Surprisingly, it wasn't even Draco who started the frenzy. It was cautious, reliable Theo Nott, advancing quietly, "How can you never have gone to the beach?"

Potter didn't respond, which Draco had obviously been expecting. Potter wasn't afraid of water, so there was something there.

Draco had never been able to just let something rest, however.

In his best, most arrogant drawl, Draco said, "You live on an island, Potter, how is it that you've never been to the beach?" Unbidden, little flashes from Hogwarts were flying through Draco's head. Potter's clothes, that were always four sizes too big. His trainers, that were often worn until they were flapping. Bog-standard Hogwarts robes, but anything else - come to think of it, Draco had never, outside of dress robes, seen Potter deliberately showing anything other than the Hogwarts robes. Maybe no one had ever shown him how to comb his hair? No, that last was ludicrous, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

Potter was still stumbling over his words, his face getting redder by the second. Draco could feel Hermione Granger's thrumming need to comfort, to intervene. Draco's hand tightened on hers. No.

Daphne attempted to rescue Potter, "Poor Harry Potter, he was drowned as a child, and has never felt quite right around water since. You realize, when they pulled him up, he wasn't breathing?"

Draco had spent her entire story staring at Potter's face. There had been no response, not a flicker of a smile, not a twist of a frown. "Were your relatives really that poor? Could they not afford to go on holiday? Or buy you clothes out of a normal discount bin?" Draco saw the twist, this time. He was drawing closer to the mark, was he? This would bear more investigation. Perhaps Granger would tell him?

"How does Draco Malfoy know about a discount bin?" That was Longbottom, whom Draco immediately glared at. He was interrupting.

Of course, Draco almost immediately had to concede that Neville didn't actually realize he was being annoying. "Bookstores have them all the time, which you'd know if you bothered to shop for anything other than your Hogwarts supplies."

"Right, er, sorry," Neville say, apparently understanding that he'd done something stupid.

Hermione picked up the flagging conversation and tossed it at the subject of books. Draco tuned out, mostly, as of this point, though he managed to contribute anyways. Unsurprisingly, none of their friends other than Theo were consumers of fiction. Longbottom had quite the talent for Herbology, and Lovegood had the "talent" for oddball creatures, real and imagined. But those did not equate to discussing Shakespeare.

Potter, predictably, didn't read at all.

Somehow, he managed to be a decent Auror despite this calamity.

[a/n: Leave a review? They'll be getting back to this. Repeatedly.]