Harry snorted in amusement as he waited for Draco to catch up. "Wait until we swim in December. You'll miss this warmth." Without further comment he took off in a freestyle stroke. After a moment processing that statement, Draco was on his heels.
It was two hours later, and dawn had lightened up the sky when they both were back on shore where they had started.
Harry was standing on the ground, stretching a bit, breathing heavily. "Stand up and stretch, it'll keep you from getting cramps."
Draco was on the ground on his back panting for breath, but he dragged himself up to his feet, to try and copy the stretches he saw Harry doing.
Harry knew that he was probably more fit than most wizards. His enforced summer exercise regimen kept him fit. Harry idly wondered if his cousin and friends would have continued "Harry hunting" if they knew it did a great job of keeping him in shape. Of course Harry had never really thought about it in those terms when he was this age the first time.
Harry had to grudgingly admit that he was somewhat impressed with Draco's level of fitness, and level of stubbornness. Draco had only lagged behind on the final trip back across the lake. Harry had played it safe and discreetly cast a monitoring charm on him as they swam. He definitely did not want to explain things to someone in the chance that Draco got a cramp and ended up drowning. Though he had resolved that he would face any of the explanations needed if the choice was an inquisition or god forbid, giving Draco Malfoy mouth to mouth. "That wasn't bad. We'll keep getting better as the days wear on."
Draco was still panting heavily but he managed to nod in response. The swim had been miserable for him, but he was determined not to let Harry leave him behind. He was thankful that he spent so much of his summer's playing quidditch when he was this age. It may not have kept him as fit as possible but twisting and turning and throwing did give him at least some semblance of a workout. "You plan to do this every day?"
Harry nodded, "At least school days. Weekends we may try and find something else to do. Shake things up a little." Draco groaned at that, and muttered something about insanity.
Harry shifted his shoulders a little bit. He had been mostly truthful with Malfoy about everything. However there was another reason for the morning exercise. Harry was readjusting to the movements of this body. It still felt… weird to him.
It had been a week since Harry had arrived in this world in his old body. He'd started to make adjustments, but still felt off to him. There were times that he found his right eye bothered him. The first few days it seemed like it was always either watering or it was too dry. Harry had spent several years with the fake eye there, and even something as simple as blinking felt strange to him. However, that had shown significant improvement over the last week.
His leg however was a different story. Whenever Harry wasn't thinking about it he still tended to put most of his weight on his right leg and favor his left. It wasn't until Perenelle had asked him for the fourth or fifth time to re-examine his leg that he realized what was going on. He had spent so long walking with the limp that he was having to adjust to not limping. And since the movement was a conscious one, it seemed somehow more ingrained to him. It was the reason that he had made no attempt to see if he could shift into either of his animagus forms yet. Harry didn't think shifting to them would be a problem, but shifting back might be far more problematic. At the moment Harry felt like he was still in a stranger's body. It was like wearing a set of clothes that should fit, but for some reason weren't sized right, and fit oddly. It was still stiff and uncomfortable at times. Doing this physical activity was forcing him to use this body and become familiar with it all over again.
Harry looked over at Draco, shivering in the cool morning air, as dawn had not quite broken around the castle yet. He took pity on Draco and snapped his wand into his hand, and threw out a couple of drying charms on Draco's clothes and then his own. Draco nodded gratefully as he gathered his clothes up and put them back on, once again noting how handy the wrist holster Harry had was.
They were in the castle and walking toward the common room when Draco spoke up again. "I'm going to order a wrist holster today. I didn't like being out on the lake without one."
Harry frowned, though he didn't break his stride. "I hadn't thought about that. Don't bother. I've got a couple spare you can use."
Draco hesitated and then nodded. He opened his mouth somewhat awkwardly to express his thanks. Thanking Potter of all people felt weird. Instead he returned to their earlier conversation. "Have you figured out anything more about who we might get to give us some decent instruction?" Harry frowned and shrugged a bit, "At the moment it will probably be me trying to see what we can learn from one another until we figure out someone who might be able to help us actually make stuff up as we go. If I thought I could get away with it I'd be tempted to free the real Moody and get him to to put us through our paces. That would probably be the best option I can come up with. But again he'd probably just run to Dumbledore."
"What do you mean the-" Draco started to ask but was cut off by a screech in the air. He looked around startled at the sudden sound.
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