showed it in public. Only Ron looked as though he still had some disbelief left in him.

"Going to hit the sugar again tonight?" Dean asked quietly, watching Hermione stride off to find Neville, for whom she felt sorry: Neville almost never got asked to be someone's partner, and Hermione was one of the few people who did not become inconsolably vexed after several moments with him.

"Dunno, maybe," Seamus said thoughtfully, turning away from Professor Flitwick so the tiny man would think he was working. "Freckles?"

Dean and Harry chomped viciously on the insides of their cheeks in order to keep straight faces, but mercifully, Ron noticed nothing. Reaching into the pocket of his robes for his wand, he tilted his flaming head to the side, contemplating. "Possibly," he said at last, nodding. "Harry?"

"No, the proper question for Harry is: are you ever going to hit the sugar again?" Dean chipped in, chuckling.

"For the tenth time," said Harry patiently, "no. That stuff is like alcohol to me, God knows why, but nothing good ever happens when I consume large amounts of sugar."

"You convinced Goyle to eat an Acid Pop when we were thirteen, remember?" Ron asked, staring off into space with a reverent, faraway look in his eyes. "That was brilliant, that was. And it wouldn't have happened if not for those four Chocolate Frogs you ate before break."

"Yeah, all right," admitted Harry, grinning as Seamus and Dean guffawed. "He had to spend two days in the hospital wing. Best forty-eight hours of third year."

"Boys," squeaked Professor Flitwick reprovingly from Seamus's side. As he was so tiny he was quite easy to miss when you weren't looking for him, and while they were talking they had overlooked the fact that he was standing there. "Get to work, now."

It was hard be afraid of such a lilliputian voice, but the fifth-years obeyed him in silence, Harry partnering Ron and Dean grabbing Seamus. The last thing they wanted to do was land themselves in detention on a promising Friday evening.

XXX

In general, when the class emerged from Charms, their bags slung over their shoulders and their wands stowed safely in the pockets of their robes, they were in quite a good mood. Ron and Harry were laughing about Crabbe's failed attempt to produce a Summoning Charm, which resulted in the book he was trying to will to himself losing heart halfway and dropping on Flitwick's head. It had earned him classroom cleanup duty and ten points from Slytherin for poor wandwork.

"Well, Malfoy's minus one bodyguard for dinner," Dean said happily.

"Now his view of Harry won't be blocked," Seamus said slyly, resting his arm on Ron's shoulder. He was right, Harry realized as his heart involuntarily missed a beat: Crabbe and Goyle usually sat across from Malfoy at the dinner table.

"Boys," Hermione said exasperatedly. "I know it's terribly difficult for you, but can we please talk about something besides Malfoy and Harry for once? He's trying to forget what happened, you know."

"Right," said Dean, and he had the good graces to sound embarrassed. "Sorry, Harry."

"Me too," said Seamus reluctantly. "It's just - "

But the words failed him as he fell under the menacing laser of Hermione's warning glare.

Contrary to Hermione's beliefs, Harry was, if not amused, at least grateful for his friends' attempts to keep things lighthearted. If they had been discussing seriously how to make Harry and Draco realize they were madly in love with each other, that would have been a different story, but as all they were doing were making light jokes about them, it didn't bother him as much as it perhaps should have. He accepted their apologies with a little smile and a nod of his head and they separated from the queue to return to Gryffindor tower and deposit their bags before dinner.

As they were dumping stuff on their beds and throwing their bags on top of their trunks and generally just creating a mess for themselves to clean up later, Seamus and Ron engaged in an extremely random and unexpected snogging session. Harry's and Dean's eyes met and they vacated the room as quickly as possible, falling over each other laughing on their way down to the common room.

"It's going to take me a while to get used to that one," Dean said, shaking his dark head.

"Ages," Harry agreed, and then they couldn't speak for the hysterics that overcame them.

XXX

Draco was past the point of having to look to know that Harry had just walked into the Great Hall; the sense of him was enough. Instantly he felt his pulse begin to pound and his stomach gave a fierce twist. He kept his sleek blond head down to avoid automatically finding Harry's eyes.

"Get out of it," he muttered crossly to himself, but within two moments of his resolution not to look he found himself involuntarily searching for the jet-headed Gryffindor. When he found him his stomach dropped like a stone: Harry was already watching him, a guarded, indecipherable expression in his brilliant eyes, a slight frown creasing his brow.

Draco was ready and willing to play the stare game, and it appeared that Harry had no imminent intention of looking away either. They were just settling in for an evening of gazing uncertainly at each other when the Weasley twins sat down on the bench opposite Harry, blocking Draco's view and causing him to swear badly under his breath.

"What is it, Dray?" Pansy asked, leaning over to speak to him, her sleek, straight hair falling like a veil across her face. He glanced at her and for the first time it struck him how very pitch-black the color of her hair was – exactly like Harry's.

Stop it, he told himself firmly, then added aloud, "Nothing, Pans. Just banged my elbow off the table, that's all."

"Are you all right?" she asked immediately, insipid concern filling her eyes.

Ordinarily, Draco would have milked this opportunity; he loved attention and would do most anything for it, but tonight he just wasn't in the mood to be fawned over. "I'm fine," he said, and when she continued to look troubled he added firmly, "Really. Fine."

At last she turned away to speak to Millicent Bulstrode, who was slouching moodily on the bench across from her, and Draco took the opportunity to once again eye the Gryffindor table. Harry was paying him no attention; he was absorbed in conversation with a sandy-haired boy – Draco thought his name might be Flaherty, no, Finney, no...Finnigan, that was it – and busy finishing his dinner. He looked relaxed, comfortable, normal. For some reason, this bothered Draco on a very deep level, but he couldn't have said why, exactly – maybe because every time Harry was in a room lately he felt as though his stomach was a huge mass of knots and twists and he was always on edge. He hadn't been truly relaxed in days. What he couldn't possibly know was that Harry was feeling the exact same way – he was just much better at masking it.

Sudden and strong anger was making him agitated: anger that Harry was ignoring him, anger that he was upset that Harry was ignoring him, and a childish, unjustified anger that he couldn't get what he wanted: a stare match. Distracted as he was, he ate very little of his supper and only a bite of Pansy's custard for dessert. When Harry and his friends stood up to leave the room he pushed back violently from his bench, leaned low over Pansy to whisper in her ear: "Watch me make Potter's Friday night miserable."

"Ooh, Dray, whatever are you going to do?" she shrieked gleefully, but he had already started off. Quickly she roused Zabini, Millicent, and Goyle and they started after him, Goyle tripping over his enormous feet in his haste.

Draco wasn't sure where this rash vindictiveness was coming from; all he knew was that he was exasperated beyond all levels of sanity, resentful of the fact that he could not simply discard what had happened as a one-time thing, and, overpowering every other emotion currently seething inside of him, extremely sexually frustrated. He also knew that all these feelings centered around Harry, and at that moment in time all he could think of was getting to the source of his problems and letting him know what, precisely, he was doing to Draco. He wanted to know he wasn't the only one slowly succumbing to his inner lunatic because of this, wanted Harry to feel was he was feeling – and the only way he knew how to do so was to provoke him.

Shoving his way roughly through a crowd of fourth-year Ravenclaws who had gathered around the entrance to the Great Hall, he burst through the double doors, looked wildly left and right before spotting Harry's dark head retreating down the hall to his left.

"Hey – Potter!"

Freezing, Harry turned on the spot to look, knowing innately who was calling him: there was no mistaking that low, haughty, smirking voice. By instinct the group of Gryffindors he was with glanced back with him. When Ron saw who had hailed Harry his hand went automatically to the pocket of his robes where he kept his wand.

The jet-headed Gryffindor and the Slytherin with eyes like twin storms sized each other up for a moment, then:

"What?" Harry asked guardedly.

"Heard Umbridge gave you a new scar," Draco said, searching through the shelves in his memory at random for something, anything that might incite Harry to rage. "That true? Going to try to use it for sympathy, since that ugly thing on your head isn't getting the job done anymore?"

Harry's face was turning white with anger, but Hermione stepped up to his elbow and attempted to make calming eye contact with him, her head bent low and her voice earnest as she said, "Forget it, Harry. He's trying to make you do something you'll regret later."

"He's already done that, Hermione, remember?" Harry said furiously, shaking her off.

Draco's gray eyes narrowed and he took several steps closer to the other boy; Harry matched him, his frustration finally erupting, his blood boiling. If Draco wanted to duel this out he wasn't stopping him.

"It wasn't only me," he said, harsh, fierce. "And if I remember right, I smacked into you on your way to the kitchen to get more sugar, which would mean that your sugar high was wearing off, which would mean that you were semi-rational when we – when it – happened."

"It's true for both of us," Harry retorted, his luminescent eyes flashing. "You told me you were getting more sugar as well. But I was definitely not semi-rational. There's no way I would have even spoken to you had I been in my right mind. Avoided you, more like."

Draco glared venomously at him for a moment. Then he snapped, feeling quite ridiculous, "You touched me first!"

"You kissed me first!" Harry spat.

"You invited me back to your common room!" Draco snarled, triumphant, knowing Harry had no answer for that. Sure enough, Harry stopped, his jewel-bright eyes broadcasting his rage and vexation, and was silent.

Meanwhile, Ron, Seamus, Dean, Hermione, Blaise, Pansy, Millicent, and Goyle were all staring openmouthed at them; Hermione thought she might have found the childish argument funny had it not been for the utter seriousness of the matter. Passersby had stopped to see what the fuss was all about; it was rather like a playground fight, with people queuing up to spur the involved ones on.

"Ha," said Draco softly, and without so much as a thought Harry drew back and punched him bang on the nose.

Ron, Dean, and Seamus howled with delight, Hermione gasped and latched onto Harry's arm, speechless (he was glad of this – he didn't want a lecture now), and Pansy and Goyle surged forward to help Draco, but he pushed them back. Spitting blood, wiping it painfully from his streaming nose, he grabbed Harry's shoulder to hold him still and smashed his fist into the Gryffindor's face.

Harry felt his nose break; pain flowed freely from the wound and he staggered, floored by Malfoy's reaction. Dimly he realized that the crowd around them was breaking up and a very familiar and very unwelcome voice was saying, "What is this? What's going on?"

It was Snape, his heartless eyes sweeping over the scene, no doubt taking in only the damage done to his prize pupil. He bent over Malfoy, his lip curling, and said without looking at Harry, "Fighting, are we, Potter?"

"I'm not the only one," Harry said thickly, siphoning coppery blood from his upper lip with the sleeve of his robe.

But Snape, as usual, appeared deaf to Harry's arguments; he said, still leaning over Malfoy, "Fifty points from Gryffindor and detention, Potter. Other teachers may be lenient with the – Boy Who Lived – but I will not stand for for fighting in this school."

Ron, Dean, and Seamus burst out in an unintelligible stream of protests, but at that moment Professor McGonagall strode into the midst and added, quite as though she had been watching and listening from the sidelines the whole time, "And for Malfoy, Professor Snape?"

Snape's greasy face turned an ugly shade of blotchy magenta, but he was silent.

"Very well," said Professor McGonagall. "As you seem capable only of punishing students that are not in your house, I shall temporarily take over your duties and subtract fifty points from Slytherin. And detention for you, Mr. Malfoy. Now, you two, follow me. We will go to the hospital wing, then to my office. We must set up a time for you to serve that is convenient to both of you."

Scowling viciously at each other, Harry and Draco followed her, stemming the waterfalls of blood that were coursing freely from their noses with their sleeves. As Harry passed Hermione she took out her wand and whispered a spell; the pain receded a bit and the torrent of scarlet fluid seemed to abate a bit. He gave her a lopsided smile of thanks before turning back to follow Professor McGonagall.

In the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey mended both their noses easily, muttering the whole time under her breath about unnecessary violence and adolescents raging with hormones. Then, after a bit of gentle prompting from Professor McGonagall, she released them, and they began the long and awkward trek to McGonagall's office. Once inside, she shut the door firmly behind them and pushed them into the two chairs placed in front of her desk.

"Now," she said sternly, gazing at them with her guilt-inducing, unblinking stare. "Shall we set this detention for a later date, or would you rather get it over with?"

Harry and Draco exchanged a glance, one that clearly announced mutual malice, and said together, "Get it over with."

"Very well," said McGonagall briskly. "I trust you are both free tonight?"

They started to protest, but she silenced them with a single look. Both boys sighed.

"I am," Harry said.

"Me as well," Draco said resentfully.

"Right then," said Professor McGonagall. "Let's see...I think I'll have you two clean the Great Hall for me...it's due. You'll be allowed to use a bit of magic to scrub the walls, but I want the tables done by hand and the floors swept with brooms, understand?"

"Yes," the boys muttered sullenly, knowing better than to argue. Professor McGonagall was not one to contradict.

"I'll escort you down and make sure everyone stays out while you work," she said. "When you are finished, you shall come back to my office and inform me, and I will inspect your handiwork. If I am satisfied, you will be free to go; if not, you will resume cleaning tomorrow. We will set the time later if necessary."

And so saying, she beckoned them imperiously out the door.

Harry and Draco followed, walking side-by-side and matching each other's strides. This was the worst possible way either of them could think to spend their Friday evening; Harry would rather have been force-fed sweets stuffed with sugar and suffered the consequences than spend the night cooped up with Malfoy in the Great Hall.

Draco was feeling the same way. He would have given his spot on the Slytherin Quidditch team – well, okay, maybe just for a game or two – to just be able to go back to his common room and relax, enjoy the lack of homework, maybe trash talk a few of his least favorite people with his friends. But their reasons for not wanting to share detention were more than just the fact that it was going to be tedious and time consuming – and rather pointless, when Dumbledore could just wave his wand and the whole room would be spotless. It was the fact that they were afraid of what they would do when they were alone together, especially now that they had spent a great deal of their frustrations and were now just left with the fact that they, to put it frankly, wanted each other.

It was going to be a very long night.

(A/N): Ha! Finally! It has been SO LONG::gets ready to be screamed at/scolded, and rightly so:: More Draco-and-Harrys to those who review!!! I'm now taking requests as to what kind – chocolate and whipped cream can get a bit monotonous after a while, yeah?

P.S. I just loved the idea of Harry and Draco fist-fighting. I don't know why. They just needed to.