1

Harry looked at the tent. The tent failed to look back. It failed, in fact, to look like anything other than a tent – and a crap one at that. The shiny green fabric flapped despondently in the wind. It was only a light breeze, but already the tent-pegs were working their way out of the ground, lumps of damp soil clinging to the dull metal.

Still, Harry thought, trying to look on the bright side. Looking at the tent meant that he wasn't looking at his son. And not looking at his son was a good thing, considering how much Harry wanted to punch him on the nose right now. Harry had always supposed that when he grew up and had a family of his own, he'd know just what to do when his children made mistakes. He'd be calm and rational – and love and compassion would fill any gaps in his knowledge. Failing that, he'd get Ginny to sort them out.

But now he and Ginny had separated – amicably, for the most part, but with the usual attendant loss of ‘it's your turn to tell the kids off' privileges – it was up to him to sort out his sulky son.

So that left him and Al. And the tent. And the other person – people – who he was resolutely not looking at, because if he cracked and punched Al on the nose then he'd absolutely have to punch them as them well, in the interests of equality. Because if there was one thing Harry was quite sure of, after his utter conviction that life was not fair, it was that it was as much Malfoy's fault as it was his own. Which Malfoy was most to blame he hadn't quite decided, but the buggers looked the same, so on the whole Harry thought they were probably both equally at fault.

Harry looked at the tent for a bit longer. It failed to do anything exciting, so he pulled at the fabric at the entrance to reveal his worst nightmare: the inside of a tent.

"The absolute fuckers," came a disdainful voice from somewhere just off to his left. "Father, I really don't see why we have to put up with this. It's a complete disgrace."

"Oh shut up, will you?" Harry's own son replied, to Harry's dismay. "You're so far up your own arse you probably can't see daylight. It won't kill you to slum it with—"

"Enough!" snapped a familiar voice, at the exact moment Harry whirled around to strangle Al before he could go on.

Scorpius smirked. Harry's fingers tightened for a moment around Al's neck as he wistfully imagined what it would be like to throttle the Malfoy heir.

"Ow! Dad, get off!" Al gasped, squirming out of Harry's grasp.

"Oh, sorry," Harry said, catching Draco's eye for a moment and wishing he hadn't. Draco was smirking too, just as hard as his son. Harry felt his fingers twitch, so he jammed them into his pockets quickly before either of the Malfoy fuckers could see and guess at his state of mind. Although Draco Malfoy's smirk deepened and his lips parted, just a fraction.

"Dressed up for a party, are we?" Harry heard himself say, interrupting whatever awful thing he knew Draco was about to come out with.

Draco laughed, without much humour. "I see that your sense of style has improved about as much as your wit, Potter."

"Ha ha," Harry muttered. He shot another look at Draco, who was dressed in expensive flowing robes, which billowed in the wind. Draco's hair also billowed, as did Scorpius'. As did Scorpius' own flowing robe. It was, Harry reflected, like some hideous nightmare, where his old school nemesis came back to taunt him forever – but this time in duplicate.

"Fuck off, will you?" Al added, helpfully. "Leave my dad alone, you ugly sod."

Harry tried not to grin. It was hard work being a parent. It was wrong of Al to be so crude . . . quite wrong. He should tell him off. Definitely. Just after he'd let the insult linger for a few seconds, that was.

"Don't be rude, Al," Harry said, when Draco's expression had shifted from shocked to reproving, one eyebrow curving upwards to a hairline that was higher than when Harry had seen him last, just a few months ago. He stared, hoping that Draco would spot the direction of his gaze.

Draco's cheeks coloured and his eyes darted away for a moment. Scorpius, who'd been watching intently, tossed his long hair in the wind. "Ever heard of a hairbrush, Mr Potter?" Scorpius asked nonchalantly. "I'd have thought that, what with your love of Muggles, you'd have come across one before."

Harry spluttered, forcing his hands to stay in the pockets of his Muggle trousers and not roam up to try to flatten his hair down. It would be a lost cause, and it would only make Scorpius happy. He counted to ten under his breath, while Draco failed to reprove his son in any way.

"Do you usually allow your son to be so rude?" Harry asked, genuinely curious – although that curiosity was mixed with a desire to cause actual bodily harm to either Draco or Scorpius, or preferably both.

Draco stared at him for a moment, then snorted. "Truth hurts, eh, Potter?"

Harry blinked as a blur ran past him and leapt upon Draco, pushing him on to the ground. Draco cried out in shock as Al straddled his chest, grabbing him by the hair and shaking his head like a child would shake a rag doll. "Take it back!" Al yelled. "You fucker!"

Before Draco – or Harry – could respond, Scorpius had leapt in turn upon Al, their combined weights almost grinding Draco into the ground. Draco let out an agonised groan and Scorpius tugged Al off, pulling violently at him, and they rolled in a heap of tangled limbs and clothing on the floor, kicking and biting and making enough noise to give Harry the beginnings of a headache.

It was lucky, Harry thought rather gloomily, that he already had a headache, wasn't it?

Harry stared at the roof of the tent – upon which a heavy, insistent rain was beating, preventing him from sleeping – and thought about how much he hated camping. The conclusion he came to was: quite a lot. More, even, than he hated his own son right now, and the answer to that particular conundrum was also: quite a lot. He thought he probably even hated camping more than he hated Malfoy – although that was a more difficult conclusion to come to, given that twice as many Malfoys surely added up to twice as much hate.

If camping had not figured quite so keenly in his memories of that awful time when he and Hermione had been hiding from Voldemort, without even Ron's support – and as he got older his memory of those hideous weeks stretched into months, and sometimes even years – he supposed he might have liked it. Or tolerated it, perhaps. He didn't mind mud and cold so much when in the company of cheerful friends, and there was a certain fun to be had in sleeping outside and cooking on campfires. But this situation was so far from fun that it was almost the opposite of fun.

Without entirely meaning to, Harry turned – cursing how hard the ground felt against his hip – and glared at his son, who was snoring beside him. This situation was all Al's fault, and his son would have to grovel for the rest of his life to get his father to forgive him. After all, there was no way in hell that Scorpius Malfoy was more irritating than his father, and Harry had managed to spend a whole seven years – just – without murdering a Malfoy, so why couldn't Al do the same?

At first it had been an Owl home: This is to inform you that Albus Severus has been fighting with Scorpius Malfoy again, and will be carrying out a series of detentions. Then, an official letter: Albus Severus has tried to strangle Scorpius Malfoy, and his father has lodged an official complaint. This letter had been countered by one from Harry, complaining that Scorpius had tried to drown his son, but it was annoying, just the same. Then had come a series of meetings at school – Al sulky, Scorpius sulky, and Harry just as sulky, although trying not to show it in front of a supercilious, smirking Draco, who claimed that his son was the victim of a long-standing persecution from the prejudiced Potter family.

A fat lot of good those meetings had done, Harry thought, given that their only quantifiable effect had been to increase his own blood pressure. In fact, if anything, relations between Al and the Malfoy spawn had become even less cordial, culminating in an epic battle that had left twelve students in the hospital wing, and many more as walking wounded. Harry was perversely proud that his son was popular enough that his fellow Gryffindors were willing to fight on his side, but as Scorpius had apparently had just as many Slytherins under his evil thrall, he couldn't even boast that his son was the more popular of the two idiots.

"We can't expel them," the Headmistress had said wearily – to Harry's intense relief (although he wouldn't have minded particularly if Scorpius had undergone that fate) – "the scandal would be impossible to contain." So they had been left with one, hideous option apparently – and no way out of it: group counselling. And, the perky counsellor had said (her bright smile and cheerful optimism had annoyed Harry on sight), as this was 'clearly an issue of fatherly grudges being passed down to the next generation', here Harry was. On a bonding trip. Stuck in a wood without a wand, or any kind of magic whatsoever, with his sulky, irritating son and twice as many Malfoys as was pleasant – the optimal number of Malfoys being none, as far as Harry was concerned.

Harry could feel his irritation rising, but he tried to will it away and go to sleep. He needed to sleep. Tomorrow he would have to spend a whole day not killing Malfoys, and restraining his son from also making an attempt at it. His only consolation was that, in the next-door tent, he bet Draco and the Draco-clone were having an even worse time of it.

Harry's smile widened when he remembered that he and Al had a plentiful supply of one essential that he'd bet anything hadn't even crossed the Malfoys' minds.

Toilet paper.

In the battle of Malfoy versus Potter, Harry mentally chalked up one point to his team. And, dreaming of victory, he fell into an uneasy, uncomfortable sleep.

"I beg your pardon?"

Harry would have laughed at the look on Malfoy's face, but he was too busy being mildly terrified by the determined look on the counsellor's face.

"Teambuilding exercises, Mr Malfoy," the counsellor repeated. "They are intended to get you all comfortable with each other, and creatively solving problems by—"

"I have a wand," Malfoy snapped. "I have no need to participate in your lunatic scheme."

"You do not have a wand right now, Mr Malfoy," the counsellor said, smiling brightly, but Harry noticed she was clutching her clipboard a little more closely to her chest. "You have your intellect, and you have three ‘friends' to help you succeed in your task." She glanced down at the piece of paper on the clipboard, before angling it back towards her body. Harry didn't like the determined, positive way she said the word ‘friends'. It didn't bode well for the future. Would he and Al have to be holding hands and braiding Draco and Scorpius' hair, before the weekend was out? He wanted to prove to her that his son could keep his temper around Malfoy – but there were limits. Definite limits.

"Let's just get it over with, shall we?" Harry said, resisting the urge to throw something at Malfoy when he raised an eyebrow in Harry's direction. He wasn't sure what he could throw: a torch, maybe, or one of his shoes. Yes, a trainer to the head would probably have the desired effect.

"You may think that that expression looks determined and oh-so-heroic, Potter, " Malfoy said, his face calm and blank, "but let me assure you that you look . . . How would you describe it, Scorpius?"

Scorpius' head emerged from the tent behind Malfoy. His own expression was one of extreme distaste. "Imbecilic," Scorpius said.

"Good choice, my boy," Malfoy said, his lips curving into a half-smile. He turned back to Harry. "Imbecilic," he repeated. "So don't try my patience, Potter. I hardly need advice from a moron like yourself, who cannot even keep his own son under control."

The hypocrisy of Malfoy's words floored Harry for a moment, but when he opened his mouth to retaliate, he found that he couldn't say a thing. His mouth felt like glue. When he tried to wave his arms about in a sense of indignation, he found he couldn't move either. His utter indignation was tempered with a feeling of complete idiocy – here he was, Head Auror, and he couldn't even spot when a spell was being cast upon him. He wondered what the counsellor would do to him when he confessed he couldn't even remember what her name was. Was it Smith? No – but something equally as boring. Jones? Huh. He'd have to ask Al when he'd regained the use of his vocal cords.

"Hush," the counsellor said, then smiled sweetly as she tucked her wand into the interior of her voluminous cardigan. "That's better. Now, as I was saying, you will all work together and become good friends. Do I make myself clear?"

Harry attempted to waggle his eyebrows in an acquiescent manner, and found he suddenly regained the use of his limbs.

"Don't make be me mean to you," the woman said.

Harry stared at her for a moment, wondering exactly when he'd agreed that she could work spells upon him. He'd signed some sort of contract, but he hadn't exactly read it properly – and now he wished that he had. "Um, no one said anything about—"

"What is the meaning of this outrage?" Draco Malfoy said in a very marked manner, interrupting him.

"YOU WILL CLIMB THIS WALL," the woman all but screamed. She pointed and, with a sharp crack of magic, a wall appeared. It wasn't exactly high – but it was taller than Harry was, and it looked distinctly lacking in handholds.

It was enough to make Harry entirely lose his train of thought. When he glanced over at Malfoy, his mouth was open – a bit like a fish, Harry thought with satisfaction – and Scorpius didn't look much better.

"I beg your pardon?" Malfoy said, for the second time that morning. Harry thought that was quite a reasonable thing to say, given the circumstances, and then felt annoyed that he'd actually thought that.

"It's just a wall, Malfoy," Harry snorted, wondering how the fuck he was going to get over the sodding thing. At least, he thought, he was wearing jeans. He began to cheer up. Al was wearing jeans too. Unlike Malfoy and son – who were both clad once more in billowing robes. And Harry knew that it was a matter of etiquette that undergarments were not worn beneath traditional robes. Like the ones that Malfoy and son were wearing. Hah!

For the first time, Harry felt as if the weekend might actually be fun. In a mocking, blackmail-material sort of way, of course, which, when it came to weekends involving Malfoys, was surely the only kind of fun to be had?

"Aren't we going to get some breakfast before we . . ." Harry started, thinking that ‘fun' on a full stomach would be infinitely better than ‘fun' with empty insides.

Before the counsellor had a chance to answer, however, Al strode over to Scorpius. Harry had a bad feeling about that. But, before anyone could intervene, Al had pushed Scorpius over, right in front of the wall, into a particularly disgusting patch of mud. Al leaped up on top of him, his trainers leaving a particularly dirty patch on Scorpius' light-coloured robe, and used Scorpius as a kind of step-stool, hoisting himself up the wall by his arms and dropping lightly over.

"There," Al said, as he sauntered back around the wall, kicking a spray of mud into Scorpius' face as he passed him. "Done. What's next?"

There was silence for a blissful, frozen moment, and then there was the sound of a Malfoy (which one Harry couldn't tell – he had his eyes tight shut) exploding.

Maybe, Harry thought with increasing gloom, he'd been a bit too optimistic when he'd thought the weekend would be fun. He suspected that the most important thing would be to finish it alive.

Harry took one look at Draco Malfoy – the hem of his robe smeared with mud and his hair flying free from the elegant clip that secured it – and did his best to suppress the snort that erupted from his nose. He had only minimal success.

Malfoy glared at him and folded his arms tight across his chest. "Something funny, Potter?"

"Did you not think about bringing some trousers with you? You knew we were going camping, didn't you?" Harry asked, attempting to stop his lips from curling up into a grin. He'd never been able to manage supercilious very well – he suspected that ‘one' had to have it bred into ‘one'.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "Muggle clothing, do you mean?"

It was Harry's turn to raise an eyebrow, sensing that some awful slur was about to come out of Malfoy's mouth. For a change. "Yes?"

Malfoy relaxed a little, flicking a hand in dismissal. "Malfoys do not shop in Muggle outfitters." He sighed, his forehead puckering into a frown. "I confess, however, that I did not expect this level of squalor. The toilet facilities . . ." He trailed off with a shudder.

A Cunning Plan came to Harry. "If you do all the cooking—"

Malfoy stared at him. "I hardly think—"

"—I'll trade you a roll of toilet paper."

A glorious range of emotions flitted over Malfoy's face. "Done," he said.

Harry wondered if he'd made a bit of a cock-up of things. He didn't put it past Malfoy to have smuggled some kind of noxious potions ingredient in, in his suitcase. "You're not planning on poisoning us, are you?"

Malfoy smirked. "Potter, I have never cooked anything, ever. I won't even have to try to poison you – no doubt it will come with depressing ease."

Oh hell, Harry thought. But, try as he might, he couldn't think of anything else he could trade with Malfoy for, so he shrugged. "Just do your best, eh?"

Malfoy looked at him, this time rather blankly. "I see your survival instincts are as finely honed as ever, Potter." Then he smiled, so quickly that Harry wasn't sure if he'd imagined it. "Very well. I shall attempt this epic feat. If a Muggle can do it, a Malfoy should have no trouble."

He sounded, Harry thought, as if he were trying to convince himself of that. Still, he'd now been talking to Malfoy for at least a minute and a half, and neither of them had gone for each other's throats, which had to be a new record. "We should do this task then, shouldn't we? Otherwise our sons will be stuck in the tents for all eternity."

After the earlier ‘little incident', as she had called it, the counsellor had sealed both boys in separate tents. Only successful completion of a team-building task by their fathers, she had said, would buy their freedom.

"And us barred from them," Malfoy said with a wince, rubbing his side. "By them I mean, of course, the tents rather than our sons. However uncomfortable last night's accommodation was, it had the negative merit of actually being there. We'll have to sleep outside if we fail to do this ridiculous thing."

Harry groaned and eyed the painted circle in front of him. Inside it was a bucket of water, and by his side was a stick and a length of rope.

"Do you have any ideas on how to solve this conundrum, Potter, or do you still rely on Granger to do your logical thinking?" Malfoy asked.

"Fuck off."

"Gladly," Malfoy snapped back. "However, until we have satisfied this madwoman that our sons will not start a full-scale war when they return to school, I am stuck here."

"It's just for the weekend," Harry said, trying not to grind his teeth.

Malfoy stared at him, his eyes widening in an alarming fashion. "You didn't read the contract, did you? Good God, Potter, does your idiocy know no bounds?"

"Er, what?" Harry said. He was experiencing an unpleasant sinking feeling.

"This little jaunt isn't just for the weekend, Potter – it's for as long as it takes. So, if we fail to please Little Miss Psycho, we are trapped here until we grow beards, or grow hungry enough to eat each other, or—"

"Fuck," Harry said, thinking that the word wasn't nearly expressive enough, but it would do for now.

Malfoy laughed. It was a hollow laugh, completely lacking in humour. "Fuck, indeed."

Two hours later, Malfoy was yelling at Harry, and Harry was yelling at Malfoy. They'd been following that pattern for, oh, about one hour and fifty-five minutes, Harry thought, although with minor variations – sometimes it was quiet mocking, rather than yelling, but it was all much of a muchness when it came down to it.

"Just throw the fucking rope straight, will you?" Malfoy shouted. "Even a monkey could manage it."

"Well, let's see you do it if it's so fucking easy," Harry shouted back.

"Incompetent moron," Malfoy muttered.

"What was that?"

"DEAF, INCOMPETENT MORON."

Harry took a deep breath. "How about if we—"

"Yes, like that's going to do any good."

Harry blinked. "You didn't even let me speak."

Malfoy pushed a flyaway strand of hair back out of his eyes. "Would it have been worth my time to listen?"

"Well," Harry said, attempting to find some inner strength and patience. "How about we tie the rope to the stick, and kind of pass it through the bucket handle. We could stand either side."

"The words come out, but they make no sense," Malfoy said. Then he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I confess, Potter, that I'm not entirely clear what the aim of this exercise is, anyway."

Harry took hold of his inner strength and patience and squeezed it hard, imagining that it was Malfoy he was squeezing. "We're pretending that the bucket is full of toxic waste, and we have to get it out of the circle without touching it, or going too close."

"Toxic waste."

"Yes."

"It's water, isn't it?"

"Did I say that—" Harry started. He could hear his voice rising from ‘annoyed' to ‘shrill'. His throat hurt. "Let's just try my plan, shall we?"

"Oh, good Lord. If we must."

"Didn't know you were Christian, Malfoy," Harry said, irritated beyond belief at Malfoy's tone of voice. "Pick up Muggle religion, did you?"

At first, Harry didn't realise what Malfoy was doing. Then, with a flood of comprehension – and a flood of freezing liquid – he did. Malfoy had leapt, grabbed, and then poured the entire bucket of ‘toxic waste' over his head.

"You were saying, Potter?" Malfoy said smugly, tossing aside the bucket.

Harry could sense the spectre of the counsellor on the horizon but he was glad that, before she stunned them both, he managed to get in a good, solid punch, right on Malfoy's nose. He hoped it hurt.

"I wish it had been toxic waste," Harry said. He didn't particularly fancy talking, but he'd been sitting in silence for what felt like a million years now – or an hour, perhaps – and even talking to Malfoy was better than the crushing boredom that was overwhelming him.

Malfoy said nothing.

"Because," Harry said, persevering, "if it had been toxic waste, then I'd be dead. And if I were dead, then I wouldn't still be here."

Malfoy said nothing.

"I would never have agreed to this if I knew I could be here for the rest of my fucking life," Harry said. And then, because he suspected that Malfoy would say nothing, he sighed. "Or maybe you did kill me with toxic waste," he continued, "and this is hell. That would be a bit of a fucker," he concluded. "I'm not sure what I've done to deserve that fate. Really, I—"

"Potter, do you ever shut up?" Malfoy said.

Harry thought about that. He registered that Malfoy hadn't said it in a particularly unpleasant way – more in a weary way. He wondered if he were Malfoy's idea of hell as well. Well, wouldn't that be ironic. They did say that hell was other people – and the idea of being stuck camping with Malfoy, and two teenage boys who were determined to maim each other, for eternity, certainly fit that definition.

They'd been in the woods for a week now. At least, Harry thought it was a week – it was sort of hard to tell, now that Little Miss Psycho had nicked his Muggle wristwatch. At first he'd thought about scratching marks on a wall to mark off the days (given that he lacked paper and parchment of any sort), but tents lacked walls, and he didn't really fancy slicing holes in it. It had rained pretty much solidly ever since the 'toxic waste' incident – which was another irony, Harry thought. If Malfoy had waited just five minutes, the rain would have accomplished the job for him without him even having to move a muscle.

Instead, Harry had given Malfoy a satisfyingly painful-looking shiner, and had grappled with him in the mud until Malfoy's robe was sodden and ruined. Of course, Harry's clothing was also dirtied, but he had several changes of clothes, and towels – which he'd quickly discovered was another one in a long line of essentials that Malfoy had neglected to pack.

"Oh, I see," Malfoy said. His voice was deeply sarcastic, and Harry wondered why.

"Huh?"

"You're willing to talk constantly – until I join in. How like you, Potter."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry demanded.

"Oh, forget it," Malfoy muttered.

Harry stared at Malfoy. Malfoy had almost sounded . . . hurt? Which was nuts, because Malfoys had hearts of stone. Or venom, perhaps. If you cut them, after all, they bled poison.

"Look, I'm trying my best here," Harry said rather indignantly.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. Harry wondered if anything, ever, would annoy him more than Malfoy raising an eyebrow. Scorpius had quite a nice eyebrow-raise, but it wasn't a patch on his father's.

"I am!" Harry protested, not even sure why he was bothering. "I lent you some clothes. I gave you a towel." He began ticking off items on his fingers. "Soap. Toilet paper. Deodorant."

Malfoy's eyebrow raised even higher – which impressed Harry, because it should have been impossible. "I am a pureblood, Potter, in case you hadn't noticed. We use magic for all our . . . our . . . personal hygiene matters. It never even occurred to me to pack such Muggle monstrosities."

"Yeah, but you're still not saying thank you."

Malfoy closed his eyes. "Thank you," he muttered. And then spoiled it with, "I hate you."

Harry thought was a bit much. "Well, I hate you too!"

Malfoy snorted, very softly. "I know."

Harry thought that was a bit much. He was stuck in a tent with Malfoy – Little Miss Psycho, for some reason, had decided that the way to 'mutual cooperation' was to trap the parents in one tent, and the kids in the other, until they decided to behave – and now Malfoy was being even more of a git than usual. "I tried not to!" he said. It didn't come out quite how it had sounded in his head.

"How kind of you," Malfoy said, sounding tired. His eyes were still closed when Harry looked over at him. He looked kind of small and pathetic in Harry's Muggle clothes – which were overlarge on his slim frame, and made him look very peculiar. Like a kid dressed up in his dad's clothes. Harry couldn't remember ever seeing Malfoy wearing Muggle stuff.

"You don't understand," Harry said. Malfoy didn't move, and Harry wondered why he was even bothering. It wasn't like Malfoy wanted Harry's approval, or anything. Still, Harry had always been stubborn, and he saw no reason not to continue, just because Malfoy had his eyes shut in an infuriating way. "I wanted to make things up – you know, after. I returned your wand. I–I invited you round to dinner. You said no! What more was I supposed to do?"

Malfoy was so still that Harry suddenly wondered if he was dead. It was a cold, awful feeling, and he'd almost reached forward to poke Malfoy hard, just to make sure, when Malfoy moved. His face was stiff, and it took Harry a while to realise that he was almost white with anger – which made a change from red with anger, Harry thought, but it was a pretty scary thing. Malfoy was between him and the door – or rather, tent flap. Harry felt about surreptitiously for anything he could use to slice a sudden exit in the tent wall, if necessary.

"You invited me to dinner?" Malfoy spat. "And you thought that would make things right?"

Harry backed away, feeling the tent wall, still depressingly damp, against his back. "Well, no," he admitted. "But—"

"I was just a child," Malfoy said. His eyes were glassy and odd. "Everything I'd ever believed in was—" he stopped, suddenly.

"Did you get the Dark Mark?" Harry asked. He almost flinched when he realised what he'd said, and then did flinch when Malfoy turned an expression that was disturbingly keyed somewhere between 'rage' and 'despair' on him. "I, er . . . Sorry. I don't know why I asked that."

"Of course I didn't, Potter," Malfoy said. He was breathing very fast. "I can't believe you . . . Are you an idiot? I mean, of course you are but . . ." He shook his head. "Only trusted followers got the honour of the Mark. I was just a plaything." He snorted, except it came out almost like a sob. "He wanted me dead, Potter. How the fuck did you not know that? He wanted me to fail, and die, so he could kill my parents." He laughed, somewhat hysterically. "He probably didn't even have a reason – he just liked to see people suffer. Fucking hell, Potter . . . what . . . why—" He stopped, suddenly, pressing the backs of his hands hard against his eyes, his body completely still and rigid.

Harry's mouth felt dry. He blinked, unsure of what to say. It all felt so raw, all of a sudden, as if it had all been yesterday, rather than over a decade ago. This Malfoy sitting beside him felt, and sounded, like that snotty little brat he'd nearly killed by accident, and had felt sorry for ever since. And Harry? He felt like a child again, despite having several of his own, and – if he was honest – had never felt like he'd grown up very far.

Except . . . except that snotty little brat would never have said what Malfoy had just said. Not to Harry – and probably not to anyone, except perhaps Narcissa. What had happened to her, Harry wondered. He'd heard something awful, he thought, but hadn't paid it too much attention – some debilitating illness. He wondered how Malfoy was coping – and then wondered why he'd wondered that.

And the old Harry – well, the old Harry would never have patted Malfoy, rather awkwardly on the shoulder. This new, older version of Harry did it almost without thinking.

"What –" Malfoy cleared his throat – "are you doing, Potter?"

"Eh, it's Harry," Harry said, somewhat to his own surprise. He wondered why Malfoy hadn't bit his head off for ‘pitying' him. He wondered why his hand was still on Malfoy's shoulder. "Don't you think that we've been stuck in a tent together for enough time for it to be Harry?"

Malfoy raised his head, his shoulders dropping and his hands coming to rest quietly in his lap. He wasn't looking at Harry – rather, his eyes were fixed on a no doubt rivetingly interesting spot of the tent wall – but he almost smiled. "Maybe I could cope with Scarhead," he said. Then he really did smile, a lopsided thing that made Harry's heart do a funny, squirmy thing that he wasn't sure he liked.

"OK, Ferret-Face," Harry agreed, mostly to cover his confusion.

But thankfully, before he could have a chance to reflect on things further, the counsellor-slash-drill-sergeant poked her head in the tent to announce that Scorpius had drawn first blood, and she required parental input before she killed the pair of them.

It was the first time that the woman had showed a touch of human feeling so far, but Harry was feeling so off-balance that he couldn't even appreciate it properly.

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