Blaise was used to a dull weight in his chest. It spread out when his mother looked at him with resentment in her perfectly made-up eyes, and it spread out when he saw that Potter – fucking Potter – had friends and fun and family, and it spread out when he looked at little Astoria Greengrass and faced the truth that, now that the Yule Ball was over, even a third-year didn't want to spend time with him. He'd been a means to an end, and now he had nothing to offer her.

Not that he'd had a crush on her or anything. He hadn't even known she existed until she cornered him into taking her to that dance. That should have made it hurt less to be patently ignored afterward, but somehow it made it worse. And he'd made the mistake of building this summer into a thing in his head. A holiday. An escape. And, of course, it was none of those things. Sirius looked happy to see him. Potter, though, he looked like he'd just discovered he was going to spend his whole holiday locked in a pit with vipers. And, from the glance he exchanged with Malfoy, that blighter felt the same way.

Bastards, both of them.

And it was fine. He was fine. Blaise smoothed his hands over the bed he was sitting on in Sirius Black's guest room and inhaled. The room was clean. His mother didn't care where he was. At least here, one person wanted him, even if Potter clearly didn't. It was still an upgrade.

The knock at the door jerked him to his feet, and he forced a cocky smile into place. "Yeah?"

He was hoping for Sirius. He got Potter.

Potter, who slouched against the doorframe, then ran a hand through his tousled black hair, then sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. It was utterly ungracious, and Blaise snorted. He knew a forced apology when he heard one.

"Don't worry about me."

"No," Potter said, "I really am." He hovered right on the edge of the room, then blurted out, "Can I come in?"

"It's your house."

"But It's your room," Potter said. He didn't move until Blaise rolled his eyes and waved an exaggerated hand at the bed, beckoning him to sit as if it were a throne. Then he edged in, sat down, and sighed. "I shouldn't have been a shite to you at the train station."

Blaise crossed his arms. At least Potter had that right. This sounded more authentic, though. Less like the recitation of a naughty child sent upstairs to make it right and sullenly grinding out the expected words.

"He didn't tell me," Potter said, which filled Blaise with sudden, unwelcome sympathy. If he'd gone home and discovered his mother had invited Potter along for the entire holiday, he wouldn't have been happy either. "And I wanted to talk to him about… anyway, it doesn't matter. I was shitty."

"Talk to him about what?"

"Nothing important," Potter said, which was obviously a lie. He held his hand out, though, and added, "Truce for the summer?"

Blaise stared at the outstretched hand. It wasn't as if he really had a choice. He was going to be here, and forging a truce was the pragmatic thing to do. The smart thing to do. He still hesitated.

"I know where Sirius hides the whiskey," Potter added, which wasn't nearly the lure of the forbidden he probably thought it was. Blaise's mother wouldn't care if he drank, and more than one of his step-fathers had left bottles around. But he recognized Potter was trying to be generous and let him in as more than an unwanted houseguest, so he took the hand.

"Truce," Blaise said.

"Great." Potter grinned at him. "Because Sirius and Remus have gone out. Something about 'letting us work it out on our own' and I thought we could get Pansy and Draco over here and celebrate the end of term."

"I – "

"Theo too." Potter stood up and almost bounded to the door, painful apology over. "Kreacher is excited to make things again, and Hermione's parents don't let her have sweets – can you imagine? – and she doesn't turn down biscuits, and – "

"Hermione? Hermione Granger?"

Harry Potter paused. "You don't have a problem with her, do you?"

Blaise shook his head and followed Potter down to a large room with a floo, a couple of curtained portraits, and a table already filled with enough snacks for a dozen people. "We won't get in trouble for this, right?" he asked.

Potter stopped, his hand already filled with floo powder, and looked at him. "I'll just say it was a party to welcome you," he said, then flung the powder into the flames and called Draco Malfoy.

. . . . . . . . . .

"How do you think it's going?" Sirius asked.

Remus looked at him over his pint. Since they'd arrived at the restaurant, he'd floo-called Kreacher twice, gotten up and strode toward the door, only to return looking somewhat embarrassed three times, and ripped fifteen sugar packets into bitty pieces. "Well," he said, dragging the word out. "I figure they've either beaten the shite out of each other, or Harry's throwing a party."

"He wouldn't throw a party," Sirius protested weakly. "Not on his first night home from Hogwarts."

Remus smiled.

"Kreacher would tell me."

"Kreacher would tell you about something Harry did?" Remus' brows went up at the sheer unlikeliness of that.

"Fuck." Sirius stood up again. "Now I know why he was poking around the firewhiskey."

"Sit," Remus said. "Let them have their fun."

"But – "

"Kreacher is there, and he'll make sure they don't get really hurt, and I replaced the whiskey with water charmed to look like firewhiskey."

"So – "

"If they get drunk, it's all in their heads. And, besides, if Narcissa sends Draco over, she'll probably manage to work some kind of eavesdropping device into his pockets after what happened this year."

Sirius hesitated, so Remus added, "Let them be stupid for one last summer. Voldemort is back. They won't get to be dumb kids for much longer."

At that, Sirius sank down into his seat. His shoulders sagged, and he picked up his glass. "What are we going to do?" he asked.

"The same thing we did last time," Remus said. "Fight."

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco tumbled through the floo and landed on his arse. He rose to his feet, gathering his dignity back around him like a cat. Blaise Zabini snickered from a corner, and he spun on his heel and pulled his wand. "Watch it."

"Oh, come on." That was Pansy Parkinson, who appeared out of the shadows with a biscuit in one hand and a lemon squash in the other. "Do we have to start the night off with some kind of male posturing?"

"I don't need your help, Parkinson," Zabini snapped.

The cool look she turned on him was more satisfying than any hex would have been, and Draco tucked his wand away. Pansy could be awful, but sometimes her awful was a handy weapon. Zabini squirmed under it. "Everything okay?" Draco mouthed to Harry.

Harry shrugged, but he wasn't sporting a black eye, so Draco figured it was all reasonably fine. As fine as you could get when it turned out your fathers had taken a stray in for the summer, anyway, and It got even better when Pansy said to Zabini, "Last I saw, you needed all the help you could get. Don't suppose you invited little Astoria Greengrass, did you Harry? Blaisey Blaisey has trouble with girls his own age, but he does okay with children."

"She's thirteen," Blaise said.

Harry made a snorting sound. "Thirteen," Pansy said as if it were the biggest condemnation she could think of. As if they weren't all only fourteen.

Draco stopped caring about twitting Zabini when Hermione stepped nearly out of the floo and smiled at him. He laced his fingers through hers, and tension he hadn't even realized was there slid away. It was ridiculous, really, because it wasn't as if they spent that much time together at Hogwarts. Yes, they ate every meal together, and often studied together in the Common Room, but she got bored by too much Quidditch talk, and he wasn't nearly as interested in going to the library as she was. But when she wasn't around, he like something was missing. Now that she was here, it clicked back into place. "Missed you," he said.

"It's been hours," Pansy said sarcastically. "Whole hours without each other. How will you ever manage the whole summer?"

"Bugger off," Draco suggested.

"Up yours," was her response.

"At least he's not interested in someone who's old enough to apparate," Blaise said.

"At least Viktor isn't nine."

"Thirteen," Blaise said. "And I'm hardly mooning over her, so give it up already."

"Who said I was mooning over Viktor?"

Theo picked that moment to stumble in. He had a book in one hand and a haunted look on his face. "Hermione," he said, spotting her at once. Draco stiffened a bit. It wasn't as if he was jealous. He wasn't. That would be a ridiculous feeling, but he still wasn't sure he liked the way Theo appeared, and the first person he wanted was Hermione. It didn't help her eyes lit up, and she smiled with genuine delight at seeing him.

"Theo," she said. He lifted the book toward her, and she took it, turning it back and forth in her hand. "But, this is your copy of Mathilda." She sounded confused. "I gave this one to you. You don't have to return it."

"I think it's probably better my father not find it," Theo said. He turned abruptly away and headed for the snack table. "Oh, chocolate cremes. Kreacher is the best."

Harry cracked open a bottle of firewhiskey and grabbed enough glasses for all of them. Draco glanced uneasily at the door, expecting Kreacher-the-best to come in any moment, demanding to know what they were doing, but the elf stayed strangely – albeit mercifully – absent. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked.

"God," Harry said. "There's six of us. "We aren't going to get really drunk on one bottle."

"Did you invite Ron?" Pansy asked. "Or Neville?"

"Ron's still freaking out that his rat turned out to be," Harry began, then fell silent. "Ron can't make it," he added after a long, awkward moment.

"That's too bad," Pansy said. "What about Neville?"

"His grandmother doesn't let him out."

"Still?" Pansy glanced around the room. "Does that strike anyone else as weird?"

It struck Draco as painfully wise given his aunt had tortured Neville's parents. At least she was still safely tucked away in Azkaban. Voldemort might be back, but he was off with a bunch of losers, and the crazy and the violent supporters were still in prison. He glanced down, almost without volition, at his own arm. Through his shirt sleeve, a Mark seemed to gleam up at him, dark lines writhing where they couldn't possibly be. He almost tore the fabric in his need to check. To verify the impossible hadn't happened.

"Everything alright?" Harry asked.

Draco wanted to say yes, everything was fine, but his mouth wouldn't form the words. "Just a –." A memory, his mind said. But that wasn't possible. "Déjà vu," he said weakly. "I guess."

"What happened to Krum?" Hermione asked in a clear attempt to move the subject away from him.

"Went back to Bulgaria," Pansy said in a 'why aren't you keeping up' tone. "And that ginger thing Ron has going on is sort of cute." She held her glass out, and Harry filled it. This seemed like asking for disaster, but Draco didn't want to seem like a coward, so he let Harry fill his too then took a sip.

Funny, he'd have expected the stuff to have more taste.

They gathered, legs flung over chairs and feet on the cushions. Pansy lowered the lights because it was 'moodier' to sit in half-darkness, and no one bothered arguing with her. Draco took another sip of his drink and watched them all. Theo said he couldn't have any, if he went home and his father found out he'd never be allowed to see them again. He was already having to promise there was no one here who shouldn't be. He didn't quite look at Hermione when he said that which filled Draco with a tiny ember of rage at Theo's father. How dare he?

The rest of them seemed impressed by their own daring at raiding the liquor cabinet. Well, except for Zabini, who took a small sip of his whiskey, looked at it with a slightly puzzled look, then took a much larger swallow – practically a gulp – and smiled. It was a small thing. Private, clearly meant only for himself. Draco couldn't figure out why the rotter would be so amused at the idea of all of them drinking, but it didn't matter because Hermione was curled up against his side and, really, who cared why Zabini did anything?

"We should play Exploding Snap," Pansy said, which was met with a wide range of groans.

"Truth or Dare," Harry suggested, which got two pillows thrown at him.

"Like I'd let you dare me to do something," Pansy said. "You're a menace."

"I'm not telling you anything secret," Theo said. "So, truth's out too."

"Yeah, I don't think spilling our guts is a great idea," Draco said. He tried to give Harry a pointed look, which wasn't easy in the darkened room.

If Harry got the message, he gave no sign. He just leaned back on the floor, hands laced behind his head. "What are we going to do this summer?" he said. "The manor's out because mum is doing some charity thing. This place gets crowded, so we can't just stay here all the time."

"We could go to my house," Hermione said.

"No," Pansy said. Zabini coughed, and she snorted with the greatest disdain. "Her parents won't let her have sweets, you moron. Not because of any gross reason a person like you would care about."

"As if you weren't afraid they'd eat you at first," Hermione said.

"What?" Zabini asked.

"Theo too," Hermione said. "They thought my parents – my dentist parents – would burn them at the stake." She took a big swallow of her drink, laughed, and her head lolled against Draco. "So, don't let them pretend they're better'n you."

"Dentists?" Zabini's eyes were on her almost empty glass, and his mouth twitched up in another inscrutable smile. "And you're slurring your words, Granger. Better cut yourself off."

"Tooth healers," Draco said, and he had to suppress a giggle coming up from deep within his throat. For some reason, 'tooth healers' seemed impossibly funny to him, so he said it again. "Her parents are tooth healers." This time he didn't try to stop the laughter, and it must have been contagious because first Pansy started laughing, then Harry. Theo eyed the lot of them as if they'd lost their minds.

Hermione gaped at all of them. "It's not that funny," she said. "It's just a job."

"Don't blame them, Granger," Zabini said. He took another sip of his drink, then raised it towards her in what might have been a toast. "They're getting drunk on what must be the finest firewhiskey, and now they think anything's funny."

"You know what we should do," Harry said. "Since you cowards won't play truth or dare with me?" He took a big swallow of his drink then put the glass on the floor with a definitive thunk. "We should go to the shore."

"Now?" Pansy asked. "It's nighttime."

"No," Harry said with disdain. "Obviously not now, Pans. Tomorrow. And all summer."

"Mum has an amazing tent," Draco said. He grinned at Harry, surprised by how much he liked that idea. He would have to slather himself in skin protection charms, but the shore would be good. It would be absolutely grand, in fact. In all that bright sunshine, not a single shadow could wrap itself around his arm and look like a snake and skull. He raised his glass. "To the shore."

"To the shore," everyone repeated.

Harry pulled the bottle closer and filled his glass. "Who wants more?" he asked and, feeling delighted with the universe, Draco held his own glass for more.

,