Harry started laughing. "You shouldn't have dared me."
"I didn't!"
"Close enough."
It was a low trick to play on him, low. Draco couldn't even change them back, not here! He was beginning to think of the underage magic laws as the bane of his existence, he really was. But Harry could do all the magic he liked, and without risk of getting caught.
Draco wished, not for the first time, that he could do wandless magic. It got to be so annoying, Harry always having every special talent. New ones kept popping up all the time, in fact. Every year, seemed like. Draco couldn't help but wonder what was coming next, because with Harry's record, he doubted that seer dreams, dark powers, and wandless magic were going to be the pinnacle of his talents.
And look at what he was using his talents for!
"Fix them," Draco said, waving the horrid trunks through the air.
"No."
Ha. Draco knew a way around that. "I dare you to!"
Harry's smile practically split his face, he was grinning so wide. "Oh, but didn't I mention? Dad and I just had a talk about how I shouldn't let people dare me into things I don't want to do. So, I'm afraid you're out of luck."
"You know, you really are a Sl-- a snake at heart!"
"Yeah. It's great fun." And then, in innocent tones--very innocent tones--Harry went on, "But at least the casual shirt you asked for is just a simple white."
Suspicious, Draco pulled it out. His mouth fell open in dismay. "With a crest of a lion on the pocket?"
"Good thing I got so much practice at duplication," quipped Harry. "Though we didn't want it to be a perfect copy of a school symbol, considering, so I tried to make it come out a bit cartoonish."
Draco didn't know that word, but he decided it was a synonym for childish. The lion was soft and rounded, with a silly smile. It looked like a baby lion, actually. The kind you'd see in a child's book of stories. Well, except for the fact that it wasn't moving.
"I'm not wearing this crap," he announced, folding his arms over his chest, turning a beseeching look on Severus, who of course could solve all of this in an instant, if he chose. "And I frankly can't believe you let him do this to me."
"Perhaps I thought it time you expanded your fashion horizon."
So much for beseeching. "Oh, cut the horse shite and tell me what you really thought you were doing," snarled Draco.
"It seemed perfectly equitable to me that if Harry was going to fetch your things, he had some say in what he fetched," murmured Severus, sounding almost kind. Like he hadn't been trying to hurt Draco in any way. "Not to mention, the good doctor explained that this sort of thing, brotherly pranks, would help you bond."
"Bond."
"He did bring your lotion."
Draco rounded on Harry. "Did you mess about with it, too? Well?"
"That would be a bit more than a prank. I wouldn't do something like that."
True enough. Draco knew that Harry wouldn't. Snatching up his bag, Draco marched into a stall and slammed the door.
When he emerged wearing the trunks but with the shirt and towel slung over an arm, his father and brother were both waiting for him. That made sense; Draco's special lotion took a while to start working, and he wasn't about to stroll back out into the common area of the changing room with that horrid scar showing. He didn't like to look at it, himself, so he certainly wasn't going to have some stranger stroll in and gawk at it, or worse, catch it at the moment when the mugwort came to life and pulled the glamour in his skin to the surface of the scar to cover it.
As it turned out, though, nobody else had come in, yet. Maybe free swim didn't get busy until closer to half past, Draco thought.
His gaze was drawn to the large Muggle bandage that was covering a good portion of Severus' left forearm. "Are you sure that won't come off in the water?"
"Yes, I do know how to make things stick," said Severus dryly. Sitting sat down on a bench, he began applying sun lotion to his bare legs. Merlin, but the man was pale. Draco had never realised quite how pale, before, but then, he'd never seen Severus wearing nothing but trunks. They reached half-way to his knees and were about as modest as wizard swimwear got these days, but something about them struck Draco as almost unseemly, all the same. He was just used to seeing Severus so buttoned up. Or wearing nightshirt and robe both, when he was roused from bed.
"Er . . . how long since you went swimming?" he asked, casting about for something to say.
A small wrinkle marred Severus' forehead. "Twenty years, I do believe."
"You don't have to go in," said Draco, thinking that Severus must not care for it much if he'd let decades pass, like that. "I can stick close to Harry in case he has any trouble."
"Hey, I'm doing all right with my lessons--"
"Yes, you are," said Severus, dabbing more lotion onto his hands, then slathering it across his chest. "But you won't have Mr Yates at your side during a free swim period."
"Who's Mr Yates?"
"He means Roger," said Draco.
"Oh." A small smile curled Harry's lips. "He's good, yeah. And you know, he told me he works all day. He'll probably be watching out as lifeguard."
"Yes, but you should have help closer than that. I insist. And while your swimming skills are coming along quite well indeed, Harry, that doesn't mean I feel comfortable about them just yet. As for you--" Severus turned toward Draco. "The presence of the young lady is bound to distract you."
"Like I'm going to let Harry inhale water because I'm looking about for Rhiannon," said Draco, scowling. "Yeah, that'd end up impressing her loads."
"I thought you wanted to lie out in the sun where she could see you."
Draco nodded. "Thanks, then. But I would put Harry first, you know."
"Yes, I do know that."
"Um, so the only real question, is, if nobody's going to sit on the bleachers, what do we do with our . . . things?"
He meant wands. His own was rolled up inside his trousers, which would probably wrinkle since Draco hadn't been able to figure out how to fold them.
"Put everything in here," said Harry, opening up a metal locker where two canvas bags were already stowed, one on top of the other. There was just enough room left for Draco to pile his own bag on top. He looked at Severus again, then at Harry, and frowned. None of them had anywhere to put a wand, and he didn't like the thought of them being out there, defenceless.
Severus must have read his expression. "We'll be fine."
Yeah, Severus could do a little bit of wandless magic. Draco knew that. And of course Harry was brilliant at it by now. But Draco still felt uncomfortable, even if the snake emblem on Harry's trunks would guarantee there'd he'd be able to cast.
"Besides, you've got your amulet," added Harry.
That was true. He wore it all the time. True, it was responsible for his scar, but it was also responsible for saving his life. Literally. If not for the magical emanations of the amulet, Nott and company would have transported him straight to Lucius, the moment they'd killed Pansy.
Huh. For the first time in Draco didn't know how long, he could think of Pansy without fury or despair. Though he wasn't sorry that she was dead.
So yes, Harry was right; the amulet would warn them if any danger approached. Or at least, danger to Draco.
And that wasn't good enough, was it?
"We can't do this," Draco said, feeling like he might start shaking. Exeter was safe and he knew it, but that didn't matter. It was sheer folly to go out there, all three of them without wands. No matter that Harry had his hands. His wandless magic wouldn't be enough, not if several Death Eaters descended on the Northbrook Pool.
Going out there without wands was courting disaster.
Besides, it struck him as an awfully Gryffindor thing to do.