Potter and Granger glanced at each other. Granger looked away first; back at Draco. "Sorry, Malfoy, I can't help you there. I don't know any more than is already written in books like the Potter History book; Harry can help you, though. He knows far, far more than I do. That's all I should say here; you two should probably go somewhere more private. The reason I don't know more about the Stone is because the information is rather powerful; if it gets to the wrong person, it could be used really badly, Dumbledore said. So no, I can't help. Harry will, though."

"What? Hermione, no! Why would I? He won't even tell me why he wants the Phil- the Stone! And he's Malfoy!"

"Malfoy is right here, and he can hear you," Draco said. The two ignored him.

"It's for a really good cause, Harry. He won't tell you because- wait, why won't you tell him? You knew I'd tell him, but you told me-"

"I needed you for the information about the stone. When I withheld from telling Potter earlier, it was because I didn't know I needed information so badly on the Stone. If I must," he added with a sigh, "I suppose I can tell Potter. Come along, then. I'll tell you what I'm doing if you tell me about the Stone." He started to walk away, but paused. "Do you know anywhere... More private? I don't really know anywhere fully secluded-"

Potter sighed and started heading off in the opposite direction to the one Draco had started going towards. "Yeah, I know just the place. C'mon, Malfoy. Do you remember the Room of Requirement?"

Draco froze. "The- the- where Crabbe- I mean, where you held DADA meetings the year we had Umbridge?"

Potter rubbed over a scar on his hand- the way rubbed at his scar he did when someone mentioned Voldemort. Remembering how he received it. "Yeah, there. Merlin, I hated that old toad. In any case, we're headed to that place.

"Um- the room that the- the fiendfyre was in is still unusable, but the rest of the Room of Requirement is perfectly fine. It's the most secluded place in Hogwarts, anyway, and really the only place I could speak about this thing."

Draco nodded. "Yeah, I get it." It still stung a little to think of Vince; especially since that lead to his memories of the leaping fire reaching for him, and then of the look on Potter's face as he came back to get Draco; the insufferable "righteous hero" look. Draco still owed Potter a life debt for that, actually. But, well, if Potter didn't bring it up, neither would he.

At this point, they'd reached the entryway to the Room. Potter stepped forwards and paced back and forth three times, muttering something under his breath. On his third passage, a door appeared in the wall. Potter stepped forwards and opened the door. "After you."

The room Potter had conjured up actually wasn't as terrible as it could've been. It was decorated with neutral colours; no specific house colours featured more than any other. Two plush purple chairs were situated around a fire- a golden, glowing fire, not the terrible orange of fiendfyre.

The floor was a thick mauve carpet, and the fire was the only source of light. It painted the room in a warm yellow glow. There was a window at the far end of the room- rather small and cosy, now Draco looked around, taking everything in- that showed the sky outside to be dark, but littered with stars. The moon wasn't visible from here, but Draco had the feeling that if he saw it, it would seem bright enough to replace the sun. Sheer white drapes billowed around the window; a warm breeze drifted in.

Draco supposed the room wasn't terrible, for a Gryffindor.

Potter had sunk into one of the chairs, his legs curled up onto the chair. He was leaning against one of the armrests, staring into the fire. Draco made his way over, and sat on the chairs as he'd been taught to- back straight, legs out in front of him, hands folded, head high. Or, well, he tried to. The chair seemed designed to make you comfortable, and Draco was embraced by the soft cushions. He felt like he was being given a warm hug. Deciding that this was Potter, who had nearly killed him, and he didn't particularly care about Potter's opinion (he told the voice of Pansy that spoke up in his mind to object to shut up) he got just as comfortable as Potter looked; lounging across the chair, head on one of the armrests, legs slung over the other. He looked into the flames as he waited for Potter to say something.

It must've been a good couple of minutes that he waited before Potter spoke up. "I encountered Nicholas Flamel's invention in my first year here at Hogwarts. I'm sure you remember that the third-floor corridor was off-limits to students; well, I ended up there accidentally-" he glanced over at Draco, saw the disbelieving raised eyebrow, and added, "Shut up, Malfoy, it was an accident. I was an innocent rule-abider in first year-" Draco snorted. Merlin, he truly had let go of his care for his reputation in front of Potter. "I was! Except for- well, anyway. I ended up in the corridor, and I found this dog- no, never mind. Any way, later in the year, someone got down through the third floor corridor and to what was hidden- Nicholas Flamel's stone. There were a bunch of challenges the teachers had set up you had to pass through to get to the Stone, to try and keep people out. So, I was with Hermione and Ron-"

"Obviously," Draco muttered under his breath. Potter ignored him. Wow, his self-restraint had increased drastically since first year.

"I was with Hermione and Ron, but I ended up losing both of them to some of the challenges down there. So I went into the final chamber, which had two things. The Mirror of Erised, and Professor Quirrel."

"Quirrel?" Draco asked incredulously, bolting up in his chair before inevitably sinking back down. "The incompetent, stuttering fool? Who shook like a leaf every time you so much as breathed in his direction?"

The tips of Potter's mouth twitched upwards. "Yeah. That guy. So it turns out, he was- I don't know, hosting Voldemort or something? Voldemort was leeching off of his soul, and he was on the back of Quirrel's head. That's why he always wore a turban- to hide Voldemort."

Draco remembered, with a jolt of fear, the winter of first year, when those Weasley twins had enchanted snowballs to repeatedly hit Quirrel in the back of the head- where Voldemort had been, apparently... and when Draco himself had joined in, seeing how much fun they were having, and how unlikely he was to be caught. Whoops.

"So he was there, trying to get the Stone. But there was also the Mirror of Erised. That's the Mirror of Desire- it shows your heart's deepest desire. For example, earlier in the year I stumbled across it in an abandoned classroom, and it showed me stood with my family.

"Ron saw himself winning a Quidditch tournament.

"Dumbledore told me he saw himself with a pair of really nice socks.

"Voldemort- Quirrel- was trying to get the stone, too, and it was down there, but he couldn't find it. He made me look in the mirror. I saw myself, and I put the stone into my pocket. When I went to put my hand in my pocket in real life, the stone was there. Dumbledore had enchanted it so it could be taken out of the mirror, but only by someone who didn't intend to use the stone for themselves. That's why Quirrel couldn't get it.

"So then Quirrel fought me for the stone, I ended up accidentally killing him-"

Draco's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, maybe you could accidentally stumble across a mirror, or into the third-floor corridor, but you cannot accidentally kill someone!"

Potter frowned. "Well, it's more like, when I touched him, he disintegrated. In any case, he died. Then the remnants of Voldemort's soul flew at me and I fainted and woke up in the hospital wing, and I think you know the story from there."

"Yeah, I pretty much knew that. But what about the stone?"

"Well, Voldemort had been drinking unicorn's blood to keep himself alive. He was trying to get the Philosopher's stone so he could-"

"Hold on, the what?"

"Oh, yeah. Nicholas Flamel's stone is called the Philosopher's stone. Anyway, Voldemort wanted it to produce the Elixir of Life, which makes the drinker basically immortal. He wanted it to mainly become human-ish again, with a body and all that. The stone can also turn any metal it touches into gold. It's alchemy; only Nicholas Flamel is known to have created it successfully, although Beedle the Bard's Resurrection stone was thought to be based off of it, and that works as it does in the story."

"That's just a children's story, Potter. Everyone knows that. How do you produce to the Elixir of Life from the Stone?"

Potter's eyes widened and darted around the way he did whenever he accidentally revealed something. "Oh, um, a children's story. Yeah, obviously. 'Course. Er, the Elixir? I'm not sure. Ask Hermione?"

"Is that your answer for everything?"

"Everything I don't know, yeah."

"So, pretty much everything."

"Hey!"

Draco realised with a start that he was smiling; this wasn't the antagonising battle of insults he and Potter had engaged in for the past seven years. This was- banter? And almost-friendly banter at that. At that rather unsettling thought, he stood up from the unbelievably comfy chair and said, "Well, thank you for your information. I'll go ask Granger for her information and see if I can get any method of getting the Elixir of Life. Goodbye," and he stepped out of the Room of Requirement, heading towards the Gryffindor tower once more.