Click. Click. Click.

Crack.

Harry had been roused by the strange clicking sound, but drawn out of bed when the window above his new desk had cracked loudly. The sun was just coming up and he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Nightmares had been plaguing him again in the last few nights since he'd seen his uncle again, and he wished he'd been getting more than a few hours of sleep each night. His father had asked him about it, but he didn't feel like trying to explain.

I'll have to explain that, Harry thought as stood he looked at the long radial crack in the middle of his window, wondering what had caused it. He moved to the window and looked down to see a guilty looking Draco with a handful of pebbles. Harry lifted open his window and pointed to the crack.

"Are you going to explain that to him or me?"

"Are you a wizard or not?" Draco dropped the rocks and put his hands on his hips.

"Not until next week I'm not," Harry said, remembering a far off time when Ron had once asked Hermione if she was a witch or not. He tried to forget the comment as he watched Draco withdraw his wand and fix the crack.

"You're on wizard property you know. Age rules don't apply unless you're in the Muggle world."

"Really?"

Draco nodded. "They can't tell if it's you or your dad doing the magic."

From out on the short grass, Draco watched as Harry's head disappeared for a moment and then as he reappeared with his wand. "So if I bind your arms to your sides nobody will bother to come looking for you?"

Draco glared, "You would do that when I came to ask if you wanted to catch water dragons?"

Harry raised a brow. "Muggles call them lizards," Draco said exasperated. "But they're the same thing you know. The ones in the stream actually breath fire if you make them mad."

"There's a stream?"

"Yes, and if you don't hurry up they'll all be sleeping by the time you haul your butt down here."

Draco ducked as Harry suddenly threw something down at him, and closed the window. It was a gray sweat jacket, he realized too late and he picked it up and put it on in the chilly morning air. The sun had just started to come up over the horizon, and it wouldn't warm up for another couple of hours at least.

It was only a few minutes before Harry came out the back door with a red hat bearing the letter HGW in tan font across the front. He was wearing a new red sweat jacket and a pair of blue cargo shorts much like the one's Draco was wearing.

"Got new clothes," Harry muttered when he saw Draco looking him over.

"Figured," he said. "What's the HGW stand for?"

"Hogwarts. He helped me change it from ATM, whatever that meant."

"Oh."

They walked across the field and into the thicket of trees Harry could see from one of his bedroom windows. After a short while they came to a clear stream in the darkened shadows of the trees as the sun had not yet penetrated this place yet.

"What do we do?" Harry asked.

"Get in and catch dragons," Draco said with a look on his face that said, what else?

Draco waded into the cool water up to his knees and complained about the coldness of the water for a minute before he rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hands into the water, coming up with a small gray lizard with a long red tongue.

"Looks like a snake with legs," Harry commented, amazed that Draco had been able to catch one.

"This one's magic," he said. "He'll change colors if you set him on some leaves. He tossed the unhappy lizard to Harry, who caught him and picked up a green leaf, which he held next to the lizard. As promised the lizard turned from gray to green, followed by an angry hiss. Harry set him gently on the ground where he scurried away into the woods.

"There's different kinds in here, some Muggle. Don't rub your eyes if you touch a yellow one, because they're poison. The fat little brown ones bite, and the fat little red ones breath fire if you agitate them too much."

Harry grinned as Draco plunged his hands back into the water and came up with a red one who promptly tried to set Draco's hair on fire.

"I want to try," Harry said, climbing into the icy water and shivering. He had stepped into a deeper spot than Draco had and the water had gotten the legs of his shorts wet.

"The biting ones live in the deeper spots," Draco said. "Look into the water for anything that doesn't look like a rock."

Harry did as instructed, and a few minutes later when he pulled up a green toad, Draco laughed hard until Harry hurled the poor toad at him and it landed on his face, knocking him over.

"Agh!"

Harry laughed hard as Draco came up soaked, and then splashed him.

They continued catching lizards until they were sure they had all abandoned the water because of the intrusion, and then used their wands to dry themselves off and get warm. By now the sun was coming up and had helped in this endeavor.

"If you ever catch a blue one, don't let it go because they're rare and worth a lot of money," Draco said knowledgably.

"What do the blue ones do?" Harry asked as they sat on the bank looking at the shimmering water.

"They're good potions ingredients. Rub them on your tongue and you'll fall in love with the next person you can get to rub the lizard on their tongue."

"Eew," Harry said, unsure if Draco was joking or not.

"It's true it is," Draco insisted. "Dad says that's how they used to do it in the old times before there were many potions. Now they dry them out and turn them into powder which is used in love potions."

Harry sobered then, swearing he would never turn a blue lizard over to become potions ingredients. What an awful fate, he decided. One day you're swimming in the water and the next you're simmering in a cauldron. Somehow this train of thought depressed him again and he looked down at his watch.

"It's breakfast time. I should probably get back before my dad wonders where I went."

"Yeah," Draco agreed. "me too."

They stood up and Harry started away before Draco called out, "See you!"

Harry turned to wave, and then continued home.

* * *

Clink. Clink. Clink. Smash!

Harry came back into his darkened room just in time to see the rock sail through the window and land on the floor with a thud. That was an awfully large rock to be throwing at his bedroom window at ten in the evening, he thought, cursing Draco for the noise it had made.

Sure enough, Severus had appeared in the door frame from his reading downstairs a moment later, looking at the rock on the floor and then at Harry, standing there wondering what to do. With a wave of his wand the rock was gone and the window fixed as Severus moved over to the window and looked down to see a white blond face framed by blond hair.

"Perhaps we should install a ladder for Mr. Malfoy, so that we can spare the windows any more damage," Severus said, turning to Harry, whose face was now red.

"A, a ladder?"

"Unless you'd like to tell him that he is welcome to come up any time via the front or back door."

"Oh."

Severus had not failed to notice that most days Harry disappeared off to somewhere with Draco. Sometimes he was gone in the morning when Severus rose, sometimes throughout the day. This was the first time his godson had tried to rouse his son out of bed at night however.

"Go on," Severus said, waving him away with his hand. "Go get into whatever mischief it is that Draco wants you to get into, provided that it will cause no living creature any harm, and that it does not involve vandalism, alcohol or another substance that would be forbidden at Hogwarts."

Harry started to move away, but then hesitated. "I'm, I'm allowed?"

"It is summer and it is only ten o'clock. If you are back in bed by midnight then I do not foresee any issues."

"Oh, ok." Harry moved towards the door again, but Severus reached out a gentle hand to stop him.

"And do tell Mr. Malfoy to use the door next time. He likes to think he is sneaking around when I know perfectly well he always informs his parents of where he is going."

"Ok," Harry said. He almost said thanks, but wasn't sure if he should or not. He had the feeling that this was some sort of trick, that when he came home he'd be in trouble and find himself out on the street. How could Snape be so strict with him at school and so lax at home?

Harry hurried off and out to meet Draco, and Severus watched from the window as the two boys disappeared off into the night, wands lighting the way. Normally he would have been unsure of what to do with his charge, whom he had always previously assumed had needed a strong hand of discipline to keep in line. Now he felt that was far from the truth. The boy seemed to be respectful and responsible, and more than anything needed time to adjust.

Severus had not failed to notice that the purchased posters still sit rolled in a corner, and the boy's previous decorations and posters had still not found a home on the walls either. He was still depressed, was the conclusion Severus had come to, and he was still working on a way to bring the boy out of it. At least he seemed to have some peace when he was with Draco, he thought, and he left the window to go back to his reading.

* * *

"There it goes." Draco pointed up at the sky.

"What did you wish for?"

"Alyssa Leatherby."

Harry laughed out loud as he lay on his back staring up past the tall golden wheat to the dark night sky.

"You?" Draco asked.

"Alyssa Leatherby."

"Shut up!" Draco said, rolling over to punch Harry playfully in the shoulder.

"Nah, her hair is too long. It's way down past her waist."

"What did you wish for?"

Harry sighed and closed his eyes as the calm night breeze floated over him, gently sweeping through the field and through his hair. He didn't really know what to wish for. Answers he supposed. He wasn't really sure what was going on in his life right now.

On the one hand, he really liked being Draco's friend and spending time with him, but on the other hand, he really missed Ron and Hermione and knew they would probably never accept him again.

Then there was his father. He wasn't really sure what to make of him. He had been so nice, and yet Harry couldn't help but thinking that this was all a bizarre dream. He would wake up in his dorm in Gryffindor tower crying again, still hurting and alone. Or maybe he would end up back there if he messed something up really bad.

He really wanted to be free of this depression too, because it seemed that every time he started to enjoy himself, some stray thought would drag him back down again and he would be swept away in a current too strong to fight.

"Must be a big wish," Draco said quietly when Harry didn't answer after so long.

"I just don't know what to wish for is all," he said.

"Aren't you happy living with your dad now?"

Harry nodded. "I guess that's the problem. I am, but I'm not sure if he's really happy living with me. Look at how much he hated me before now. Can he just give all that hate up that easily? What happens when we get back to school? Is it back to ‘detention Potter,' ‘minus fifty points for your cheek Potter,' ‘you're the laziest scum of the earth Potter."

"Did he tell you that?" Draco asked incredulously.

"No," Harry said, "but he might as well have."

Draco wrinkled his nose as another star crossed the sky. "There it goes," he said, pointing. "See it?"

"What did you wish for?"

"That your dad would never be mean to you again."

Harry thought on that. "Why'd you wish for that?"

With a smile, his friend said, "Cause you didn't know how."