Narcissa Malfoy took herself off as soon as the pavilion was charmed into existence, and they were all left staring at one another. Specifically, Harry and Draco were left staring at one another. They'd managed to get through the end of their fifth year without ever quite interacting. They passed the marmalade at breakfast if asked, and they played Quidditch together well enough, but they'd never really talked. They'd never had to. Classes and sport and even sharing a room had clearly delineated rules on how to behave. Harry had never been one for rules, but he'd taken to these with relief. A script made life easier, but now the script was gone.

Theo and Luna sized up the situation and departed immediately in search of water nargles. Pansy hooked an arm through Neville's and said, "I have always wanted to see a water nargle. Let's follow them."

"Nargles don't exist," Neville pointed out. "It says so in every textbook."

"You talked to a diary for five years and didn't notice it was evil," Pansy said. "You aren't good at evaluating sources. Let's go." She yanked him hard enough that he stumbled after her out of the pavilion and into the hot summer sun.

Hermione looked at Harry, who was standing with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, then at Draco. Draco had his nose in the air and an expression that mimicked his mother at her most snobbish. This pavilion smelled bad and was filled with the lesser orders, and he simply could not believe he was going to be forced to interact with them. Harry knew the expression well. He'd just never seen it directed at him.

It made his own scowl dig its way deeper into his mouth.

"I wonder what the water is like," Hermione said all too brightly. She turned that smile on Blaise, all too obviously wanting him to abandon the pavilion with her.

"If you think I'm going for a walk with you, you've lost your mind," he told her.

Harry felt a flash of satisfaction. His mum – no, Draco's mum – could leave, and the rest of his so-called friends could disappear, but Blaise would stay. And if there was one thing you could count on Blaise for, it was that he wouldn't ever want to talk about feelings.

It was utter shit knowing everyone was ducking out specifically so he and Draco could talk. Like Blaise, he didn't want to talk about feelings, or how much he missed his brother, or how Sirius' death still clawed at his gut. He could be walking somewhere, feeling okay, and he'd think that he should tell Sirius something, and all the grief and pain would come back as if Christmas had just happened. He could barely stand it. He didn't think he'd ever want a Christmas tree or holly again, and he hated the way the counselor and Remus and even Professor McGonagall were just on him to make it up with Draco.

Draco hadn't lost his father.

Blaise eyed him, then picked up a sun hat that was suddenly cool in his hands. "On second thought," he said. "Let's go, Granger. Nargles are fascinating."

"They are," Hermione said. "And we wouldn't be walking together. We'd be meeting up with Theo and Luna."

"And Neville," Blaise said. "Been meaning to ask him some things about his whole, you know, experience."

"You going to be okay?" Hermione asked Draco.

"I won't kill him," Harry snapped.

"You couldn't if you tried," Draco snapped back.

"Because you're so fucking great at magic?"

"Better than you."

Blaise met Hermione's eye, and she nodded. The two of them left the pavilion so quickly they were almost running.

"Think they'll get over it?" Harry heard Blaise ask.

"If they don't, we're in for a miserable week," Hermione muttered, and then they were out of range, and it was just him and Draco.

Draco, who crossed his arms, slouched, and waited.

"I didn't want to be here," Harry said into the silence. God, feelings were the worst. "Remus made me come."

Draco didn't say anything, but his face got even more closed. It was hard to see his childhood friend – his brother – in the scowling boy in front of him. His jaw had gotten harder and more defined, and a scattering of pimples were fading on his forehead, mostly hidden by white-blond hair falling across his eyes. He'd gotten taller since Christmas, too. He was lanky and lean in the way of someone in the middle of a growth spurt. Harry knew the feeling. Kreacher tossed out most of his clothes when he got home from Hogwarts, declaring them too small because his ankles and wrists were hanging out the ends. Kreacher'd also taken to feeding him more and more meals and leaving cookies and cakes out in the kitchen in case he felt the urge to snack.

"Kreacher misses you," Harry said.

"Wouldn't expect that since - apparently - I'm responsible for murdering Sirius," Draco said.

"Sirius wasn't his favorite."

"Ah."

There was a long pause.

Harry wanted to ask Sirius what to do, how to mend the gulf between them, and that Sirius could never answer his questions again made everything worse and raw and awful.

"I'm pretty sure mum misses you," Draco said. "Since she wanted you here even though you've been a total shite to her ever since –"

"Since she sent Sirius to kill the snake?"

"It had to be done," Draco nearly screamed. Harry could see him swallowing back more words and struggling to get himself under control. "And those things on their arms… they were worried Voldemort would –"

"Oh, whatever," Harry said. "It's all excuses."

Something dark flashed across Draco's face, and for a moment, his grey eyes were clouded and blank. Harry shuddered, thinking of clouds and his parents. They're watching you from the clouds, someone had told him years ago. That those clouds would come apart and his parents would fall had been his worst fear for years, even after he knew it was ridiculous. But Draco's eyes reminded him of that fear and brought up a new one. What would his parents have thought of the way he'd blamed the Malfoys for everything? Part of him insisted they'd hated the Malfoys and would have been happy to see him reject them and everything they had been. Voldemort supporters. Death Eaters. Sirius killers.

Draco shrugged and turned away. "Whatever then," he said. "I'm glad you're alive and shit. But –"

Harry wanted some way out of this, but he wouldn't ask. Couldn't ask. He's your brother, the counselor said. Why can't you talk to him? As if it were easy. As if the words didn't want to swallow him whole the way the snake had swallowed Sirius. As if he wasn't the one going down the monster's throat whenever he closed his eyes, or worse. Sometimes, he could feel a lump in his throat and knew it was Sirius, and he was the snake, and he was the one murdering his father. "But what?" Harry asked, shoving away the memory of how it felt to swallow a person whole.

"But I didn't kill Sirius," Draco said. "And my mum did the best she could, and Voldemort's dead, and—"

"But I don't care about Voldemort," Harry nearly screamed. "I care about Sirius."

He sat down hard on one of the chairs in the pavilion and started to cry. The tears were sneaky at first, burning the corners of his eyes before slipping away, but soon they were rushing after one another as quickly as they could, and he was gulping at the air.

"Yeah." Draco hesitated but then sat down in the chair next to him. "If it had been my father, I would have been… I'm not sure I'd be okay, you know?"

Harry knew. He knew so much he was going to fall apart from so much knowledge. "I hate this," he said, meaning all of it. Sirius' death. His anger.

Their fighting.

"It's pretty hate-able," Draco said. He hesitated. "I never thanked you for knocking me out of it when, uh, Voldemort —"

"You mean when I punched you in the face?" Harry asked. He'd been so scared seeing the way Draco froze in the middle of the battle. It was like he was trapped in his own snake-vision and couldn't get himself free.

"Yeah."

"Bad fucking timing to get all caught up in your fear of nothingness shit."

"It really was." Draco leaned forward and ran a slender hand through his hair. The gesture was so quintessentially Draco – vain and out of his depth at the same time – and Harry remembered all the times he'd stood around and waited for Draco to do his hair. For Draco to spend another ten minutes looking at the otters in the zoo.

For Draco to arrive, to come downstairs, to be always, unquestionable there.

His brother.

He missed his brother so much.

"I'm so fucking angry all the time," Harry said softly.

"I can tell."

"I really hated you after Sirius died."

"Could tell that too."

"But when you were… you were standing there frozen, and I was afraid he'd get you, and none of that mattered," Harry said. "I mean, it mattered, but also –"

"Yeah," Draco said. He looked down at his hands. "I've been pretty mad at you, but like, if you were dead…."

He trailed off and stopped speaking, and Harry knew what he meant. He was so angry it was burning him from the inside, but a world without Draco was unthinkable. "Or worse than dead," he said, trying to make a joke. "Living with my aunt."

He and Draco met one another's eyes in mutually horrified amusement. Sirius' death was too raw to touch, but his Aunt Petunia was the sort of relative everyone agreed was terrible. "I wonder if she won best lawn this year," Draco said.

"Her ultimate ambition," Harry said.

"It's a very shallow goal," Draco said. "We would be doing her a favor if we helped her focus on other things."

"Plus, lawns are very bad for the environment," Harry said. At Draco's look, he added uncomfortably, "There was a pamphlet in my… in an office I was at. I read it while Remus talked to… the person there."

Draco, mercifully, didn't ask for details.

"It's better to have weeds," Harry added quickly because he really didn't want to talk about his counselor.

"Biodiversity and all. And I have a portkey to get to her place, just in case there's an emergency."

"Mum made up portkeys to get back to the pavilion," Draco said. "She likes to be prepared."

"And Aunt Petunia is family. Family is the most important thing in the world."

Draco's voice sounded a little choked as he struggled to get out, "That's true."

"And we shouldn't let a member of my family have shallow goals that are bad for the world. Not when we can help her expand her horizons."

"I did get an Outstanding in Herbology," Draco said.

"I didn't," Harry said, "But I'm pretty sure I can wing it."

"There and back?" Draco asked.

They linked arms as Harry activated his portkey and stumbled when they landed on Petunia Dursley's lawn. If it hadn't won best lawn, it certainly should have. By the standards of even the most rigorous suburban gardener, it was a flawless carpet of green, every strand of grass the same height, not a single leafy intruder spoiling the monotonous perfection.

By the time Uncle Vernon came outside to chase the two no-good hooligans away, a riot of white clover and tiny daisies, creeping buttercups and dandelions polluted the Durley's yard. They fell, laughing, back into the Malfoy's pavilion, his shouts still in their ears.

"That was the best," Draco said. "Did you see the look on his face?"

"I thought actual steam would come out his ears."

"When he saw the daisies," Draco said. "I think he turned purple."

"Do you think he knows it was us?"

"When we disappeared, he probably figured it out," Draco said.

"Maybe not," Harry said. "He's pretty stupid."

Hermione stuck her head back in the flap of the tent. "Who's stupid?"

"Draco is," Harry said just as Draco said, "Harry."

"I see you're both right for once," Hermione said. Her eyes landed on the strand of creping buttercups still dangling from Draco's hand.

"Where did you get that?"

Harry put on his very best innocent face. "Nowhere."

Draco wound the viney plant quickly into a flower crown. "I found it and thought you might like it."

"Found it where?"

"Sheesh," Harry said.

He grabbed a towel and swaggered to the door of the tent. "Let him be a little romantic without acting like flowers are a crime."

"Are you two good?" Hermione asked.

Draco and Harry exchanged tentative glances that deepened into smirks. "He's a right shite," Harry said.

"Wanker," Draco retorted.

"Fuckhead."

"Arse for brains."

Harry couldn't keep the grin off his face as they exchanged insults, and he could see Hermione's shoulders relax. It wasn't all right, but it was better. It was enough for now. And he had a letter from Aunt Petunia to look forward to. Sirius had always –

His chest tightened, and for a moment, the world went white around the edges. Then he forced himself to breathe and finish the thought.

Sirius had always read them out loud in a petulant, nasal voice while he laughed, and Remus tried to look serious and failed. Maybe he could read this one to Remus and watch him try to hold in his smiles.

Maybe.

"You kids have fun," Harry said. "I understand there's a nargle hunt going on." He slipped out, turning back to see Draco settle the circlet of flowers onto Hermione's bushy head.

#

"Things okay?"

Hermione asked once the tent flap fell back into place.

"I think so," Draco said.

"I'm glad."

"Me too."

She reached up and touched the flower crown. None of these flowers grew anywhere near here, a clump of clover was stuck to Draco's shoe, and he and Harry had worn a very familiar set of matching expressions. She felt like she ought to ask what they'd done, but sometimes not knowing about Harry and Draco was a happier place to be.

"We should find everyone," he said.

"We should," she agreed.

"Nargles and all."

"Uh-huh." She pressed up on her toes, and he wrapped his arms around her. He'd gotten so tall this year. Last year she'd been taller than him, and now she could easily rest her head on his shoulder.

"Or," he said, "we could stay in here for a bit. Avoid the worst of the sun." He bent down and brushed his nose against hers, then lowered his lips to her mouth. Hermione curved herself inward, reached her own hands up to twine in his hair –

"Already?"

Hermione spun around as if she'd been caught stealing test answers. Pansy was standing in the doorway, looking annoyed. "We have all week," she said. "Plenty of time for you two to play hide and seek with the tonsils later. Right now, you need to get out here and help us keep Luna from flinging herself off a cliff in search of something that doesn't exist but which is apparently nevertheless leaving a trail of rainbow sparkles through the ether."

"Okay," Hermione said with a sigh. "On our way."