Once Draco had returned to his dormitory, having successfully taught Potter how to calm his mind, he started thinking.

As Pansy would say, this couldn't go anywhere good.

Draco appeared to be an adequate teacher, and calming enough to successfully get even the constantly panicked Potter to learn a few breathing techniques. So, he'd succeeded.

Draco liked succeeding.

Could he succeed even more?

His Slytherin ambition would kill him someday.

Draco didn't sleep that night; he spent the whole time reading and practicing, wandering around the Slytherin dormitories and Common rooms; then he slowly expanded his trail outwards a few corridors and classrooms.

He gained many strange looks from classmates, up late from nightmares, portraits and ghosts; to escape them, and to clear his head as the sun rose over Hogwarts' great turrets, he strode down to the Black Lake.

He made his way down the shore leisurely, calm and level-headed after all the meditative exercises he'd done. His head did hurt a little- he'd forced a lot of information into it in a very short amount of time- but he was glad he'd found a personal use for this technique other than meditation.

He skipped breakfast in the Great Hall purposefully that morning, walking his friends to the doors and bidding them goodbye just as they entered. He stepped far enough in to be seen, then turned around and made his way down to the dungeons. Straining his ears, he could only just hear the telltale scuffle of Potter grabbing up all his things and racing after Draco, and the resulting shouts of his friends after him. Indeed, after a little, Potter caught up to him in the hallways. His breathing was far too even after he'd run all that way; he was probably trying to consciously slow his breathing so as to appear more composed. The fool. Draco knew all those tricks. After all, he'd used them all multiple times over the past few years.

"So, Malfoy," Potter said. Ah, conversation without any "er"'s or "um"'s. Perhaps Potter was finally becoming adequate at social interaction!

"Why- er-" Or perhaps not. "I was wondering why you weren't in the Great Hall for breakfast- it's my turn to look after Viv and the others today, right?"

Draco waved him off. "I put up spells around them to monitor them, and they've all been moved to our new location."

Potter immediately turned wary. "New location?"

"Yeah, I figured that the potions room we were using was far too open, so I asked McGonagall and all of the plants have been moved. We- well, I- also have better, newer equipment in the new location."

"Where?"

"Room of Requirement." The idea had come to Draco last night as he's been wandering the shores of the Lake, pondering what he knew about the Stone, and he'd remembered when Potter had taken him to the Room, and changed it to how he needed it to be. Draco had moved all the plants himself, before he returned to bed- and he hadn't asked McGonagall, but he hadn't told her where he was brewing potions and growing plants before and she'd found him.

Potter had said "Oh," quietly; now he strode confidently ahead of Draco, knowing where they were headed.

Choosing the Room as the new location had been difficult and yet easy; the idea, when it came upon him, immediately struck him as obvious and safest; choosing to willingly face what had happened there before had not been. In the end, though, he avoided all of the trauma linked to this room, caught up in the places he ended up creating.

Draco paced in front of the wall, brow furrowed, concentrating on the room he'd settled upon last night. When he looked up, there it was; the large oak door that opened silently, revealing his dream room.

His plants were all in little cute plant pots of varying shades of green and turquoise, hung from little metal hooks in the ceiling to the left of the vast room. The middle was taken up mostly by rows upon rows of desks and equipment; everything Draco had ever dreamed about. To the right of the room was an incredibly large potions cabinet, full of hundreds- if not thousands- of ingredients and simple base potions.

At the back of the room was a door. This had taken Draco a good half hour of trial and error to get right. He led an ogling Potter past all the alchemy and potions equipment to the door, and opened it to let Potter through first. Potter stopped stock-still in the doorway, and Draco knew his jaw had dropped open, his eyes wide with wonder.

Last night, Draco had walked down by the Black Lake- and further, out of the grounds of Hogwarts. There, he'd apparated to a quiet little village called Godric's Hollow.

He'd spent a good while looking around, noting the architecture and colour scheme, until he came to what was clearly the Potter's old house.

It was far more run-down than the rest, but most of it was recognisable. Draco had learned the layout, all of the little things like the genres of books on the bookshelves, the main items in each room, even the organisation method of the cupboards. He'd memorised the smell of the home, the softness of the carpets, the amount of stairs.

And he'd recreated it all here, in the Room of Requirement.

Evidently Potter had been to see his home; he recognised the place immediately. He walked hesitantly into the room, brushing his fingers lightly over the furniture and the books. He wandered into the kitchen, out of Draco's sight, and Draco heard the creak of a cupboard being opened, followed by Potter's soft gasp. Potter emerged a few minutes later, and Draco pretended he didn't see the tear tracks glistening on Potter's cheeks.

Potter made his way upstairs slowly, and Draco seated himself on the living room sofa, listening to the creak of the floorboards upstairs. All the doors in the hallway at the top of the stairs were opened and shut individually; every room was given a few minutes of appreciation.

Draco leant back and listened to Potter rediscovering his childhood home when his eyes caught on the one thing he'd changed.

The stairs.

Everyone had heard about how Potter had lived as a child, before he came to Hogwarts. It'd been a scandal, pretty much, when it came out; the papers were all over the fact that muggles had mistreated the Harry Potter. It had turned out that the Potters had a cupboard under the stairs, too; and while theirs had been full of canned provisions- likely in case they'd needed to fully shut down to hide from Voldemort- Draco hadn't felt right leaving it in this remodelled home, a visual reminder of Potter's childhood abuse. Especially not with what Draco had designed this place for.

"Hey, Malfoy?" Potter called from upstairs.

"Yeah?"

Potter emerged from the tops of the stairs, holding a weathered piece of parchment that Draco had hoped he'd find. "How'd you get this?"

In his hand was a little photograph, a few-seconds-long loop, taken by Bathilda Bagshot on the day of Harry Potter's first birthday. In it, a little boy rode a tiny broomstick around the house, chased by his father, while his mother sat by, laughing.

"Found a scrap of parchment, and tried a Reparo on it to see what it was. Turned into that. I left a copy of it back at Godric's Hollow, but I thought you should have the real thing."

Potter turned away abruptly. When he spoke, his voice sounded a little thick. "Oh, well-" he cleared his throat- "Thank you. It- er, I don't have much like this that I can- can openly display. So, um, thank you."

"You're welcome, Potter."

"Say, why are you being so- I mean, this must've taken ages. It's accurate to my real home, as far as I can tell. Just- um- why?"

"So, you remember that breathing exercise I taught you yesterday?"

"Oh, yeah- I used it last night, actually. I only had one nightmare, and I actually managed to sleep afterwards. Thanks."

"You're welcome. In any case, I learned- I mean, I remembered a new method to calm yourself. It's also a way of remembering things pretty well. And it's why I brought you-" he gestured to the home around him- "This.

"It's called the Method of Loci. There are many ways it is learned and utilised; I'm going to teach you the way I learned it," Literally just last night, just for this, he added mentally, "And how it can help you.

"So, the theory is, you create a space in your head that you can store bits of information in, through writing or images and sounds; I've heard it be called a mind palace, if that's how you want to think about it. I'm going to help you make a mind palace of your own, and then you can use it however you wish. You can add people you know, you can add plants; I'm teaching you because it's a place you can go to in your mind where no one else can get in. It's sort of a non-magical form of Occlumency, I suppose.

"So, you take a place that you know well. You're going to use this house. You start with one room of the house. We're starting here. Now, go stand in the doorway." When Potter had moved, Draco continued. "Now, walk around the room, starting on your left and making your way around clockwise back to the doorway. Good. Go again.

"This time round, pick five large, noticeable objects in the room. Make them as unique to this one room as possible; so, the sofa here, which isn't in any other room, is a good choice. Touch your objects as you go past them. Done?" Potter nodded. "Right. Now, come sit here," Draco said, shuffling over so Potter could sit on the sofa with him, "And imagine your room. The walls, the boundaries; don't go any further. Just this one room.

"Now, take your five objects. In your mind, starting at the doorway, make your way around the room again; as you do, place your five things. Go around the room again. Make sure you know those objects, and where they are. Always walk the same path past them to remember them best.

"Right, you're doing well. Now, go and do the same for all the other rooms. Five large, unique items and the room they're in. Travel the path of this room into the next, and once you've done a room, return to here with your first five objects and make sure you remember them all, and then go through your house in your mind again, always walking the same path. I'll just be in the other room if you need me."

Potter set off, headed for the kitchens, and Draco retreated to the potions room, where Viv had started crying. As he hushed her, he heard a cry from the House (as he had dubbed the adjoining space). Potter stumbled out of the room a little later, holding a trunk. Oh, so he'd found that, too. Good. It'd taken Draco a while to find it, and it'd been a pain to haul it from the outskirts of Hogwarts to the Room of Requirement, but now Potter was very clearly happy with it. He hugged it tight, held Draco's eyes confidently, even as his voice broke as he told him, almost reverently, "Thank you."

The label on the trunk, though faded and worn, read: Lily Evans.

. . .

A/N: The Method of Loci is also another thing you can try out. There are loads of videos about it online if you'd like to try.