"Good afternoon young Master, you must be Master Potter," one of the servants smiled warmly, "And you must be Mrs. Dursley."
"I am," she nodded, "Harry is here for tea with the other children and I-"
"Ah yes," the servant, a young man, interrupted her, "The young Masters and Mistress Parkinson are in their lounge. I shall escort you there. Thank-you for bringing young Master Potter up here, Mrs. Dursley, but you may go home now."
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He and Harry walked down the marble steps and began to cross the lawn.
Petunia stood on the porch watching them go, almost angry but mostly insulted. She turned on her heel and began her way back down the hill to her home. Behind her the door opened silently and a boy in a dark jacket slid out and leapt across the lawn, catching the servant and Harry by surprise.
"You may return to the house, Laurence," Draco said and the servant nodded and walked away. "Hi Harry."
"Hi Draco," the green-eyed boy smiled at him.
"Aren't you excited for tea?"
"Yes," Harry nodded, "Where are we going, exactly?"
"Our secret hideout, it is not too secret since Mother and Father know about it…that is unfortunate but so be it."
"Where is it?"
"Underground."
Harry, wide-eyed, followed him into the woods and to the knotted old tree that disguised their entrance.
"Really?"
"Of course," Draco opened the door and stepped in, "Come on."
The elevator slid down and came to rest at the bottom and opened into the pretty, well kept lounge. Blaise and Pansy were playing chess near where Crabbe and Goyle flipped through television channels with Theo scrunched between them with a large book. Near the small kitchen Ron was standing with a cup of sugar, stirring it into a tea cup.
"Oh, hello," he spotted them first and moved from behind the counter.
"Hello," everyone chorused and stood.
"Hi," Harry smiled.
"Harry, this is Ron Weasley, we've been attending school with him since the beginning."
Ron held out his hand, "Nice to meet you Harry."
"Hello," Harry shook his hand.
"I will get everyone's tea ready, how do you take yours Harry?"
"Just plain will be nice, thank-you," he smiled and carefully seated himself on one of the comfortable dark couches. Draco sat next to him and the television flipped off.
"And I shall get our snacks," Blaise followed Pansy to the small kitchen. "What do you think of him?" he asked her in a hushed voice.
"He is quiet, like Theo, but I like him so far. You?"
Blaise smiled while cutting the cake, "He is quite interesting, I think he will be a wonderful addition to our group."
Pansy nodded, "I cannot wait to see how he evolves as he grows up."
Blaise nodded too, "It will be most interesting," he took the trays of cakes and sandwiches and carried them to the central coffee table where he set them down. "This is quite the feast." He commented and Draco nodded.
"Mother insisted," he said and his friends smiled.
"Do you always do as your mother says?" Ron asked, seating himself and smirking.
"He's her little angel," Pansy taunted and the others joined in.
"I have never met Mrs. Malfoy," Harry said, "Is she nice?"
"Very pretty, very sweet," Crabbe said and looked towards the door, "I'm always expecting her to walk through the door and smack us all for being troublesome."
"She only did that once."
"And that was because we deserved it."
"I hardly think that a little rope swing was deserving of that." Blaise countered.
"It was indoors-"
"And made of bed sheets-"
"And a serving tray."
"That's not the point," Blaise persisted. "The point is that a swing was hardly worth getting smacked."
"We secured it to rafters using spears and a pair of rocket engines." Pansy said, almost shocked.
"Yes, well," he huffed, "It was fun."
"That's not why she hit us though,"
"Her intentions were never clearly stated."
"That is true."
The banter continued, picking up new threads of conversation and then changing. Harry listened and only chimed in once or twice and when he did they all looked at him approvingly. Ron spoke quite a bit and he seemed more human than some of the other children present. Perhaps it was their maturity and their social position that made Harry think of them as characters instead of real people.
Slowly the conversation silenced.
"It's a quarter past five," Pansy said with a glance to the clock. "Dinner will be served in an hour."
"I should start walking home," Ron said, "I'll not get fed if I'm late and don't finish my chores."
"I'll see you out," Draco stood and escorted him to the elevator after everyone said good-bye.
"That was wonderful," Goyle said in reference to the cake, "Nice choice Harry."
Harry, on his third piece, blushed and smiled, "It is really good."
Pansy smiled at him. "Next time we shall have to have a variety of pastries."
"Mmm," Harry approved, "That sounds great."
SCHOOL
"Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"Mrs. Dursley…she's been replaced."
"Oh?"
"By the Weasley's mother, Molly."
"I had no idea."
"Yes, quite the upset. Petunia stormed out of the PTA meeting and called the Head Master and threw a fit."
The female teachers stood in a circle in the faculty lounge. They had mugs of coffee warming their hands and interested looks on their faces as the school secretary told them.
"I heard Mr. Carter told her the PTA was none of his business and their petty power struggles did not interest him."
"Oh, I was there when she called," the secretary said, she was also his wife, "The woman ranted for near on twenty minutes about how the school would go bankrupt without her fundraiser ideas and support and how if he didn't reinstate her immediately she'd take her son out of the school and so on and so forth."
"And?"
"He said it wasn't his business and their petty power struggles did not interest him." The woman laughed, "He also told her that she could pull her son out of the school at any time and no one was stopping her and VA will hardly go bankrupt if he doesn't attend anymore."
They laughed again.
"She won't pull him out though," Dudley's teacher said with a sigh. "That woman is too preoccupied with getting on the Malfoy's good side she'd never intentionally ruin her only way of getting at them."
"God," another teacher agreed, "If she would lay off the ladder climbing for ten minutes she would see how horribly unhealthy her son is."
Madam Lavore shook her head, "And the nephew, Harry, he's so thin and sad looking." The women cooed sadly, "But I saw him sitting with Draco Malfoy and his group of friends. I think they've taken him under their wing."
They all smiled.
"That's so nice."
"Splendid."
"I do hope he succeeds."
"Oh I think he will."
They twittered on until the clock notified them that it was nearly time for classes to begin. Madam Lavore walked the halls and found her classroom, peeking in the glass plate she saw Harry sitting proudly with Ron in the back row, his books piled on one side and Draco sitting on the desk chatting away with the other friends surrounding.
"Class," she said as she entered. Draco slid from the desk and into his chair and the other students spread out and sat down, "Today is a very special day."
"Why?"
"Today is the day students have their fist choir recital," she smiled. By November the children had already learnt seven songs.
"Oh joy," Blaise muttered.
"Shut up," Draco nudged him, "We must be supportive of our school mates."
"What?"
"I'm trying the 'sweet and supportive' thing for a while. Mother says it will help me make friends."
"What do you care? We're going to Hogwarts in three years and you have us, and Harry now, what do you need commonfolk for?"
"So people will think I am a young community leader."
"Lame."
"No it is not," Draco protested and clasped his hands on the desk before him.
"It is too," Blaise hissed back and clasped his hands the same way, imitating his friend.
"Stop it Blaise, you are being immature."
"I'm eight, Drake, of course I am immature."
"You're a Zabini, Blaise, you should have more control of yourself."
"You expect too much."
"Always have," Draco admitted with a small sigh.
"Will you two hens stop clucking?" Ron asked from behind them. He folded his newspaper and set it on his desk. "Madam is trying to get someone to answer her preposterous French questions and no one really speaks it but you two."
"And Pansy, Theo, Greg and Vince," Blaise added and saw those four were involved in other studies.
"Christ," Draco mumbled and listened to her ask the question again, very slowly.
Blaise, also already aggravated by her childish teachings, shouted the answer as well as a less than polite addition.
She smiled, not understanding anything but the basic language, "Good work Blaise, you're doing very well. Maybe you'll be a linguist someday."
Blaise 'oh'd excitedly, like a young woman may do at the sight of a child doing something cute, "Thank-you," he said in the same way.
"Of course," she said and moved right along without sensing the sarcasm.
"Kill me," Blaise grumbled, "I cannot imagine what life would be like if she were my mother."
"First off, she will never have children. Second, if she was your mother it would not matter, you would know nothing else."
"Does not matter," Blaise shrugged it off.
"You said that about your poor mark in gym class too and now look where you are."
"On the remedial golf team? I prefer it there to the uber cricket team you and Theo are forced to be on, and it is far better than the boxing team like Greg and Vince have to put up with. I also prefer golf to dance class or the football team like Pansy and Ron are burdened with."
"Remedial," he stressed the word, "It means 'bad' or 'easy' Blaise."
"That's hardly the correct definition. That is more a colloquial meaning."
"The colloquial and technical definitions mean the same thing; remedial is lesser."
"But your definition is derogatory, almost insulting."
"I have never been in remedial anything, Blaise, what do you expect?"
"Sympathy for those less physically gifted than yourself."
"You're a wonderful fencer Blaise, you have gifts."
"Ah but I don't show them off," he said.
"You show off all the time."
"Shut up, both of you," Ron hissed, "She's gone off into the history of language and I think she got lost between Greek and Arabic."
Draco tuned her in for a moment and heard her going on about the tribes of Arabia and how they traveled the earth, eventually landing in Greece and the local people took their language and mixed it with Arabian and so Greek was born.
He blanched and quickly tuned her back out. "She got very lost," he told Ron and, with that, the redhead opened his newspaper and started doing the crossword.
:16 June:
"Thank God," Draco threw himself onto the couch and curled around the pillow he had been given just twelve days prior. It was his birthday gift from Harry and it now decorated one of the couches in the hide out.
"School is out," Blaise rolled over the top of the couch and onto the blonde.
"So nice," Crabbe groaned and spread himself over the half couch not already taken up by Goyle.
"Three and a half months of nothing but this," Theo extended his legs, propped them up on the coffee table and opened the newspaper.
Ron stretched across the floor, resembling a starfish, closed his eyes and smiled, "Ahhhhh," he breathed out and Harry carefully stepped over him.
"What is it you guys do during the summer?"
"This," Blaise said, already falling asleep.
"Nothing but this," Theo said.
"Really?"
"No," Pansy shook her head and brought out a tray of lemonade. "We travel a lot and ride horses, swim, play cricket and football and we study quite a bit."
"In the summer?"
"Yes," she confirmed.
"Why?"
"If you do not study in the summer, you are wasting valuable time when you could be absorbing knowledge. As you grow older it is more and more difficult to learn new things, do this while you can," Blaise did an imitation of his mother with her high, accented voice.
"Bleck," Draco made the noise from beneath the tall African.
"I have no intention of absorbing anymore knowledge, not until I'm…twenty-five, at least," Blaise said and rolled himself onto the floor, exposing the rumpled beauty.
"You are the fattest person," Draco breathed heavily and fixed his hair.
"Says the walrus."
"Oh, hardly," Draco crossed his legs and took a glass.
Harry settled himself next to Draco and was offered a glass of lemonade.
"Good year, wasn't it?"
"The best," Harry smiled.
She's a wee bit late but she's here. I wanted this chapter to be a goody. I think she is, hope you lot agree.
This story has gotten an AMAZING response and for that I thank you all very, very much. It's wonderful to have a legion of fans. I'm going to try writing for Rapid Expansion and hopefull I can unblock my mind for another chapter or two...
LOVE
FireStorm