Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hello!” Harry said, and stuck his hand out as he turned into the doorway. “I’m your new part—”

There was no need to continue. The cubicle next door to Harry’s was empty. Like Harry’s, it was bare and undecorated; its occupant had not yet arrived.

Harry put his hand back in his pocket and returned to his home cubicle. He was fairly sure no one had seen. Reset.

It was the first day of the rest of Harry Potter’s life. He was certified, qualified, on the payroll. He had metabolized a wild ride into some marketable skills. He was an Auror.

He reflected for the dozenth time on what a good fit this job would be. Heart-pounding adventure: yes. Public service: yes. Inescapable forces of destiny dropping him into collect-them-all games of dizzying stakes: no. Being lied about, scapegoated, publicly hunted: probably less.

There had been some pushback from his loved ones. Hadn’t he seen enough action? Did he have concerns about getting into duels as the master of the Death Stick? Was he aware there were entire paths through wizarding adulthood where a wand would never be pointed at you with murderous intent?

But to Harry, the balance was perfect. He didn’t have to save the whole world, every day. He would save a little piece on weekdays, and take weekends off.

The Auror office was slightly cramped, slightly overwhelmed with file cabinets. But how could Harry mind these discomforts? Harsh lights, a stiff chair: these were what adults suffered who didn’t have to suffer the attention of supervillains. The chair wasn’t even bad, it swiveled. Soon enough the cubicle would feel like his. Harry began pulling from his satchel his meager defense possessions: spellbooks mostly, a Sneakoscope, a battered pair of Spectrespecs free with purchase. Shyly, his Cloak. A handheld Foe-Glass, which immediately clouded.

A severe crack rent the air very close to Harry. He jumped, then placed the source: the cubicle next door. That would be his partner.

A very loud Apparition, he noted, louder than most people’s. It had an aggressive quality, like firing a gun into the air as a warning. No, Harry chastised himself, don’t be pessimistic. As far as he knew, there was nothing personality-wise to read into a loud Apparition versus a subtler pop.

Apparating directly into Auror HQ, on the other hand…that implied a real brashness, didn’t it? These were combat-ready, suspicion-prone people. Though no one had reacted badly.

The Foe-Glass on Harry’s desk was showing some definite movement. Harry turned it over.

So his partner knew the location of their cubicle well enough to Apparate into it. Maybe they’d already been in — maybe they weren’t even new. Maybe he’d been partnered with a more experienced Auror.

That might be nice: someone to teach him, someone who’d known Tonks, worked with Kingsley, maybe even Moody in his day. Although that might put them in middle age or beyond. Harry selfishly nursed the fantasy that it was someone close to his own age, a contemporary, potentially a new friend.

No, he reasoned, it couldn’t be an established Auror. He’d already looked in the cube, and it was bare. Cleared out for a fellow newbie.

A puff of smoke plumed up from beyond the dividing wall.

Harry looked at it in wonderment. What could be emitting smoke within moments of their arrival? Maybe they’d brought their own collection of defensive instruments. Harry looked again at the books and the trinkets he’d unpacked. Nothing too rare or esoteric apart from his Invisibility Cloak, which would come in handy and — he almost didn’t dare admit — hopefully impress his new colleagues.

But this person had brought out what — a powerful potion? An enchanted flame of some kind? Or maybe, he thought wildly, maybe they were emitting smoke — maybe his partner wasn’t even human. He’d never heard that magical beings couldn’t be Aurors, had he?

A warm, buzzy thought washed over him, one he’d had before: that the wizarding world was boundless in possibility, that he would never cease turning corners into the novel and outlandish. It was a feeling he hadn’t had in a while, one he welcomed back. He felt good.

Tamping down on a strong urge to simply pop his head over the cubicle wall, he got up, straightened his robes, and went round to the doorway again.

“Hello!” he started for the second time in ten minutes. “I’m your new part—”

Again he stopped mid-word. It was not a magical being. It was a human man, smoking a cigarette. A human man who was quite known to him.

He felt incredibly bad.

Draco Malfoy, pale as the dead, cigarette halfway back to his mouth, stared up at Harry from his own delicately swiveling chair.

“No,” Draco Malfoy said, as his gray eyes filled with a very familiar loathing. “You’re shitting me.”

Harry’s stomach dropped further. The voice was just as he remembered it: cold, a little reedy, a little nasal. Brimming with contempt.

Harry’s shock curdled swiftly into anger. Just who was shitting whom exactly?

“What the hell are you doing here?” Harry demanded. “This is Auror Headquarters.”

“I know that, fuckwit,” Malfoy sneered. Oh God, the sneer. He was just the same.

Harry’s mind was flying at top speed. Suddenly, lurchingly, he landed on an answer. Someone — an Auror — his partner? — must have arrested Malfoy. Malfoy was still practicing the Dark Arts and they’d caught him at it and…somehow…sent him here? And now Harry would have to help deal with him.

“What are you doing in my partner’s chair? Where are they?” Harry drew himself up, slid his wand down his sleeve. He was an officer of the law, and Malfoy a criminal. It wasn’t correct to think of it as some mutual animosity returning to life. He was in charge.

Malfoy’s expression unexpectedly buckled, as if something Harry’d said had horrified him. “Your partner’s—?”

Malfoy broke off and stood up. “No. Robards will have to fix this.”

“You sit back down.” Harry said, raising his wand. How the hell did Malfoy know Robards? What the fuck was going on? “We’ll wait for my partner to return.”

“Are you brain-damaged?” Malfoy snarled. “I’m your partner!”

Now that he was standing, it was obvious that Malfoy was wearing the same dove gray Auror robes Harry was. But it didn’t make any sense. Malfoy was not an Auror. He was a Death Eater.

“Good one,” Harry said, keeping his wand raised. To bolster his resolve he took a step forward, shoving the wand tight under Malfoy’s pointed chin. “I think a visit to Robards is a good idea, he’ll sort you out.”

He was close enough now to Malfoy that he could hear the enraged little growl that didn’t quite make it out of his mouth. “You stupid — don’t point that at me!”

With an audacity that Harry had simply not expected, Malfoy slapped his wand clean out of his hand.

Wandless, Harry was prepared to sock him. But Malfoy didn’t make any sudden moves, didn’t go for the wand, and still hadn’t taken out his own. Harry squashed a rising embarrassment as he snatched his wand back up. So much for constant vigilance. Disarmed manually…at headquarters…on his first day…by Draco Malfoy. Who was claiming to be a fellow Auror.

“I’ve died,” Malfoy said. “I’m in hell.”

Now he did take his wand out, ignoring Harry. It was a new wand, one that Harry had never seen before. Long, of a blond wood. Of course he had a new wand. He’d probably had it for years. Harry felt insane. Of all the blasts from the past.

As Malfoy transfigured an inkwell into an ashtray, Harry saw beside it on the desk — there it was — a badge. An Auror’s badge. And — it did. It fucking did. It said Malfoy on it.

Harry lunged for it. Malfoy made to grab it first, but Harry was faster. Ha, he thought. At least that piece of the universe was still in order.

But it was littler and littler consolation, as he ran his thumb over the engraved name, as the reality settled over him like a sheet of ice. Somehow, Malfoy actually was an Auror. And not just any Auror, but Harry’s own partner.

“I’ll have that back,” Malfoy demanded, hand out for the badge. The cigarette was still between two of his long fingers, and a trickle of ash tumbled to the floor.

Harry cast one last, desperate Revelio on the badge. Nothing. The name Malfoy shined cruelly up at him.

“Okay,” Harry said. “So why are you really here.”

“I work here, you knob,” Malfoy seethed. He made to take the badge out of Harry’s hand. It seemed he was entitled to it, but Harry jerked it out of reach anyway.

This infuriated Malfoy, which gratified Harry. “And what are you doing here, Potter?! You could have any profession the wizarding world has to offer and yet you choose mine? Are you fucking stalking me again?”

The rational part of Harry’s mind told him that he would feel — and look — much better if he remained calm. Let Malfoy be the only one freaking out. But he was unpracticed with the kind of petty, personal, vindictive dislike that Malfoy inspired in him. He hated to think there were aspects of being famous that he enjoyed and had come to expect, but the truth was: people did not talk to him like this anymore.

“This,” Harry said, “is my profession.”

“I was here first,” Malfoy said childishly.

“I was here first! You were late!” With effort, Harry brought down the volume of his voice. “I’ve always wanted to be an Auror. Meanwhile, you wanted to be—”

"What, a minion?” Malfoy cut in. He lunged again for his badge, which Harry again held out of his grasp. “Wrong, arsehole. All I’ve ever wanted to be is indolent, wealthy, and in with the right people. Now I foolishly left it to my father to get in with the right people, and he picked the wrong people. Which left me with no money and a shat-upon name. Which necessitates getting a job, and one that will raise the Malfoy name out of its immense pile of shit, tenderly clean it off, and restore it to its rightful position. Hence,” he gave a sarcastic little flourish, “I’m an Auror.”

Harry’s ears were buzzing by the time Malfoy had finished his little monologue; he felt offended and infuriated in at least three different directions, hearing Malfoy make such flippant reference to his past and his father like the whole thing was some tragic adversity for him.

And most pressingly: that Malfoy had horned in on Harry’s job, Harry’s dangerous, interesting job that didn’t suit craven, self-centered Malfoy at all, Harry’s job that Harry was supposed to make a long career in, because it was good for his image.

Harry watched him take a smug little drag off his cigarette. Oh, he fucking hated him.

"And you smoke now," Harry said.

Malfoy sneered anew. "Yeah? And?"

"You know that's bad for you."

Harry could see a vein in Malfoy's temple begin to throb. Good. "What’s it to you, you speccy, disfigured—” he ashed the cigarette onto Harry’s shoes, “—little shit?"

Harry tossed Malfoy’s badge back onto his desk, hoping to scuff it. "Not to mention it’s incredibly Mugglish."

By his side, Malfoy’s fist clenched and flexed. Excellent, as far as Harry was concerned. Harry wanted him to lose his temper, wanted to fight—

“Get out of my cubicle,” Malfoy ground out. “Before I knock your teeth in.”

“So you smoke like a Muggle and you fight like one? What a nice change for you.” Harry smiled savagely. “Or maybe you just remember that any wand you raise to me is two seconds from becoming my wand.”

Malfoy threw his cigarette to the ground, and punched Harry in the face.

Two bloody noses, a cracked glasses lens, and a number of bruised ribs later, they were sitting in Head Auror Robards's office.

Harry felt — well. It was a way he hadn’t felt in a while. His face and body ached; either Malfoy had gotten better at fistfighting since they were teenagers, or Harry had gotten worse. He felt alert. Situated in his body, which he could feel acutely from his breath to his stinging knuckles. Refreshed.

But shame pressed in. Shame and embarrassment, like coming out of a trance in which he’d been made to do stupid shit. He was in trouble, brought to the boss’s attention for a bad reason, on his first day.

If he was sacked, he comforted himself, he could go ahead and beat Malfoy’s lights out. That would be a delight, at least…

"What the hell is this? Are you not grown men?" Robards asked.

Sitting there, staring at his lap, Harry did feel juvenile. It was Malfoy’s fault. Malfoy was juvenile, a perpetual spoilt brat, and with his name-calling and swearing and hitting he brought normal people — people who were in delicate negotiations to become normal — down to his arrested level.

“I can’t work with him!” Malfoy burst out. “He’s not fit for the job, he’s a fraud! His entire life has been stage-managed! All he’s good at is getting attention and whoever’s around him always gets killed!”

“I’m not fit for the job?” Harry gasped. He implored Robards: “He’s got no business catching Dark wizards — he is one! He’s got a Dark Mark!”

“I’m aware of that, Potter,” Robards said. “I decide who’s fit for the job. Not you two. Both of you were deemed qualified and both of you are expected to be professional.”

“He tried to kill me!” Malfoy exclaimed. “He attacked me in a bathroom and left me to bleed out!”

“I also saved his life from fiendfyre,” Harry said, feeling defensive as he pointedly continued to address himself to his supervisor. “And he’s tried to kill me too, like, at least five times, but I can’t even remember them because he wasn’t very good at it.”

“Bastard, I saved you too! Or don’t you remember anything? Too much head trauma at a young age?”

Harry remembered. “Call that saving someone? You’ll do well here, I don’t think!”

“No, I don’t want to hear it,” Robards said, holding up his hands. “Next you’ll be telling me about lost House points and Quidditch cheating. It’s time to be adults. Unless you don’t think you’re capable?”

Harry badly wanted to protest that the ill feeling between them was quite a bit more profound than school: they’d fought on opposite sides of a war. Recently. But Robards seemed unmoved by Malfoy’s damning past as a Death Eater. Evidently he’d already set himself on rehabilitating him. Maybe it was some kind of reconciliation effort he’d been forced into by Ministry higher-ups.

Or maybe Malfoy had bought his way into the job, Harry thought darkly. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Harry took a good look at Malfoy for the first time since they’d been yanked apart and hauled in here. Malfoy sullenly, pointedly, didn’t look back. Even in profile he was the picture of churlishness: looking down his nose at Robards, sharp jaw jutting forward. It was such a punchable face.

Harry was going to have to look at it every day. Indefinitely.

“Please,” Harry heard himself saying, and turned back to Robards. “We don’t — we really don’t get on.”

“Well, start getting on. Out.”

They got up, both scraping their chairs loudly in a way that belatedly, when Harry saw Malfoy also do it, felt petulant.

"One more thing," Robards called after them. Harry turned to see him hold up the crushed remains of a cigarette butt. "Smoking is not permitted in the Ministry of Magic."

“Idiot,” Harry whispered.

“Prig,” Malfoy whispered back.

Harry’s effort to stalk sullenly away from Malfoy was ruined by the fact that, as partners, their cubicles were of course the adjoining ones they’d started in. He ended up trailing after him, fantasizing about jabbing the back of his annoying blond head.

As they passed their new colleagues, embarrassment settled over Harry. They’d all heard him and Malfoy scream at each other and tumble into a fight. What a poor first impression — and Harry was kidding himself to think he could really ever make a proper first impression from scratch on anyone, let alone a good one. People already thought of him as hotheaded and young. And if any of his new coworkers shared Malfoy’s obnoxious opinion that he was starved for attention, well, this wouldn’t have helped.

Robards was right. It was time to be an adult. He didn’t want to live with the war anymore, and he didn’t want to wallow in his least pleasant Hogwarts memories. He wanted to get on with his real life, his chosen life, and do good work. Malfoy was a bastard, but Harry had pitied more than hated him by the end. However he’d managed to get the job, he probably wanted to move on too.

“Listen, Malfoy,” Harry said when they reached their desks. “This job is important to me. I worked hard to get it and I want to do well in it. We have a chance to help people and we shouldn’t let personal history squander that.”

Malfoy said nothing.

“So what do you say? I’m willing to start fresh if you are.”

Harry held out his hand for Malfoy to shake. As he did so, as he watched Malfoy glance down at it, he recalled that they had, of course, been in this position before. Malfoy had offered Harry his hand in friendship when they’d met on the Hogwarts Express, and Harry had turned him down.

He knew Malfoy was remembering the same moment as he leaned in close, bared perfect teeth, and said:

“Get fucked, loser.”

The force of Harry’s Apparition sent a few clusters of dust skittering down his entry hall. “Scourgify,” he said, obliterating them as they fled. He felt ruthless toward them: dust was only human slough, and there was only one source of that here.

If he was already annoyed, as he was now, the state of his cottage in Godric’s Hollow tended to further annoy him. From the outside it was perfect: cosy and cute with a tall thatched roof, round the corner from the memorial to his parents so they could keep an eye on him.

He had just enough sense for decoration to know his place looked shitty inside, but not enough to fix it. He owned it, but it still had the underfilled quality of a sublet that one didn’t have leave or time to do much with. For most of his tenure here, he’d been under the running misapprehension that someone was close to moving in.

A large part of him wanted to go straight to bed. But he had a Floo date with Ron and Hermione late that night.

Hermione had gone back to Hogwarts to get some insane number of NEWTs, and had been earning post-graduate qualifications ever since. Eventually, she insisted, she would professionalize, but a NEWT alone didn’t prepare one to contribute to the real conversations going on in living magical fields of study. She’d interpreted runes in Ireland and developed potions in the Balkans, and now she was doing a yearlong transfiguration fellowship in Japan.

Ron had gone with her. It was their longest, furthest trip abroad yet, six months of it down and six to go, and it was doubling as a sort of extended honeymoon. They needed time to contextualize their marriage apart from their war-torn adolescence, Hermione had explained, although Harry could not help feeling as though when they spoke of their ‘war-torn adolescence,’ they also meant him. He'd pretty much paid witness to every stage of their unfolding relationship. Except the intimate stuff, although he'd accidentally walked in on a bit of that as well.

The point was, he was losing the battle not to feel like a third wheel. A successfully detached third wheel, in fact, one that could be remembered really fondly now that it was gone. Especially as there was not a lot of Floo access in Japan, and it was a long journey to demand of an owl. Harry talked to them only every month or so, and it always had to be done in the middle of the night. The pang was lessening little by little, the frustration of wanting to recount some story in detail only to find that when he had them in front of him weeks later it had lost all its juice. But he didn’t like that it was getting easier. He did not want to entertain the notion that they were drifting.

Tonight, anyway, he was tired, miserable, and in bad need of their commiseration.

Viciously he killed time. He fed Roger, then fed himself, some bland little pasta for one. He did the washing up and broke a glass and repaired it so badly that it broke again when he set it down to dry.

He should have expected it. Not Draco Malfoy, per se — who could have ever expected him at a job where you were meant to risk your safety to protect other people? But Harry should have expected that in this new chapter of his life, like every chapter before it, he would have an enemy.

In a sense, he had: he’d known that this job would put him face to face with Dark wizards who hated him. But he’d been prepared for that, he’d thought of them more as professional challenges than as interpersonal problems. What he’d been naïve enough to hope for was that, within his milieu, amid his coworkers, he would be among friends.

It was embarrassing, confronting this dashed hope. From the moment he’d gained consciousness as a forced adoptee, he’d known about being among people who were out to get you. He’d never endeavored at anything without a certain quantity of sneering nemeses getting in his way, and he’d basically thrived. He was used to it. He could handle it.

But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

His hand still hurt from throwing punches and his ribs smarted from taking them; he couldn’t believe he’d been in a fistfight. He lit his fireplace, flopped onto his back on the rug, and waited. The agreed compromise was that since he was staying up for Ron and Hermione’s morning, they would be the ones to put their heads through the Floo to him, for which he was very grateful; he hated firecalling.

“Oh no, are you asleep?”

“Hermione!” he cried, sitting bolt upright. “I was just resting!”

“It’s so late there,” Hermione cooed. “Ron’s on his way.”

Her hair was piled up in a high, messy bun to keep it out of the fire, which Harry thought suited her and made her look collegiate. She looked mature, he thought, unbidden. Older, they were all older, he continued morosely…

"So, Harry," Hermione started in. "First day on the job! How was it?"

"Well, my partner's Draco Malfoy," Harry said.

“What?” she gasped.

"WHAT?" said a distant, crackling voice, and then Ron's head crammed in next to Hermione's.

The shocked, sympathetic distress of his friends’ flaming heads was already helping him. In their company, Harry knew he could find the strength to transform this from a depressing nightmare that could only be endured into a scandalous outrage that could be hotly complained about.

He proceeded to tell them all about it, from the initial discovery of Malfoy in his partner’s cubicle, to the exchange of physical blows (“Oh Harry, you didn’t! At work?” Hermione moaned). When he got to Robards knowing and not caring that Malfoy was Marked, Ron interrupted.

"But isn't that, like, illegal?"

"No, it's not illegal," Hermione said. “The Malfoys were essentially pardoned. Didn’t either of you follow the Death Eater trials?”

“No,” Ron and Harry both said. Prior to his enrollment in Auror training, Harry had been advised to take some time away from it all. Advice which he’d taken as hard as he could. He didn’t open a Daily Prophet for years. When it came to the long procession of war trials, he’d made a sworn statement to the Wizengamot about all he’d done and had done to him — omitting a few details of Hallows and Horcruxes that the public record had no need for — and then bowed out.

“Well, he was convicted, and he’s subject to certain restrictions, but he didn’t go to prison. Obviously. And he’s free to seek employment anywhere that’ll take him.”

“Pretty plum gig for a convict,” Ron grumbled.

“I think it’s kind of admirable of Robards,” Hermione said. “We do have to reintegrate them into society.”

“Says who?” Ron said.

“And he was a minor.”

“So were we,” Harry said. “I understand reintegrating Death Eaters into society. I guess. I just wish I weren’t doing it at my job. With this Death Eater.”

“So he’s not any different?” Hermione asked.

“No,” Harry said, seeing the flash of Malfoy’s white teeth. “He’s the same.”

Chapter Text

Day two. Harry had nowhere to go but up. He arose, he fed his owl, he looked at himself in the mirror. He was Harry Potter. He was a competent and resilient person who had made delicious lemonade of some of life’s sourest lemons. Time to get squeezing.

He tried to practice gratitude in his commute to the Ministry of Magic. The soft gray of his uniform robes absorbed fireplace ash gracefully and the monster hearths of the Atrium required no ducking out of. The bustle of the place was life-affirming. Harry was part of a world that teemed.

The Atrium’s fountain of magical brethren had not survived the war, and had not been reproduced despite some blinkered suggestions that it was missed. What would replace it had been a protracted decision. Many had wanted a big spangled Dumbledore. Harry himself had come up; he had threatened to leave the country if this happened.

Ultimately the best way to include everyone in the war memorial was to include no one, and so what was built was a figureless mass of onyx down which flowed a flat pane of water. The idea was that the water would carve paths and shapes eventually, would wear down even that which seemed to be monumental. This was meant to evoke acceptance of mortality, hope for a long peace, mourning, contemplation, Harry didn’t really know. The black was dramatic and handsome. Harry believed its actual title was Eon. It had been nicknamed “the lugubrious lump.”

Harry fished out a Sickle from his pocket. I wish Malfoy would quit, he supplied instantly, but that was too petty. I wish today would go better than yesterday: too limited in scope.

I wish for a pleasant surprise in this job. He flicked his Sickle into the lump’s great pool of tears.

“What’d you wish for, Harry?”

Harry turned to find himself addressed by a witch he had met at least twice before and remembered absolutely nothing about.

“Can’t say, can I? Then it won’t come true.”

Everyone said hello to him. This was true generally and was especially true in the headquarters of the government. Harry exchanged pleasantries with people whose names he was meant to know until the very doorway of Auror HQ. Once through, he transformed from a target of professional jockeying to a shy junior colleague. No, scratch that. An able and confident junior colleague. The witch at the lump had been Gilda Speedwell of Broom Regulatory Control, he knew suddenly and pointlessly.

In the morning, the Aurors gathered to give and receive updates, lightly corralled by the occasional barks of Head Auror Robards. Harry had little context for most of what was said, having to do with underway investigations and midstream projects. Instead he admired his new colleagues. They were a charmingly rough bunch, diverse in age and appearance, totaling about a dozen. There were eighteen Aurors total in the office, but not everyone was in every day: the work often took people afield, and attendance wasn’t insisted on. They were on long leads, evidently, which struck Harry as quite cool. Even if it meant a harder time learning names. That everyone else knew his automatically was a disadvantage he was used to.

Malfoy was nowhere in sight. Good, Harry thought, with willful spite. Maybe he’d resigned. Maybe he’d died.

“Potter!” Robards called to him. “Where’s your partner?”

“No idea, sir,” he said.

“Well, find him. You’re each other’s responsibility.”

So much for the long leads.

Maybe this would eventually all be revealed as some kind of hazing ritual. After a week of escalatingly outrageous demands centered on his childhood nemesis, “Malfoy” would allow his Polyjuice Potion to wear off, revealing a delighted senior Auror. They’d all have a good laugh, praise Harry for his heroic restraint, and get on with the job as it was really meant to be, free of dickhead ex-terrorists.

He checked the bathrooms in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, dawdled a bit more in case Malfoy was en route, then resigned himself to really searching. Harry had once been so practiced at finding him on the Marauder’s Map that his eyes would land on the Draco Malfoy dot within seconds. Now he had no tools to help him fulfill this cruel request. He’d have to go to Malfoy’s house.

“Draco Malfoy’s,” he said, begrudging even the clarity with which he had to say it, and threw a handful of Floo powder into an enormous Ministry fireplace. He didn’t even know where Malfoy lived, but the fire flared green, so something was connected.

Harry was thrown from the Floo after a very short trip. He was probably still in London. And he was being gawked at by a very surprised man.

"Did you just…?" the man said, gesturing to the fireplace. Oh, hell. A Muggle. Harry must have Flooed into a Muggle home by accident. How was that even possible? 'Draco Malfoy' wasn't exactly a common sort of name among Muggles…

“Who are you talking to?” Malfoy popped out of the bedroom. When he laid eyes on Harry, he was animated by instant rage. “Absolutely fucking not. Get out! Get out!”

“I know this sounds crazy,” said the Muggle, “but I think he fell down your chimney. Sir? Are you all right, are you burned?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Malfoy said, giving Harry a look of heavy reproach. “Obliviate.”

The man’s expression of fearful concern was washed away by benign confusion.

"Gotta go, haven’t you?" Malfoy said to him helpfully.

"Er…yeah," the other man said, before catching sight of Harry. "Hello. Have we met?"

Harry couldn't help feeling guilty as the cause of that little bit of brain damage, and smiled. "Don't think so, I'm Harry," he said, sticking out his hand.

"Sam," said the other man. Sam had a strong grip; he was taller and broader than Harry or Malfoy. Malfoy always had surrounded himself with muscle…

“He’s from my work,” Malfoy said, projecting loud resentment at both the fact and at having to introduce them. “Don’t talk to him,” he added.

Harry wasn’t sure whom the instruction was for. He didn’t plan to heed it. What was this guy doing here? Why was Malfoy so quick with a Memory Charm? The man appeared unharmed, but Malfoy was obviously unhappy that Harry had discovered him. The whole thing seemed sinister.

“Remind me what you do?” Sam said, still floating in a mild, unbothered bewilderment.

“We’re detectives,” Harry and Malfoy supplied at the same time.

“Oh yes, that’s right.” Sam smiled warmly. Harry looked askance at Malfoy. How did he know what a detective was? Why did he know so much about Muggles?

"You’re late, I think," Malfoy said, checking a nonexistent wristwatch. He nodded toward the door. “Best be off.”

“Right, I’m off,” Sam said airily, as if he’d had the idea himself. And then he leaned down and kissed Malfoy.

Harry’s mouth dropped open and his eyebrows climbed into his fringe; he almost guffawed. He knew he ought to be abashed to have intruded, but in fact he felt delighted. What a delightful revelation. What a delightful little shift of power, for him to gain this private information about Malfoy, information Malfoy might never have told him.

"Okay, bye," Malfoy said, and Sam flushed a little red as he nodded at Harry and made his way out the front door.

As soon as the door clicked shut, objects began to zip toward Malfoy: a pack of cigarettes, one shoe and then another, a stovetop espresso pot pouring into a delicate little china cup. It took him a while, getting ready, to notice that Harry was staring at him.

"Don’t barge into people’s flats if you don’t want to know things about them,” he said crabbily. He shrugged on his robes and stuffed at least a dozen vials and sachets into the pockets as they flew into his hands, eventually giving Harry a judgmental sort of look. “Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be the prince of tolerance?"

“No, I just — I didn’t take you for — I mean.” Harry’d been about to express his shock that Malfoy had a nonconformist bone in his body, especially concerning a matter as grave as his bloodline. “I’m surprised you’re seeing a Muggle. Can’t be good for him getting Obliviated all the time.”

Malfoy fixed him with a look of such rapt, burning indignation that Harry felt sure a hex was coming. A Sneakoscope he’d summoned bounced off him unnoticed and thudded to the floor as he seethed through gritted teeth, “I only had to Obliviate him because of you!”

“So you’re observing the Statute of Secrecy day in and day out?”

“He’s not—” Whether from anger or embarrassment, Malfoy was starting to go red in the face. “Look. Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but I only met him last night. Is that acceptable to you, Arbiter of Moral Rectitude?”

“It’s none of my business,” Harry said lightly, instead of asking the million questions he wanted to. Had Malfoy always been gay? Had everyone but Harry known this about him?

“So what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

“Your absence was noted. I know the concept of holding down a job might be confusing to you, but you are supposed to go every day.”

Malfoy cast a tempus, then dismissed it in annoyance. “Picking on me already. I knew he would.”

The workday had started thirty-five minutes ago. Harry failed to see how Robards expecting his reports to show up on time was at all unfair or persecutory.

“What have you got on him anyway, for him to let you join up?”

Malfoy stuck his chin out defiantly. “I got nearly perfect marks on the training. I know a lot about the Dark Arts.”

Now that was the first thing Malfoy’d said all morning that was easy to believe.

“And this was what, a correspondence course?” Harry said. “I did three years of training. Where were you?”

Malfoy threw back his espresso like a shot and sent the empty cup flying out of the room. “It wasn’t possible, Potter. It’s complicated. My legal status. And I didn’t exactly have tuition funds on hand.”

For the first time, Harry took in the flat he’d barged into, which was handsomely furnished, but small. For Malfoy, who’d grown up on a palatial estate with acres of grounds and house elf service, it was a significant downgrade.

Hermione had shared what information she had. The Malfoys had had to give up Malfoy Manor, staging ground for a year of torture, snatching, and worse, and their vast wealth had been seized. But unlike so many other Death Eaters, none of them had ended up in prison; by the end, they’d been in an ambiguous position of little influence, and they’d basically finished by defecting. But Harry didn’t know with any detail or clarity what Malfoy’s present legal status actually was.

“Please, have a look around,” Malfoy said. “Not like I’m expected anywhere.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but Malfoy had already Disapparated with another outlandish crack. Harry decided the volume definitely was a sign of poor character.

“Sapnin, rookehs,” said a very petite, grinning Mancunian. Harry had been told her name.

“Fishbein,” Malfoy said cordially. Oh, yes. Zenobia Fishbein.

“I’m to present you your first assignment and see if you have any questions,” Zenobia said. “Usually Aurors will just take a look through the file, but the man with the plan figured for your first few, you could use some context.”

She waved her wand and the folder she was holding hovered before them, opening itself to the first page as if for a storytime.

This face Harry could put a name to instantly: Theodore Nott. He looked gaunter than he had at Hogwarts, his dishwater hair now greasy and long, and the stubble that grew on his face gave it a grayish cast.

Harry snuck a glance at Malfoy. No reaction.

“We know him,” Harry volunteered, as much to see what Malfoy would do as anything. “From Hogwarts.”

“S’pose you would,” Zenobia said, flipping forward in the file. “Class of ’98. Slytherin House.” She looked at Malfoy, who was still keeping it carefully neutral. “Might be that’s why you got the assignment.”

“What is the assignment?” Malfoy asked primly.

“He’s what’s known as a Scrap Eater,” Zenobia said.

“And what’s that,” Malfoy said, although Harry thought he could probably guess.

“It’s just what we call them. We get them from time to time, you know, hopeless devotees to the lost cause. Since Moldy returned once before, they think if they can line up all the forces of magic just so, he’ll be back again.”

Malfoy’s lack of expression hardened, as if he were redoubling his efforts. He knew he was under scrutiny. Harry belatedly remembered he was a practiced Occlumens and had spent a lot of time looking inscrutable and neutral in front of, ironically, the very person he was now being tested on.

“Of course it behooves us to keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t get too organized,” Zenobia continued. “But they’re usually just barmy loners. Almost never real DEs.” She looked at Harry with sardonic appraisal. “Although I’ll be interested to see how they react to you.”

“So what is the crime, exactly?” Malfoy asked, allowing something like irritation to creep into his voice at last. “Apart from ideological incorrectness.”

Zenobia cocked an eyebrow, like she was amused to finally hear a little sass from the ex-Death Eater. The file flipped forward a few pages. “He’s been creeping around Little Hangleton if you can believe it. Putting up Dark Marks on walls. His correspondence suggests he’s close to escalating into Muggle-bashing.”

An intercepted letter untucked itself from the file for them to read. Harry skimmed the usual ravings about filth and purity.

“Time to pay him a visit,” she concluded. “I’m sure an ‘ogwarts reunion will warm his twisted heart.”

A Portkey was arranged for them while they reviewed the file.

“Old friend of yours,” Harry commented, once they were alone.

He half-expected Malfoy to refuse to engage him, but Malfoy snorted. “Not hardly,” he said.

If Malfoy was trying to downplay his past, Harry was not the right audience. He remembered the facts of Malfoy’s life very well. “Slytherin, blood supremacist, dad in the organization. What could you have possibly lacked in common?”

Malfoy’s mouth twisted. “He was a bit touched. If you must know. Nott-All-There, people used to call him.”

By people, Harry had to assume Malfoy meant chiefly himself. “How do you mean, touched?”

“He had, y’know. Problems. Fire-starting…bed-wetting…” Malfoy lowered his voice. “Snape had to take away his cat.”

Slytherin had always been insular, but Harry was impressed they’d clamped down on such a rich bit of gossip. And only with some distance could he see that Snape, not known for his sensitivity to young people’s needs, had supervised a particularly emotionally disturbed portion of the student body.

“Not whom I’d have chosen to bunk with for seven years,” Malfoy said. “Doesn’t surprise me if he’s some kind of deranged hardliner. He was so jealous I got a Mark, he hated my guts after that.”

Harry felt a jolt of something like offense, that Malfoy would openly talk about this. To him. It seemed flagrant. It wasn’t that Harry wanted him to grovel in shame forever, but, well, perhaps he did want to see a bit of remorse. A bit more than none.

But it wasn’t the moment for a row, he coached himself. They had work to do today. If they could do something successfully, maybe Harry could be on his way to earning enough clout to get his partner changed.

“Maybe one of us comes on strong and the other gains his trust,” Harry said. “Good cop, bad cop.”

“And who’s which, I needn’t ask,” Malfoy said.

Harry smiled. “You’re the bad cop. Obviously.”

“You’re literally famous for unpredictable outbursts of rage,” Malfoy said. “I have manners.”

Harry had to laugh. Malfoy had always been ceaselessly rude. Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen him get through a conversation without interrupting someone, insulting them, ordering them around — usually all three.

“You have to know the rules to break the rules. Haven’t you ever heard that?” Malfoy said defensively. “And we’re not cops.”

“So I’ll take the lead,” Harry tried to conclude.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Malfoy said stubbornly. “He knows me, he’ll talk to me.”

“You just said he hated your guts,” Harry ground out. A headache was beginning to threaten him. How were they arguing? Hadn’t Harry just decided to avoid this?

“Everything’s relative. I thought it went without saying that people like him despise you with their lives.”

Now Harry’s temper was beginning to get away from him. “If I were you, I wouldn’t go around advertising how well I know people like him.”

Malfoy squared up with him. “That’s what I was hired for, shithead. MLE can’t run on sanctimony and expelliarmuses alone. It needs intelligence.”

“Aurors,” Zenobia interjected, appearing peppily out of nowhere. “Your Portkey, when you’re ready.”

She delicately placed a Golden Snitch on the open file between them. Malfoy glared a hole in her head as she walked away.

Harry suspected they were being made fun of.

He hit the ground hard and barely remained standing. Malfoy landed gracefully, already exhaling the first puff of smoke from a cigarette he’d seemingly lit mid-Port.

Harry felt an off-putting and partial familiarity with Little Hangleton. He’d been here in other people’s long-ago memories, but only once in person. At night, and almost a decade ago. That night was vivid to him, but the village felt mundane now, in the quiet, bright morning. Even the looming Riddle House just looked like some old wreck.

It wasn’t only the light of day. There was something more final to the stillness, he thought: an evil magic was gone. Completely gone. Harry had never been tempted to return to places like this, but it struck him as his scar did. Extinguished.

The notion of people like Nott, devoted Scrap Eaters, didn’t even really seem frightening, not when Harry could feel elementally that they were waiting for nothing. He felt sorry for them, that they couldn’t face it. Some instinct had abandoned them.

Harry and Malfoy approached the grand double doors of Riddle House.

“After you,” Malfoy said, content to hang back. After all his arguing and demands to take point. He blew smoke in Harry’s face and gestured annoyingly for him to go ahead.

“It would be a lot more professional if you put that out,” Harry said.

Malfoy took a long drag and then flicked the cigarette at Harry.

It gave a few dull red sparks as it bounced off his chest, which he brushed hastily away. The only way he could stop himself fighting more with Malfoy was to rap sharply on the door.

“Auror division,” he said loudly.

At first there was nothing. Then a bit of purposeful shuffling and footfall. Then more nothing. Harry slid his wand down his sleeve into his palm.

“Nott,” he called again. “We’d like to speak to you.”

At length one of the doors opened a crack. A searching, red-rimmed eye peered out, widening when it saw Harry.

“Harry Potter?” croaked a voice that seemed disused.

“Auror Harry Potter,” Harry said. “We’re here from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

The eye swiveled at the use of we. When it landed on Malfoy, the door swung completely open.

“Draco Malfoy?”

There was Nott, looking as ragged as he had in the picture, if not even worse. His posture was nervous and kinked, and his hands moved constantly.

“Auror Draco Malfoy,” Malfoy said with horrible smugness. “Can we come in or not? Nott?”

Nott looked him over, taking in the Auror robes. His eyes darted to Harry, then back to Malfoy. “This is low, even for you.”

Malfoy gestured to Nott’s disheveled appearance; Harry feared for a moment that he would actually pluck at Nott’s unclean shirt. “And you’re coping so well with the new normal. Now let us in, we need to ask you some questions.”

Maybe some muscle memory of being bossed around by Malfoy at Hogwarts took him over, because Nott stepped aside from the door.

The place looked bad inside. Worse than merely abandoned: it had the signs of unwell life. Too much parchment and newspaper neither random nor organized, hasty attempts to block light out, the tang of an unwashed person hanging in the air. The furniture seemed to take unhappy, murmuring note of the intruders: Harry guessed the place was booby-trapped, but who knew how competently.

“Aren’t you going to offer us anything?” Malfoy said.

“No thanks,” Harry said loudly, for both of them. Nott circled round the back of an armchair, putting the whole sitting room between him and them.

“So what’s this all about, Theodore?” Malfoy started in, hotly. He moved to sit down on a couch of peeling velvet, took a closer look at it, remained standing. “Hasn’t the graveyard been picked clean yet?”

“There have been signs,” Nott said, taking a rather snobbish tone himself. “For those who care to look.” His hands skittered over the back of the armchair. Fine, Harry thought. As long as he could see them.

“Have you stopped taking your potions again?”

Nott sneered at him. “I can’t wait to tell the others what happened to you. First against the wall, you’ll be.”

“Oh, sure, the others.” Malfoy pulled the intercepted letter Zenobia had shown them from his robes. “Blah blah blah, ‘Muggle filth,’ ‘cleansing deluge,’ ‘might of magic,’ blah blah blah. What did Snape always tell us? You haven’t broken a rule until you get caught. Why the fuck,” he shook the letter, “would you send this by owl post?”

“Have you been putting up Dark Marks in the village?” Harry said, attempting to get them back on track.

“It’s political expression, it’s my right,” Nott said.

“No it’s not,” Malfoy cut back in. “It’s outlawed as an incitement to violence, as you know.” He sounded every inch like an insufferable know-it-all lecturing a classmate. “Scrawling it on walls. You can’t even cast it properly.”

“Soon enough. Soon enough I will,” Nott said, nodding to himself. “The Dark Lord will rise again.”

“And what indication do you have of that?” Malfoy said meanly. “Are you subscribed to his newsletter, or did you just read it in some entrails?”

Harry could see that Nott was getting agitated. Personally, Harry thought Malfoy was coming on very aggressive considering they were questioning someone he himself had described as unstable. But he did know the guy.

“Want in, do you?”

Malfoy laughed harshly. “Not on your life.”

“You were always weak,” Nott said. “You never had the stomach. I should’ve received the Mark, not you.”

“I wish you had, then you’d know how thick you’re being!” Malfoy snapped. “It was fucked, Theodore, it was all completely fucked. And it’s over, thank fuck.”

Nott wasn’t the only one getting agitated, Harry saw now. Malfoy wasn’t pursuing any kind of technique; he was upset. The concept of the Scrap Eater, hoping and working for a second coming, was upsetting to him, and not just because killing him had perpetually been one item down on Voldemort’s to-do list. The envy went both ways: Nott wished he’d gotten the Mark, and Malfoy took it personally that he didn’t understand he’d been lucky.

Harry should have led the questioning.

“You’re wrong,” Nott hissed to Malfoy. “Death flies from him. You’ll be struck down, and I — I’ll ascend.”

He pushed up his sleeve and revealed what resembled a Dark Mark. Crude, homemade; it was a brand he’d done on himself. Harry went cold. Malfoy had been right; he was ill.

“Put that away,” Malfoy spat. “I’ve never seen anything so pathetic in my life. What kind of fucking Slytherin are you anyway? Can’t you tell when a party’s over? Have you no instinct for self-preservation?”

“Self-preservation, the only god the Malfoys ever worshipped,” Nott countered. He ripped a tuft of upholstery away from the armchair he was clutching. “You’re a blood traitor.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes theatrically. “Oh, spare me. The Dark Lord’s agenda boiled down to self-preservation, at all costs, for exactly one person. Everything else was negotiable and expendable. The only reward for loyalty was that you didn’t have to see it coming when he did you.”

The disgust in his tone and his face was nearly acidic. Although Harry didn’t love that he still called Voldemort the Dark Lord.

“If you want to devote yourself to some old pile of bones, whatever,” Malfoy went on. “But you’re not going to hurt anybody on your headlong sprint into total delusion.”

“You should’ve died, Draco,” Nott snarled. “If you had a shred of honor you’d have died.”

“Well guess what, Theodore?” Malfoy said, with a horrible, mocking smile. “I don’t, and I lived.”

Nott stared daggers into Malfoy. His hands went behind the armchair. Harry knew instantly: he was about to do something stupid. There was no time to do anything but give Malfoy a hard shove just as Nott cried, “Avada Kedavra!”

A jet of green lightning cracked through the spot where Malfoy had just been standing, charging the air, hitting the wall with a terrible explosion.

“What are you doing, Theodore?!” Malfoy wailed as he ducked for cover behind the couch. “We’re throwing AKs at ten in the morning?!”

“I’M THROUGH WITH YOU, MALFOY, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU! YOU’RE SO FUCKING ANNOYING!” He fired off another Killing Curse like it was a lumos and advanced toward them. “You owe me your life for how many times I almost throttled you in your sleep and forced myself not to!”

“You owe me, sicko!” Malfoy shot back, belly-crawling at top speed. “I covered for you! I never told anyone what you did with the thestrals!”

“Then how come they started locking the stables, you fucking liar?!”

Malfoy let out a mad giggle. “Okay, yeah, I guess I did tell some people.”

“Avada Kedavra!”

“THEODORE! You can’t just cast Unforgivable Curses at officers of the law! Stop at once or I’ll return fire!”

“You won’t take me alive, you spoilt little shit!”

“Great!” Harry called to Malfoy from behind a chest of drawers. “Way to de-escalate!”

“Kill Potter, Theodore, not me!”

“I’ll kill you both!”

“Oh, enough,” Harry muttered, and popped out from behind the chest. “Expelliarmus!”

Nott’s wand flew from his hand, but it barely broke his stride. With an enraged cry, he pulled out a knife and threw it at Harry.

Harry dodged back behind his cover, but the knife swerved. It was enchanted, he realized miserably as it sank into his gut. And then pulled out and sank in again. And again.

“I’m hit,” he tried to say. But it came out as a bit of a gurgle.

He managed to knock the knife away and sank behind the chest of drawers, clutching at his middle. Then he took a sharp rap to the back of the head. His vision swam as he turned and determined a drawer had violently opened — as it did so again and cracked him in the jaw. And now the whole chest was tipping onto him.

He moved as quickly as he could, which was much too slowly. The chest clipped him badly on the shoulder and sent him sprawling. He heard the clatter of his wand hitting the floor before he realized his arm was out of its socket, unresponsive. He was getting his arse kicked.

Now Nott turned on him fully. “Potter,” he sneered. “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Fucking Die. But you’re nothing now without your collection of trinkets. The Dark Lord will be so pleased to know I dispatched you for him, I’ll be so richly rewarded, his most loyal—”

“SILENCIO!” Malfoy screamed, reaching a pitch of hysteria. “No, Theodore, I’m sorry, you couldn’t have known — it’s just that I cannot listen to anymore shit like that, I’ve had too much, it makes me ill, it, it—” he pressed dramatically at his temples, “it gives me hives, I just—”

Malfoy collected himself. “Stupefy.”

Nott went limp.

Malfoy emerged from his hiding place, gave Nott a hesitant nudge with his foot, and then looked at himself in the remaining glass of a broken picture frame. Squinting at his reflection, he ran one hand through his hair, then the other.

Finally he took note of Harry. He folded his arms over his chest, looking impatient. “Merlin, Potter, I thought you were supposed to be indestructible. You can’t just die at the hands of some random guy from school!”

“I won’t die,” Harry said, but on the rounded wo of won’t a good deal of hot drool fell out of his mouth. He wiped his face with the back of his working hand and discovered it was blood.

Malfoy knelt over him, taking in his condition. “You’re bleeding way too much,” he whined. “I’ll be blamed, everyone will think I let the prince of the wizarding world get killed. Or worse.”

“So save me then,” Harry suggested. He was beginning to feel a little cold.

“Fine,” Malfoy said. He started pulling things out of the pockets of his robes. “This time. But the first time I can make it seem like there was nothing I could do, you’re finished.”

Malfoy pulled out a roll of Quick-Stanch and pushed Harry’s robes open. If Harry weren’t in such pain he’d protest, and internally he did despair of how immediately this partnership had forced him into physical intimacy with Malfoy. Malfoy had been the one to provoke the fight, and he wasn’t injured at all.

“Hold this up,” Malfoy said, shaking the hem of Harry’s shirt. Harry tried and discovered his other arm wasn’t really working that well either anymore.

“You’re so pointless,” Malfoy complained, hiking it up himself. “You’re a complete impediment.” He stuffed hastily torn wads of Quick-Stanch into Harry’s wounds and patted them into place so forcefully it felt more like slapping.

He tugged Harry’s clothes back into place, then looked at his own hands, which were covered in Harry’s blood. “How much do you think you’ve lost?” he said.

“Couldn’t say.” Harry wondered belatedly if Malfoy was phobic of touching impure blood. If he was, Harry supposed he’d just gotten over it.

Malfoy popped the cork on a bottle of Blood-Replenishing Potion. He made an abortive movement to hand it to Harry, remembered Harry couldn’t hold it, and, looking very frustrated, held it to Harry’s mouth instead. Harry took a big mouthful and swallowed.

“Have more. Keep going until you feel, y’know, replenished,” Malfoy said.

Harry made a face of annoyed bafflement before he swigged again; how was he supposed to know what enough blood felt like?

“I’m not a mediwizard, dickhead!” Malfoy exclaimed. “Just finish it to be safe.”

Malfoy tipped the bottle completely, forcing Harry to drain it. He swallowed, sputtering, then shivered. The better he felt, the nastier it tasted.

Malfoy tried to scrutinize his arm, covered in bloody clothes. He tsked in impatience and banished Harry’s shirt entirely.

“Well-practiced with that one, are you?” Harry said, embarrassed.

Rather than answering, Malfoy put his hand on Harry’s injured shoulder. “Now let’s see,” he said, and squeezed hard with bony fingers. Even Harry’s teeth ached with sudden pain. “Your shoulder’s just dislocated, I’ll pop it back in.”

Harry tried to jerk away from him, but it was agony. “You will not!”

“What, Potter,” Malfoy started, a malicious laugh bubbling out of him even as he tried to say it, “don’t you trust me?”

“You just said you weren’t a mediwizard,” Harry said, groaning in both fear and relief as Malfoy dug the tip of his wand into the joint of Harry’s shoulder. Relief because Harry had assumed he would try to do it by hand; fear because it brought to mind his total loss of bones under Gilderoy Lockhart’s wandwork.

“Don’t be chicken,” Malfoy said. “One, two—”

His wand twitched like he was about to do it early, but he didn’t. “Three…”

“Malfoy!”

“…Four, five!”

He gave a sharp flick and blinding pain seared through Harry’s arm. He knew Malfoy was determined to make him scream and he was determined not to, uttering instead a close-mouthed “HMMM!” that he felt did not count. Then, relief. He flexed his fingers, rotated his elbow, rolled his shoulder.

“You’re welcome,” Malfoy said gleefully.

Harry flexed his fingers again. His hand looked flushed and felt swollen. In fact he felt hot and sort of bloated all over.

“Ah,” Malfoy said. “I think you’re a touch overblooded.”

Harry gave him the best ice glare he could, considering he was blushing furiously and felt like steam was about to pour from his ears.

“It’s good, you’ll have a bit extra,” Malfoy assured him. “For next time.”

Harry tugged his robes tightly around his bare chest and fished his wand off the floor. “Incarcerous,” he said at the unresponsive Nott, whose hands were then bound in rope.

Malfoy fished a new pack of cigarettes out of his robes, unwrapped it, let the plastic drift to the floor. “Poor Theodore.”

“Poor him?!” Harry exclaimed. “Poor me! He stabbed me!”

“Maybe I should’ve just let him fuck the thestral, I don’t know!” Malfoy said. He shook his head. “I’d just been made prefect, I couldn’t do nothing…”

Harry snorted. As if Malfoy had ever felt duty-bound by his prefect badge to do anything but make first years cry in the corridors.

Malfoy hiked Nott over his shoulder. “I couldn’t even see the thestral, mind you. All I could see was Theodore.”

“I need a hospital,” said Harry. “If you’re finished.”

Malfoy sighed with faux-wistfulness. “The past is never finished, Potter. That’s what my thrilling new job is teaching me.”

Chapter Text

Harry thought, what with the not dying, that their first assignment had gone all right. But apparently they were held to a higher standard than not dying, and apparently a wellness check on a relatively harmless known quantity was supposed to have been an easy warm-up for them. No one had expected to have to process an arrest, let alone for Harry to return to the office with a bunch of new holes in his front.

Their next assignment was, accordingly, slightly scaled back.

“You might be familiar with the Blood Equality Redistribution Project,” Zenobia began, setting another file folder before them. This one looked like a real estate advert; it was filled with beauty shots of expensive-looking, handsome houses.

“No,” said Harry.

“Yes,” said Malfoy.

“It’s all in there,” she said, gesturing at the file. “Basically, a lot of collaborators from the Second Wizarding War who died or were put away came from old families that had a lot of money and a lot of property.”

Harry swiveled his head to openly appraise Malfoy, who ignored him.

Zenobia continued. “The Ministry undertook an initiative to redistribute those assets to Muggleborn families as reparations for losses under the Thicknesse administration.”

Harry was skeptical that these losses could be made up. He remembered well the lost jobs, lost years of school, seized wands…imprisonment…death…

“Problem was,” Zenobia said, “a lot of these houses had had some nasty alterations made. Especially after word got round about the initiative. So now we put them through a curse-breaking battery, the last step of which is to send a team of Aurors to escort the family as they take ownership of the home.”

“We’re helping a family move into a house?” Malfoy said, concealing his opinion not at all.

“Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours,” Zenobia said. “It’s routine.”

“Listen, I’m not a charity worker,” Malfoy said. “This isn’t an appropriate job for Aurors.”

In all honesty, Harry didn’t disagree with him. It seemed like they’d been given a dull job as punishment for how sideways their last one had gone — which hadn’t completely been their fault. But Malfoy’s attitude still irked him, and his distaste for this task had a particular subtext.

“Come off it,” Harry said pleasantly. “Maybe we’ll do your place sometime.”

Malfoy, stormily, said nothing. He pulled the file closer and set himself to studying it.

“That was the first one we did,” Zenobia said. “About four years ago.”

“Oh?” Harry said, though he’d suspected when he mentioned it. “So who lives in Malfoy Manor?”

“No one,” Zenobia said, keeping it neutral. “It’s tied up in litigation. There’ve been a number of appeals.”

Malfoy flipped a page in the file. Indignation reared up in Harry; so that was why he didn’t want to do the job. He thought it was unfair to turn lovely old ill-gotten inheritances over to Muggleborns.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Harry said sharply and loudly, in the absence of the option to haul off and deck him. “But then it sounds like this assignment presents a conflict of interest for him.”

“You’re wrong,” Malfoy said equally sharply. “I’m not the title holder and I’m not involved in the dispute.”

“You really survive on nothing but technicalities and loopholes, don’t you? Other Death Eaters’ houses are fair game, just not yours?”

Malfoy lost his temper all at once. “I don’t give a fuck if the Manor gets burped! I said I’m not involved!”

“Easy, Malfoy. Nobody’s accusing you,” Zenobia said.

“I’m accusing you,” Harry said.

“Nobody’s accusing you and being serious about it,” Zenobia said with an undertone of warning, before she turned back to Malfoy, looking sterner than Harry had yet seen her. “So now that it’s been made abundantly clear that you’re an appropriate choice for the job, you’ll agree it’s an appropriate job for you.”

“Fine,” Malfoy said, shaking his head and looking back down at the file. “Whatever. Fine.”

“Safe,” Zenobia said, chipper again. She tossed Theodore Nott’s de-enchanted knife down on the table and clapped them both on the back. “Your Portkey activates in thirty minutes.”

Outside the ironwrought front gate of a Georgian country manor, Harry made hard impact and his knees buckled. As he got his bearings, he found himself at the business end of Malfoy’s wand.

“Lay off the Death Eater shit at work,” Malfoy hissed, quite close to him.

“Or what?” Harry scoffed, ignoring the wand digging into his neck.

“I really don’t give a toss what you think of me, Potter. But you won’t get me sacked.”

“You don’t need my help for that,” Harry said. “You’re late every day, you complain about everything, and, oh yeah, you’re a creepy little rodent that nobody likes. You won’t last six months.”

A sharp pain like a bee-sting sparked against Harry’s neck and he jerked away. Malfoy stepped back and pocketed his wand. “Learn to Port without falling on your arse before you tell me how I’m doing. A Confunded troll could get the drop on you.”

“Please! You Apparate louder than—” Harry fell silent. A turquoise minivan had trundled into view. Trunks, tables, mattresses, lamps, armchairs and more were magicked to it precariously, creating a lumpy, creaking corona two meters all around.

The Thistledowns, Harry had just read, were Daniel and Hortense, both Muggleborns, and their two children. Hortense, née Heywood, had apparently been a Hufflepuff seventh-year during Harry’s first, though unsurprisingly he did not remember her; Daniel was a few years older than her, also a Hufflepuff alum.

During the war, the then-newlywed couple had both been accused of thieving magic, and their wands had been confiscated and destroyed. Sinister concerns had been raised about the status of their child — their only one, then, and only a baby — was she a natural magical child, a halfblood, if she was borne of stolen magic? Or had some wizarding infant had to pay? Or was she even theirs?

The Thistledowns had been rightfully terrified to submit their baby to these capricious questions. They’d fled with Hortense’s Muggle parents to Canada, and lived as Muggles there until the war was over. Only this year had they finally returned to England.

They’d had a brutal time of it, like so many others, but they didn’t seem downtrodden. In fact, as the doors of the minivan flew open and two screaming children slid out on a tidal wave of linens, curtains, and tablecloths, they appeared energetic.

“We’ve lost the bicycles,” Daniel said, looking at the wild furniture-mane of the van.

“Well, they know where they’re going. Just takes a bit longer by bike,” Hortense said. She waved at the Aurors with a flushed smile that went a bit wobbly when she absorbed just who was standing in her drive.

“Harry Potter?!” she blurted. “Oh my God, they didn’t have to send you, it’s just a bit of housekeeping — I mean, not that we mind! It’s really generous of you to come!”

“Wow, uh…” Daniel agreed, before his attention was commanded by child misbehavior. “What did I say? Only climb on the soft areas!”

“Just doing my job,” Harry said cheerfully. He didn’t want them to think he was some high-ranking hotshot who couldn’t be bothered with workaday Auror business, but nor could he insult them by emphasizing this was an undesirable junior task. So he smiled and moved on. “This is my partner, Auror Malfoy.”

“Hello,” Hortense said politely. Harry couldn’t tell if she recognized Malfoy’s name or not. “This is my husband Daniel, our daughter Jemma, and our son — well — this is a bit funny. Er, our son Harry.”

Harry had gotten used to this. In the immediate aftermath of the war, there had been a wizarding baby boom — and many couples had been inspired to honor the war’s young hero. On a crowded Sunday afternoon in Diagon Alley, so many beleaguered mothers shouted his name after their children that Harry would leave with a cricked neck. This Harry, who resembled him not at all with dark skin and an explosion of chestnut curls, looked to be exactly the right age, maybe a year younger than his godson. Little Harry had climbed into a pillowcase to hop around in like a potato sack, but was now, under discussion, nervously still.

“Hi Harry,” Harry said. “Cool name.” The young Harry said nothing, and shyly went back to hopping. His older sister started to giggle. Harry didn’t dare check what Malfoy thought of all this.

“So let me show you in,” Hortense said.

“Have you been in already?” Malfoy demanded.

“Well, no, we thought we’d wait…”

“You’ll need to keep waiting. I want to do a few things before we enter.”

Hortense gestured for him to have at it, looking a little miffed at his bluntness. Harry didn’t blame her.

“Right,” Malfoy said, and removed a small, fat book, almost a cube, from his pocket. The Field Guide to Grievous Harm: 1001 Semi-Legal Curses and Counters, Harry read.

“Don’t remember that one from training,” Harry muttered.

“It’s from my personal collection,” Malfoy said, and sat down cross-legged in front of the house, facing it as he pored over the pages.

For the next twenty minutes, Malfoy paged through the book. Every few minutes, he’d find something he liked, chant it to himself a couple times, then look up at the house and cast it with elaborate flourishes. Harry had, for the most part, no idea what he was doing, and was left to make small talk with the family. Pretty much the only Hogwarts student they all three remembered interacting with was Cedric Diggory, so the conversation didn’t necessarily dwell there. They talked about Halifax, where Harry had never been, and Quodpot, which Harry had never played, and Ilvermorny School, which Harry pretended he had at least heard of.

“So, have you been an Auror long?” asked Daniel.

“No, less than a — er, not too long,” Harry said, catching himself. “I’m still working my way up.”

“Is that why you’re—” Hortense gestured at Malfoy’s back, and finished in a whisper. “—partnered with…you know…”

So she did recognize the name.

“You shouldn’t set so much store in celebrity, ma’am,” Malfoy said, not turning around. “I scored better than him on every aptitude test we take to join the division.”

Harry decided against sharing with this innocent family the comprehensive list now populating his thoughts, of everything he had ever beaten Malfoy at, which was pretty much everything they’d ever both done. “He’s only joking,” he said airily instead. “He doesn’t know my scores.”

Now Malfoy did turn around, casting a pitying look at Harry. “It’s the poignant truth at the heart of the legend, really. That the Chosen One turns out to be so perfectly mediocre.”

Harry smiled blandly. “You’re finished, I gather?”

Malfoy stood up. “I put a few extra protections on,” he said, addressing himself to the couple. “There weren’t any charms against arson. Incendio.”

A jet of fire shot from his wand. The flame licked up the side of the house, finding no purchase on the wooden shutters or the lovely tumbling ivy, and then loudly crackled into nothingness like fireworks.

“Doubles as an alarm,” Malfoy said. “So shall we?”

The entrance hall was cavernous. A pair of curved twin staircases hugged the room’s sides, retreating into an upstairs murk. Gold plasterwork adorned the distant ceiling. Harry’s cottage already mocked him with its bare walls and the defensive clusters it made of what furniture he had; he felt secondhand stress at the idea of having to fill a place like this. Then again, he had no family.

“Really, it’s a bit big,” Hortense said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “Dan’s parents will be coming to live with us too, and my sister and her baby. We just wanted to get through all this first — they’re Muggles, of course, we want to make sure everything’s safe for them…”

Malfoy hummed to himself, enjoying some private joke as he touched a bannister. It occurred to Harry that Malfoy might well have been hosted in this house under its previous owners. Surely he’d have said. Well, why was that sure?

Malfoy turned to the Thistledowns. He seemed weirdly excited.

“The team that was here before, did they let you know about any sort of — quirks? In the house?”

Hortense and Daniel looked at each other. “No, I don’t think so,” Daniel said.

“Well, that’s not right,” Malfoy said. He didn’t elaborate, and they began.

Thrown-open double doors off the entrance hall took them into an enormous living room, all the more yawning for its current lack of furniture. Rows of built-in bookshelves held nothing. The children took running starts over the blood-red carpet and tumbled into half-executed somersaults and cartwheels.

An imposing mantle of white marble stood out against the dark wood-paneled walls; Malfoy crossed to it immediately.

He ran his hand over it, nearly as pale as the stone. “This one’s fun,” he said, and worked off his ghastly silver signet ring.

He leaned against the mantle in arrogant repose and held the ring out in his outstretched hand. “Jemma, come here.”

Unlike her brother, who was not keen to interact with the adults, Jemma was gleeful as she skipped over and reached out for the ring.

Malfoy closed his hand. “With my thanks for your discretion, fidelity, and many years of service to the family.” He opened his palm. “Now put it in your pocket, and leave us.”

Smiling hugely enough to reveal a missing bottom tooth, Jemma took the ring, stuffed it in the pocket of her pinafore, and sprinted out of the room.

“Not too far, please,” said Daniel, who didn’t look altogether happy for Malfoy to be playacting with his child.

“Come back,” Malfoy said as he slipped the ring back onto his finger. As Jemma shuffled back toward them, patting and inspecting her pocket in frustration, Malfoy displayed it to her. “As long as you’re touching the mantle, it’s the thought that counts exclusively. Although I’d be careful with how this one’s arranged, generally you want them through the front gates before they notice…maybe this is more of a sure thing if you’re permitting Disapparition, which, honestly,” he beseeched the parents, “why would you…”

“Let’s move on,” Harry said, as the younger Harry snickered and Jemma approached the edge of tears. Shock of shocks that Malfoy was terrible with kids.

Malfoy turned with renewed energy to Hortense. “Do you know which hall the ancestral portraits were hung in?”

“Er — no,” she said, apologetically.

“I can guess,” he said, and went on.

Nearly every room they worked through had some little “quirk,” as Malfoy had called them. In the ballroom, he showed them a floor tile that, when tapped, sent the chandelier crashing to the floor with the force of an explosion only to harmlessly reassemble itself (“Great bit of drama if you’re hosting something dull like diplomatic talks”); and in the kitchen pantry, he found a knot of wood that you could press to be transported to the cramped, lightless elves’ quarters below the floor. (“They’ll usually Apparate, but sometimes they’re indisposed and you need them out of sight at once.”)

At last, as they went into an empty bedroom, there seemed to be something for the Aurors to do. Harry couldn’t help his eagerness as an uncanny clang sounded from inside the cupboard along the far wall, followed by a weird moan.

“If you’ll wait outside,” he said to the Thistledowns. “We’ll have a look at this.” And shut the door to the room.

Malfoy, who in the presence of strangers had been if not friendly then at least engaged, returned instantly to surliness once he and Harry were alone. He stepped aside, sweeping his arm toward the rattling cupboard door in an it’s all yours gesture.

“Might be a boggart,” Harry said. “They love shutting themselves up in little spaces like that.”

Harry drew his wand, but hesitated. What would a boggart become for Malfoy — surely not Voldemort? Or — God forbid — something to do with his own father? Harry would rather face any fear of his own than gain some unholy insight into Malfoy’s daddy issues.

But what fear of Harry’s own? When last he’d faced dementors, he’d found that icy despair could no longer touch him. Protected by his resurrected parents, freshly retrieved from death, soul barricaded by the improbable fact of his life…well, it was a unique circumstance. But even if he weren’t immune to their monstrous effect any longer, he felt equipped. Confident, even. And if he was hoping the boggart would come out as a dementor, wasn’t that a pretty good indication they were no longer the thing he feared most?

Harry had been through a lot. And he’d been scared a lot. He didn’t necessarily feel that frightened of things anymore. What he felt instead were more like intangible, yawning worries: What if he never fell in love again? What if his friends didn’t need him? What if he’d peaked at seventeen and he was going to get more bored and more boring forever? Uselessness, loneliness, a long and pointless aftermath: how could a boggart embody fears like that?

“So…what happens if your greatest fear is dying?” Malfoy asked, evidently thinking along similar lines. “Does it turn into death? Does it just kill you?”

It wasn’t a bad point. Harry didn’t really fear death himself; not in the panicked, animal way, not when he’d already, technically, been a bit killed. But Malfoy dropping dead wouldn’t do. Harry was sort of curious, honestly, to have his greatest fear articulated to him. Riddikulus, he reminded himself. Whatever it was, make it stupid.

He raised his wand. “You open the door and I’ll take it. Ready?” Malfoy nodded. “One…two…three!”

Malfoy flicked his wand and the door flew open. Out drifted a floating head.

“Er,” Harry said. It was no one he knew. It wasn’t even human. It was made of metal; hundreds of intricate, overlapping plates of shifting, gleaming brass, tucking and stacking in tiny, clicking movements to approximate the tics of a human face. It blinked two curved copper sheets over two black apertures.

“Oh, hell yes,” Malfoy said. “It’s a brazen head!”

“Is it real?” Harry asked. For all the banging and clanging it had been doing in the cupboard, it now floated serenely. It reminded Harry of a cat, demanding attention only to do nothing with it.

“What brand of cigarettes do I smoke?” Malfoy asked it.

The soft clinks and whirs began anew as the head’s mouth slowly opened, in small, ratcheting jerks. Dun-colored and disturbing inside were a set of unmistakably human teeth, the only feature on the shining head that implied an advanced age.

“Dunhill,” it stated. Its bright, startling voice sounded like a shaken handful of coins.

“I was Occluding, too,” Malfoy said, bringing out a pack from his pocket to show Harry that it did, indeed, say Dunhill across. “Potter, these are incredibly rare. I don’t think anyone’s seen one in a century at least.”

Harry did not like the note of greed creeping into Malfoy’s voice. “Big deal, so it guessed your brand,” he said. “Maybe it’s just got a magic eye that can see into your pocket.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Who’ll win the league in Quidditch this year?”

Cranks spun along the cheeks, and the head’s jaw worked open again. “Falmouth Falcons,” it said haltingly.

“Back-to-back, nice!” Malfoy said. He turned to Harry. “Tell Ginny Weasley she can suck my dick.”

“Excuse me?” Harry said, weighing how severely he could kick Malfoy’s arse without the children outside cottoning on.

Malfoy was putting on a pair of dragonhide gloves he’d taken from a lapel pocket. “Someone had to make this, you understand? A diviner of an order we haven’t seen in, like, five hundred years. It’s completely priceless. Selwyn’s a legend for keeping it from the Dark Lord, honestly…”

“It belongs to the Thistledowns,” Harry said. “So I can’t imagine what you think you’re doing.”

Malfoy stared at him. “You know I was asking silly questions on purpose. It’ll answer anything. It can’t just stay with some family. Listen, we can tell them it was a boggart and we got rid of it, and then we can take it with us.” He saw he wasn’t convincing Harry. “Y’know, to confiscate. For study. At the Department of Mysteries.”

“It’s theirs,” Harry said. “It’s their house.”

“But that’s not fair!” Malfoy said. He reached a gloved hand gingerly toward the brazen head. It backed away with an affronted grunt like a furnace kicking. “They just lucked into it, it’s too valuable for them to keep!”

“Inherited wealth is a bitch, huh?” Harry planted his palm on the brass face and pushed it back into the cupboard, closing the door on it.

“You did this with the Elder Wand too, didn’t you, you have no fucking reverence for masterworks of design.” Disgusted, Malfoy tugged the gloves back off. “I won’t hold my breath for you to donate that Invisibility Cloak to the neediest cases.”

“If you bet on the Falcons, I’ll report you,” Harry said.

“Have fun proving anything,” Malfoy said nastily. “I always bet on the Falcons.”

As Harry turned to leave, Malfoy knocked on the closed door to the cupboard. “Hey, who scored better on the Auror examinations, me or him?” he asked, leaning in to hear.

“Draco Malfoy,” said the muffled mechanical voice.

“Well,” Malfoy said, smirking. “We didn’t really need an omniscient automaton for that one.”

Harry’s mood became fouler as they continued through the house, Malfoy’s brighter and brighter. It was obvious he just loved it here. Harry comforted himself with the justice of Malfoy’s own lavish home having been taken away from him, and nursed a growing resentment: there were no curses left in the house, plainly. This was naked PR for the Ministry, sending Aurors to dazzle Muggleborns and make them think they were a top priority for a government that had persecuted them so recently, that had always drug its feet ensuring their safety, even as pureblood mania grew and grew over the years.

All the better to send their flashy recent hire, Harry Potter, defender of the meek. And his partner, scion of infamous purity, conscripted into uprightness and here to help. For the first time, Harry understood the point of hiring Malfoy: it signified that the old families weren’t out there scheming, but had been brought to heel and put on the payroll.

After another half-hour of moving furniture, unrolling rugs, and troubleshooting the plumbing (Harry) and pompously revealing secret passageways (Malfoy), it occurred to Harry that even though Malfoy’s crash course in old-money living was illuminating for the new owners, it was also a kind of power play. There was a certain tinge of noblesse oblige, a certain reinforcement of class, in Malfoy’s facility with a total stranger’s house. Plus, he was managing not to help with any of the manual labor, which Harry supposed he thought no one was noticing.

“Hey,” Harry said, catching Malfoy’s arm as the Thistledowns went on into the next room. “We were supposed to be in and out in two hours. We’re here to make sure they’re safe and settled, not give them a history tour.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Malfoy said, jerking out of his grip. “Believe me, no one else who knows this shit would ever explain it to them.”

“What a saint! Not an hour ago you were trying to steal from them!” Harry hissed. “And nobody cares how to send an elf away after you break its legs for walking too loud. Some traditions it’s fine to let die.”

“You’re such a git,” Malfoy muttered. Harry left him, and followed the Thistledowns into the umpteenth sitting room.

“Last room!” Hortense sighed happily.

“Fuck,” Malfoy said tonelessly behind them.

“And could you mind your—” Harry broke off as he wheeled around. “—language…”

Malfoy had just come over the threshold into the room, and something had been triggered. His eyes were nothing but milky, vacant orbs, rolled back into his head. He seemed eerily unmoored, and taller than normal: Harry realized he was very slightly levitating, the tips of his shoes grazing the floor. Warily, Harry put a hand on his shoulder and, when that didn’t harm either of them, pushed him back down to the ground.

“Malfoy,” he said. Malfoy remained unresponsive for a long moment, and then his flinty gray irises came back into view. His face split into a delighted grin.

“Malfoy,” he echoed, only the voice was not his own. It was the warm, high, scratchy voice of a middle-aged woman. “A pureblood’s come to sell me out.”

“What’s happened to him?” said Daniel, drawing his wand. Good man, Harry thought. He took his out too.

As did Malfoy. “Expelliarmus,” Harry said instantly, and caught Malfoy’s wand as it zipped to him.

Malfoy didn’t seem bothered. He reached into his pockets with both hands and started taking things out. The field guide, the gloves, the cigarettes, he pulled out and dropped onto the floor indiscriminately. Out came herbological components, a notebook, a pocket knife. The knife he held onto.

“Accio knife,” Harry said warily. “What are you doing?”

Malfoy kept on. He took out his field healing kit, then another potions kit, which he popped open. With steady, fast hands, he removed a small, foreboding vial of something completely black, which looked just like ink except it was obviously not. He went to uncork it.

“Accio potion! Accio potions kit!” Harry yelled. “Stop it!”

Undeterred and unlistening, Malfoy picked up a china plate from the neat stack on the credenza and smashed it down. Hortense screamed at the noise, gathering up her children. Malfoy’s hand began to ooze blood where he held an awkwardly shaped shard, almost as wide as his palm. Harry moved to put himself between Malfoy and the family.

“Death to blood traitors,” Malfoy said in the weird, foreign voice, and Harry, understanding finally what he meant to do, lunged at him.

He caught Malfoy’s wrist just as he plunged the shard of porcelain toward his own pale throat, and pushed it out of the way so that it carved only a shallow scratch.

Enraged, not-Malfoy let out a high scream and attacked. He didn’t move like himself — Harry had fistfought him only the other day, he realized blurrily — but instead fought like…well, like a girl. He made claws with his hands instead of closing them into fists, and threw his weight awkwardly. Unsure what kind of magic this was and how it would react to wandwork, Harry swung him round to get him off-balance, kicked out his knees, and sat on him.

“Who are you?” Harry demanded.

“Just a concerned homeowner,” not-Malfoy said sweetly.

“What do you want?”

Whoever was animating Malfoy looked at Harry witheringly. “I want the mudbloods out of my house.”

“Pretty roundabout strategy,” Harry said. He wracked his brain for anything he’d ever learned about getting someone unpossessed; when Voldemort had done it to him, he’d immediately found Harry’s body inhospitable and scarpered.

“It’s a many-tentacled strategy! You think I’d possess the unclean?! No, some delightful curses await them,” she said darkly. “But blood treachery deserves its own reward.”

She didn’t seem to know that the rest of her work had been undone weeks ago; nor did she have any reaction to the presence of Harry Potter or to the Muggleborns who were still in the room with them. She was herself a curse, Harry guessed, probably not a sentient spirit; she was limited to what she’d been set to do. In this case, attack and kill any purebloods chaperoning an effort to integrate the space.

“Well, you haven’t killed him,” Harry said impatiently. “So what’s your Plan B?”

Malfoy smiled simperingly. “Plan B is death to blood traitors. Maybe I’ll walk him off a cliff. Or just starve him.”

With a bizarre giggle, she lifted Malfoy’s head and knocked it back hard against the floor.

“Stop!” Harry said, cradling the back of Malfoy’s head with both hands. Then he felt Malfoy’s hands groping him in search of his wand, and jerked back. “Hey, cut it out!”

With one hand still protecting the back of Malfoy’s head, Harry found his wand, summoned one of Malfoy’s discarded gloves, and inflated it into something like a hand-shaped balloon. He stuffed it under Malfoy’s head, wincing as fine hair snagged against the rough texture. Dragonhide wouldn’t make a comfortable pillow, but it would at least stop him cracking his skull open.

He considered stuffing the other glove into Malfoy’s mouth, but the curse would probably just try to choke on it.

Malfoy lurched and kicked mightily under Harry, almost succeeding in throwing him off. The blood pebbling along the thin scratch at Malfoy’s neck smeared as they struggled, more getting all over Harry as Malfoy shoved at his face and shoulders with his wounded hand. With effort, Harry pinned his wrists.

Harry sighed. He was going to have to take Malfoy back to HQ in this annoying state, thwarting all his attempts to kill himself until he could get him sorted. Come on Malfoy, just toss her out… he willed.

“Listen, lady, he’s about as pure as pond water! He’s a thief and a gambler and he smokes like a chimney! Even Muggles think it’s a filthy habit!”

“What are you talking about?” she snapped.

“Cigarettes! They’re little pipes filled with tar and this guy slurps them up day and night!”

The look of skepticism flashing over Malfoy’s features was off-putting; it wasn’t the way he’d move his own face naturally, which made it look like bad acting. “Oh I don’t believe you! You’re making that up!”

“Look!” Harry said, and caught both of Malfoy’s wrists in one hand so he could use the other to grope around for the cigarettes she’d thrown on the floor. He closed on them and thrilled at his luck — Smoking causes cancer was printed boldly across, along with a picture of a ruined lung.

Not-Malfoy clucked in disgust and thrashed under him. Harry’s one-handed grip couldn’t keep hold of both Malfoy’s wrists and she wrenched one free, closing it around Harry’s throat.

“And that’s not the worst,” Harry wheezed. “He shags Muggles!”

“No he doesn’t!” she said, tightening her grip.

“Oh yeah!” Harry squeezed out. “Muggle blokes!”

Stunned, the possessed Malfoy let go of his neck. “But what about making a pure and fruitful marriage?!”

Desperate and unthinking, Harry snatched up the shard of china Malfoy had tried to off himself with, and sliced his own thumb.

“Dirty blood—” he said, yanking Malfoy’s hand toward him even as it reinvigorated the other hand’s efforts to claw his face. He ground his bleeding thumb into the wound. “Look — it’s getting in there, feel it—”

“Ew! Stop it! Ew!”

Malfoy gave a bucking shudder and went still. Then he blinked, eyes clearing.

“Are you back?” Harry said.

“What the fuck, Potter!” Malfoy seethed, recovering instantly into anger. “Did you just make us blood brothers?!”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Harry snapped back, spitefully glad he was sitting on Malfoy’s chest. He was winded, and his bloody hands felt sticky.

“And I’ll thank you not to tell my business to fucking disembodied hausfraus!”

“Stop swearing in front of civilians!”

“Oh, we don’t mind!” squeaked Hortense. The Thistledowns had emerged from under the table where they’d taken cover. She smiled at Harry and Malfoy encouragingly when they both looked over. Harry realized how insane they must look, yelling at each other, Harry sitting on top of Malfoy. Once again, they were both covered in blood. Hastily Harry got up.

“So is that woman gone?” Hortense asked.

“No,” Malfoy said, standing. “You’ll need the curse-breaker to have another go.”

“We’ll let them know,” Harry said. “Just don’t have any pureblood friends over in the meantime.”

As they said goodbye in the entrance hall, Harry noticed Malfoy had already queued up an unlit cigarette between two fingers of his uninjured hand.

“Bye!” squealed the children, who thankfully seemed invigorated and not traumatized by the excitement. “Bye-bye Harry Potter! Bye-bye Mr. Ghost!”

They trudged back out onto the gravel drive. “Do you need—” Harry started, gesturing to Malfoy’s bleeding palm.

“Mm,” Malfoy remarked, cigarette now dangling from his mouth. He wandlit it with his off-hand, shrugged the wand under his armpit, and rummaged in a few pockets. “Ugh, nothing’s in the right spot!” he whined.

“I can hold something for you,” Harry said, but Malfoy ignored him. With difficulty he pulled his healing kit out of a right-side pocket with his left hand, stood on one leg to balance it on his thigh, and extracted essence of dittany.

“Jesus,” Harry muttered, watching him try to unstopper it one-handed. He snatched it off him and opened it himself. “Let me see.”

Malfoy held out his messy hand and Harry squeezed a few drops of liquid onto it. There was so much dried blood that it didn’t look much different healed, but Malfoy clenched and unclenched it a couple times and then shoved it away in his pocket.

Harry looked back at the house. The children were pressed against the glass of a front window, staring at them. Jemma breathed on the glass and wrote HI!, facing herself. Harry, who was too young to write, made some lines.

“Can’t believe they missed that curse,” Harry said.

“No purebloods on the curse-breaking team,” Malfoy said. “I guess we still have our uses.”

He sounded amused, but it struck Harry as a depressing thing to say. Malfoy was bearing up well considering he’d just been cursed, possessed, and nearly compelled into killing himself.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked.

“Apart from having left literally probably half a million Galleons in that house. I could strangle you.”

“You did strangle me.”

He’d missed the point of Harry’s question, either genuinely or to avoid answering. Almost certainly the latter. It was unlike him to play an injury down.

“Look, I’m sorry for what I said about your — your personal life being — not pure,” Harry said, feeling incredibly awkward. “You know that’s not what I think. I was just trying to get her to leave.”

Malfoy seemed unmoved by the apology. As Harry had known he would be. Still, he’d had to clarify, for his own conscience.

“I already told you I don’t care what you think of me,” Malfoy said. Then there was a great crack, and Harry was left alone with his cigarette’s stale and dissipating fumes.

Chapter Text

Harry and Malfoy continued to get more wounded than anticipated. Next, Malfoy had his mouth hexed off by a hag (a welcome reprieve), then they both became violently ill from a curse-posting hermit’s Permanent Dizzy Spell. There was a strain of Dark magic enthusiasts, it turned out, who found the intrusion of Harry Potter into their dealings to be too much to bear, and were driven by his presence to new highs, or lows, of criminality. To say nothing of the friendly fire Harry was unlucky enough to catch at least once weekly.

By the end of their first month they’d exceeded their allotment not only of Blood-Replenishing Potion, but also of Wiggenweld and burn paste.

“Of course we want Aurors to have everything they need for fieldwork,” said MLE’s office manager, Orestes Middleoak. “But there’s a budget for these supplies. We do train on best practices for the field to minimize the risk of injury.”

“Tell it to him,” Harry and Malfoy both said.

Zenobia, who had apparently taken on the mantle of orienteer for them, became gentler and more remedial in her case file presentations. “So as you can see here,” she’d say pointedly, “the suspect has reacted poorly in the past to feeling cornered. So…what kind of environment do you think you might try to seek out for an initial conversation?”

Neither Harry nor Malfoy responded to this treatment. If there was one thing they had in common, it was a hair trigger about being condescended to.

Zenobia evidently had a limit to her patience too: finally, one morning, it was Robards himself who slapped a file down on the divider between their cubicles. “No combat,” he barked. “Don’t even take your wands out.”

He left the file and walked away. Harry guessed their orientation period had ended.

“I get the feeling he dislikes us,” Harry said, watching Robards’ broad form disappear back down the corridor to his office.

“Speak for yourself,” Malfoy said. “You have problems with authority.”

“I’d rather have my problem with authority than yours, bootlicker,” Harry countered. He took a look at the assignment, which wasn’t a case file. It was a script for a presentation, and a number of copies of what looked like a quiz for students.

“We’re going to Hogwarts,” he determined.

“Surely we’re not arresting children for wrongthink just yet,” Malfoy said.

Harry read on: The Dark Arts Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program gives young witches and wizards the skills they need to abjure Dark Magic and the Black Arts. Led by Aurors of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement…

"Have you heard of, like, Scared Straight?"

“Sure,” Malfoy said, and smirked. “I did a program like that.”

Harry was taken aback. "With your parents?"

“Oh, they insisted,” Malfoy said, his smirk growing. “For some reason they felt I could use reinforcement on the importance of marriage and procreation to a pureblood society.”

Harry blinked. Malfoy was making a joke. Most unexpectedly: a joke about his own family.

“Just me and a bunch of really friendly Durmstrang guys who spoke hardly any English.” Malfoy hummed, gazing into the distance. “Great summer. Learned a lot.”

Harry had no idea if he was being serious or not. “Touching,” he said eventually. “But we’re supposed to teach the children to stay away from the Dark Arts.”

Malfoy's face crumpled into a distasteful frown. "Ew, I'm not doing that."

Harry perused the topics they’d cover. The corrosive qualities of Dark magic on your soul… How addiction to magical power would destroy your relationships… The cruel people who’d take advantage of you, even as you thought you were in control…

“Things might’ve turned out differently if someone had done it for you,” Harry suggested.

Malfoy, increasingly adolescent in aspect, scoffed. “No they wouldn’t’ve. Corny adults from the government coming to lecture me on why everything cool is strictly forbidden? Yeah, no.”

"Well, it's our assignment. So."

Malfoy snatched the file away from him. “Let me guess, it’s a special presentation for at-risk youth only, as in, Slytherin House. You know this kind of profiling does more harm than good.”

“We’re speaking to the fifth years,” Harry said, pointing to the relevant paragraph. “All four Houses.”

Malfoy tsked. “Administering abstinence training at fucking Hogwarts. What a load of shite.”

Malfoy swore quite a lot, Harry had noticed. The coarse language made a funny sort of mismatch with his posh accent and fastidious carriage. It was the zeal of the convert, Harry suspected: Malfoy’s uptight parents seemed the types to Scourgify a kid’s mouth. Or maybe, Harry thought uncharitably, it was such a hardship for him not to say mudblood anymore that he had to overdo it with everything else.

“I’ll do all the talking,” Harry said. That would be best, anyway, if Malfoy wasn’t prepared to express these talking points without sarcasm. “But you have to come, or I’ll tell Robards.”

They Apparated into Hogsmeade Village. It hadn’t changed since Harry’s time at Hogwarts: or rather, it had been damaged heavily, and a lot of care had been put into mending it into very similar shape.

The same went for the castle itself, which loomed in the distance. The reconstruction had taken a year of devoted volunteering. Architectural mages, charm-workers, even runic experts to untangle and renew some of the castle’s oldest magic. Harry had lent what aid he could, which had mostly been holding up shield charms while knobbly old scholars broke down into pedantic arguments in the middle of elaborate rituals.

Malfoy, he realized belatedly, had set off up the path to the castle as soon as they’d appeared.

A peal of husky, attractive laughter floated out of a doorway beside Harry as it flew open and dumped out a few midmorning patrons. It was the Three Broomsticks, and Madam Rosmerta was inside, still keeping the inn and tending the bar. Malfoy was already ten meters ahead.

“Not keen on being recognized?” Harry called after him. No answer.

Harry allowed himself some contempt as he watched Malfoy rush away. He was a coward. These were his own choices haunting him, and whatever guilt or shame or fear of reprisal he was scurrying away from was the only punishment he’d got for them. He could have been in prison instead of returning by invitation to the school he’d done his level best to destroy. The price of having lived through it, of living freely, was that he had to live with it.

Harry jogged to catch up to him.

“It’s a long walk,” he said. “I know a bunch of shortcuts if we go back to the High Street.”

“No.”

“There’s one in the cellar of Honeydukes—”

“And why would two grown men be let into the cellar of Honeydukes?” Malfoy snapped, and increased his pace.

“We’re Aurors, we can go where we please,” Harry said. “There’s one in the Hog’s Head, too, that goes to the Room of Requirement—”

“No,” Malfoy ground out. “I won’t go in there.”

It occurred to Harry that he didn’t actually know what kind of shape the Room of Requirement was in. Crabbe had completely torched it. Harry remembered Malfoy, face smeared gray with ash and sweat, coughing and shaking and realizing Crabbe was dead.

Malfoy was walking with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched up. He remembered too.

“Have you been back since—”

“No and I don’t want to be back now. Go take whatever stupid secret passage, I’ll walk by myself.”

Harry sighed in frustration. There was no point to their arriving separately. And he could see that Malfoy was upset. Managing his moods to get them through their assignments was proving to be a non-trivial portion of Harry’s job. And not a portion he excelled at.

“No, okay, we can take the path,” he said. “No problem.”

Malfoy shoved Harry hard enough that he was forced to take a stumbling step back. “Don’t take that fucking tone!” he snarled.

Don’t put your fucking hands on me, Harry urgently wanted to say next, and shove Malfoy in return, knock him to the ground even. Pull yourself together. If you’re so ashamed of it all, you shouldn’t have done it.

Instead he went with a curt “Fine,” and kept walking, leaving Malfoy behind.

It was a long walk, and it was cold. And — he surreptitiously checked his beat-up old wristwatch — taking the long way would make them late. Not very professional.

Harry looked up at the castle. It had been almost five years since the Battle of Hogwarts. The oldest students here would have been second years during the year the school was run by Death Eaters, the year that ended in the Battle. But Harry hadn’t come to school that year, not until that very night. So that was the only class here that overlapped with him at all: he’d done his sixth and final year during their first.

Hogwarts didn’t feel so long ago to him. The time he’d spent here felt like his whole life: those years certainly eclipsed the eleven that had come before them, which didn’t even feel like life. Everything had changed so much during that time, in this castle, that he didn’t even have the language for it. And now most of the kids here he’d never met. He was just part of the vast, boring world of adults to them. Most of them had never even known a Hogwarts with Dumbledore as Headmaster. What a loss, what a lack, and they’d never know.

Harry cleared his throat. He hadn’t expected it, but he was a bit emotional coming back here too. Wiping at his eyes as casually as he could, he looked back to check on Malfoy.

Malfoy had stopped a ways back, and was bent forward with his arm braced on a tree, like he was fighting a dizzy spell. Harry went back to him; as he approached he could hear that Malfoy was breathing slow and deliberate, and see that his eyes were screwed tightly shut.

“What’s wrong now?” Harry asked.

“Fuck off,” Malfoy said. “Just give me a second.”

There was sweat gathering at Malfoy’s temple. It seemed like he was having some kind of panic attack. “What can I do?” Harry said, feeling awkward.

“Go away.”

Harry had, of course, barged in on him doubled over in abject panic before. Please don’t start crying, Harry willed. He took out his field healing kit to see if there was anything useful.

“Which would you like?” Harry held out a calming draught in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other.

Malfoy looked up sharply, studied Harry’s offerings, and took both.

Harry squinted out at the grounds to give him some privacy. There would be a vindictive pleasure, naturally, in airing an innocent concern up the chain that his partner was mentally unfit. Or at least threatening to. He knew it was what Malfoy would do in his shoes. But truthfully it felt like a cheap way to best him.

“Okay,” Malfoy said, standing up straight. He held out Harry’s supplies, both half finished, for Harry to deal with and put away. He really was a brat.

“You’re welcome,” Harry muttered, but Malfoy had already continued up the path.

Harry caught up to him again. His shoulders weren’t up by his ears any longer, his arms swung freely as he walked. Harry knew he wasn’t going to talk about any of it.

“Might stop by Dumbledore’s portrait to say hi,” Harry said. “If you have anything you need to say to him.”

Malfoy held two fingers to the pulse point at his throat. “Pretty good calming draught,” he remarked, and ignored Harry’s invitation otherwise.

Professor McGonagall awaited them in the Entrance Hall. “You’re late, Potter,” she said to him in stern greeting.

Her brogue cracked over Harry like a ruler to the knuckles, but he found that he didn’t care at all. The warmth of coming in from the cold, the familiar smell of worn stone and the cast of the candlelight and the happy chatter he could hear bouncing off the walls, even McGonagall yelling at him, it all felt wonderful. “Professor,” he gushed, and hugged her.

“Oh, really,” she said, though he could hear she was touched. She indulged him with a few pats on the back before she pulled away. “Come, the students are waiting. You’ll have to truncate your presentation; if it runs into lunch they won’t listen anyway.”

“No problem,” Harry said. “We’ll be quick.”

McGonagall turned, and absorbed the other half of we.

“Mr. Malfoy,” she said, quelling unsuccessfully what sounded like considerable shock.

“Auror Malfoy,” Malfoy corrected her. “Professor.”

“Well.” She blinked a number of times before speaking diplomatically. “I can’t say it’s the career I’d have predicted for you. But one’s former students do turn up in surprising fields.”

Malfoy smiled the shit-eating smile of someone who couldn’t be given detention. Who was, in fact, medically calm. “It’s a calling.”

She led them before the fifth years, who were gathered in the Great Hall. They fiddled with the empty plates and silverware, eager, as McGonagall had said, to move on to lunch.

A few craned their necks to see the visitors as they entered, but with nothing like awe or even piqued interest. Harry returned to his mental math: these were children whom he’d never met, who had only ever gone to a reconstructed, peaceful Hogwarts. He wondered how famous he even was to teenagers. Maybe he was chiefly a concern of their parents’.

“Quiet, please!” McGonagall began. “Today you’re going to hear from two Aurors. Who can tell us what an Auror is? Branstone?”

Eleanor Branstone, Harry remembered, clinging to it. But this was a boy. Some younger brother.

“They’re cops,” Branstone said.

“Not precisely,” McGonagall said. “Auror Potter, why don’t you introduce yourself and your work.”

“Certainly,” Harry said, smiling. “My name’s Harry Potter—”

No reaction.

“—and I’m an Auror. Aurors are highly trained specialists in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Our focus is combatting the Dark Arts, and protecting the public from Dark wizards and other black magic practitioners.”

“So you’re cops,” the young Branstone said.

“Branstone,” McGonagall cut in. “Five points from Ravenclaw.”

Harry looked out at them. They looked back at him. They were young and yet they were not small.

“I have a question,” said the girl sitting beside Branstone, with an unsubtle hostility.

“There will be an opportunity for questions at the end,” McGonagall said.

“No, that’s all right,” Harry said. He was not intimidated by underage witches and wizards. He had survived things by their age that would make these teenagers piss themselves. “I can take a question, Miss…?”

“What exactly makes magic dark?” the girl asked, declining to give the name he’d requested.

“That’s a great question,” Harry said gamely. “The simple answer is that Dark magic is magic that’s harmful in nature. There are plenty of ways you can hurt people with magic by accident — I’m sure any of you who’ve ever blown up a cauldron in Potions will know what I mean—”

He left just the ghost of a pause there in case any of them wanted to award him an appreciative laugh, which they did not.

“—Or take something like Incendio, right, that can cause terrible damage when it’s cast irresponsibly — but Dark magic refers to the class of spells, rituals, potions, et cetera that basically run counter to life, they exist to destroy and cause harm.”

Adequately put, Harry felt. He smiled warmly at the girl.

“And what happens to people who use Dark magic?” she said, not smiling back.

“Do you want to take this one, Auror Malfoy?” Harry said.

“No, thank you,” said Malfoy, with total serenity.

“Well,” Harry began, “it comes at a steep price when you use magic to hurt people. You damage your soul. You start to change. You find that it becomes easier to hate people and harder to love them. You—”

“That’s not what I meant,” the girl interrupted. “I meant, what do you do to people who use Dark magic?”

“Oh,” Harry said.

Pointlessly he checked again whether Malfoy seemed interested in helping. He did not.

“We try and get between them and the people they want to hurt, basically,” Harry said. “A lot of what we do is recover cursed objects and dangerous potions. But sometimes in the line of duty we have to put a stop to — to people who want to harm others…people who use illegal curses, for example…”

“Like Unforgivable Curses,” she said. “For example.”

“Yes,” Harry said, relieved for the severity of the hypothetical. It seemed uncontroversial that people who wanted to commit murder should be stopped from doing so. “Inflicting an Unforgivable Curse earns the caster a life sentence in Azkaban.”

Never mind that Harry and Malfoy had both used them before and were standing here in Ministry of Magic uniforms earning Ministry of Magic salaries. But that was the type of thing she’d have already deployed if she’d had it ready.

“Well, I find that as soul-damaging as any spell!” the girl declared haughtily.

“You find what to be?” Harry said, slightly lost.

“That something could be officially unforgivable!” she said hotly. “That one act could condemn someone forever to imprisonment with no magic! Don’t you believe in rehabilitation?”

“Don’t all wizards have a right to their magic?” Branstone piped back up.

“No,” said Malfoy, who was evidently so attracted to unwise confrontation that he had been drawn in at last. “You can forfeit your right to magic.”

“But what if someone used an Unforgivable Curse on me, and I wanted to forgive them?” said a Hufflepuff.

“You might not be fit to,” Malfoy said. “Depending on the curse.”

“So who passes moral judgment on people? You?” demanded a Slytherin. “You and Harry Potter?”

Harry attempted to compose an answer about legislation and the Wizengamot and the social contract, but Malfoy, who was altogether too calm, shrugged and said, “That’s right.”

“And are you elected? Does the wizarding world vote to give you this authority?” asked a Ravenclaw.

“No,” Malfoy said, smiling now because he was enjoying himself.

“So whose interests do you serve then!” cried out a Gryffindor.

“Are you asking me personally?” Malfoy said.

“No need, is there?” said the snarling Branstone. “Auror Malfoy. Like we don’t know you’re fash!”

The look on Malfoy’s face was not only troubling, Harry realized, but familiar. At once activated and dead behind the eyes, like an invasive species in an ecosystem that could not check it. It was the look of the meanest fucking teenager Harry had ever known, giving in to his urge to bully.

“Children really are so much more forgiving than they used to be,” Malfoy said to Branstone, only the thinnest coil of glee detectable in his calm voice. “In my day when you had a breakout like that, you’d have to glamour it or people would have a go at you.”

“Pig!” shouted one of Branstone’s friends. A murmur of vulgar oinks and snorts rose from the Ravenclaw table and spread outward.

The glare McGonagall had trained on Harry was telling him that she was going to marshal all the forces of ancient Hogwarts magic to shrink him from a decorated war hero and a grown adult back into someone whose arse she could break her foot off in if he didn’t fix this immediately.

Harry improvised. He pressed a finger to his ear like he was receiving a top-secret message from a distant interlocutor. “Auror Malfoy,” he said grimly. “You’re required at HQ. You’ll need to go at once.”

Malfoy took the offered exit, but not before brandishing his wand. “If you’re going to act smart, children, you had better look smart,” he said with unconcealed delight, and swept his wand across the lot of them. He left the hall to a chorus of gulping and coughing as the fifth years’ ties tightened and their collars fastened shut.

Harry smiled out at them as they recovered. “Erm, so, we’ll finish with a little quiz on Dark Arts resistance…”

Twenty excruciating minutes later (“Could you get me Ginny Weasley’s autograph?” “No. No more questions.”), Harry escaped. He expected Malfoy to have left the premises, but a blindingly white head of hair caught his eye, gleaming Snitch-like, down by the lake.

“What the hell was that, Malfoy?!” Harry demanded as he approached. Malfoy was collapsed in an elegant sprawl, elbow braced on a bent knee while he smoked a cigarette, and his non-reaction to Harry’s yelling made Harry feel stupid standing there hands on hips. So he sat down beside.

“Bright kids,” Malfoy said, unbothered. “I think the giant squid might have died, he hasn’t taken my bait. This place seems so much smaller, doesn’t it?”

Harry saw, to his horror, that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s glittering, fathomless Black Lake had a cigarette butt floating in it half a meter from shore. He Summoned it.

“No! It’s an enormous castle, it doesn’t seem smaller!” Harry stuffed Malfoy’s wet refuse in his pocket. “You can’t raise your wand to Hogwarts students, you bloody psychopath, we’re going to get complaints from the parents!”

“My father will hear about this,” Malfoy said in a silly little voice. Harry realized with a shock that he was doing a bizarre and unprompted impression of himself. “Oh, I’m getting nostalgic,” Malfoy sighed, and Harry once again scrapped all working theories of his level of self-awareness.

Malfoy gave his cigarette a philosophical sort of look. “Funny that I was still desperate for a fag. I guess I’ve indeed progressed into physical addiction.”

It occurred to Harry, far too late, that he had allowed Malfoy to measure his own dose of calming draught and had not even watched him take it. Malfoy held it together pretty well, but the guy was heavily drugged. Harry had put his partner under the influence and then had put him, in uniform, in front of schoolchildren.

“Does that…does that concern you?” Harry attempted, trying for gentle.

“For the next — who knows — absolutely nothing concerns me.” Malfoy flicked the cigarette into the grass, where a tendril of smoke rose persistently until Harry ground it down with a heel. “Right, I’m freezing, show me one of these shortcuts. Plus I need to find the Bloody Baron. I’m pretty sure that oozing loser still owes me money.”

Chapter Text

In a sense, the school visit had been a success: the fifth year students’ sudden and strident interest in criminal justice reform meant more attention from Hogwarts’ O.W.L. class than the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had had in a few years. Nonetheless, Professor McGonagall requested that the next presentation be a touch more structured. Perhaps, she suggested, given by more senior Aurors.

“We thought, you know, ‘cause you’re our youngest, you’d connect with the children,” Zenobia explained with an apologetic shrug. “But the thinking now is that maybe a couple of retired officers would lend a more measured perspective.”

Malfoy, who was not eager to return to the school, was thrilled. Truthfully, Harry didn’t mind either: Robards had no choice but to send riskier assignments their way again.

For three weeks they investigated two deadly rival gangs of fairy dust dealers who all, to a man, turned out to be Imperiused by the same intense, twitchy young witch. They found her shut away in a rented room, consulting a convoluted diagram of murder plots, betrayals, alliances, even romances; she claimed she was keeping herself entertained since the cancellation of her favorite crime drama on the wireless.

Then they worked security for a state visit from the Vice President of the American Magical Congress, who kept fake-forgetting Harry’s name and boasted about barely knowing who Voldemort even was, but became so paranoid and hex-happy that they mostly ended up protecting other people from him.

Then they interrupted a plot to pipe noxious Nundu breath into a cul-de-sac of Muggle homes. The suspects were far from expertly in their use of Muggle gas lines and succeeded only in shutting off the heat to a few dozen houses in the middle of November.

Harry was shocked to hear Malfoy speaking coherently to a Muggle homeowner, telling him with a realistic dullness that there was no telling when the heat would be back, and demanding that they be let in to “check the furnace readings.”

“Pretty advanced for a pureblood,” Harry said, once they were alone in the cellar, inspecting the furnace from under Fume-Hooded Cloaks.

“Oh yes,” Malfoy said, casting his wand over a duct. “I know everything about our resourceful brethren. Personal computer. Fossil fuel.” He pronounced the words with schoolmarmish precision. “Anti-bi-otic. I did an owlet.”

“A what?”

“O.W.L. Equivalency Training.”

“And what on earth possessed you to do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Love for my fellow man.”

Harry snorted. “I don’t believe you.”

Malfoy sighed, as if it were terribly complicated. “Well, Potter — and this is detailed in court documents — my youth was destroyed, and my judgment warped, by coercion and misinformation from radical influences that I had no hope of resisting. And indeed I was quite impressionable and quite underage during my closest involvement with them.”

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Malfoy cut him off. “As I already said, this is in the public record of the highest court in wizardom as the proven truth.” With a theatrical roll of his eyes, he continued. “The Wizengamot was prepared to allow me to contribute to society, but in their wisdom they felt that that contribution would have to begin with a bit of…re-education.”

“So it was court-ordered,” Harry said.

“I had to get an Exceeds Expectations, which I did,” Malfoy said smugly. “So anything you need to know about telephones, I can tell you.”

“Oh yeah? How does a telephone work?”

Malfoy waved him off. “Look, you don’t become some kind of electricity scientist from one OWLET. I meant I know how to call somebody with one.”

“Electricity scientist,” Harry repeated, grinning.

Satisfied that the furnace was working healthily, Malfoy pushed his Fume-Hood back. He smiled virtuously at Harry. “You’re trying to provoke me into saying something bad. But you can’t, because I don’t have any bad thoughts anymore. I’m cured.”

Harry had feared that every mission would be a protracted fight, and they did argue a lot. But the more scrapes they scraped through, the more Harry began to understand Malfoy’s strengths.

He was, as he’d said, familiar with the Dark Arts. He could recognize with high accuracy the curses that shrouded sinister objects and unfortunate people, although he often let Harry touch them anyway so he could spring to the rescue with a counter-curse or antidote.

He was less brave than Harry, which was irritating but expected. And occasionally helpful, because he overprepared. His pockets were filled with a dozen things he needed and two dozen more he didn’t, and he never went into the field without his exquisite pair of dragonhide gloves, which he insisted on donning before reaching for anything dodgy. Usually it was unnecessary, but every so often, when a doorknocker spat acid or a piece of evidence demanded to stay at the scene, he was vindicated.

He was also something of a tinkerer. He’d repaired the Vanishing Cabinet, after all, he’d executed his little plans. He wasn’t terribly patient when he was bored, but he found tangled, multistep enchantments and precise potioneering less boring than Harry did. The latter Harry resented especially: maybe if he’d been favored by the teacher in his formative years he’d get more out of potion-brewing, but as it was, Harry preferred to competently follow clear written instructions, or else buy something readymade. Malfoy could sit for hours over a collapsible cauldron at his desk, working from components and guessing at properties, a frown of concentration pulling his pointed features closer together.

This came in handy after they were cut off from MLE’s healing potions completely. Harry nicked some Chizpurfle fangs and sloth brains from the seized contraband stores, and Malfoy made them their own.

What Malfoy wasn’t good with was people. Despite his repeated insistences that his upbringing had equipped him with impeccable manners and a facility with society intrigue, the truth was that he rubbed almost everyone the wrong way. He was, undeniably, annoying. Witnesses were put off by his snide, dismissive tone, and he didn’t know how to coax out information with curiosity, warmth, or strategic silence.

And frequently he was recognized. Not like Harry, who was generally recognized by everyone; Malfoy was recognized in particular by Dark wizards who had dealt with his father. This was not a good thing. Lucius Malfoy had few friends left in these crowds, and many of them, like Voldemort himself, thought a perfect way to let the elder Malfoy know what they thought of him would be to murder his beloved son. Harry came to learn that if a suspect at any point referred to Malfoy as “Lucius’ boy,” the encounter was very likely to end with Harry hauling his unconscious body out of harm’s way.

Harry was the better duelist and the cooler head. When things went sideways, he generally had to take charge, and to his surprise Malfoy often did as he instructed. Not without argument, and he didn’t let him hear the end of it if he made a mistake, but Malfoy generally seemed to trust Harry’s instincts in a crisis. Or else, Harry thought meanly, he was a natural at taking orders.

But he wasn’t really. Any suggestion Harry offered in the office or out of danger’s path was met with a no, if not a fuck off. When they were in the thick of it, though, they at times approached teamwork.

Harry was just slinging his satchel onto his shoulder one evening when Robards walked over and dropped a folder on his desk. Harry opened it, but closed it hastily when it appeared to be full of naked women.

"Veela," Robards remarked, nodding at the folder. "As you know, veela tend to gather together in covens. Usually they stay out in the fens, but occasionally they'll creep into wizarding districts and see what they can get away with. We've had a few disappearances around Upper Flagley. You'll investigate tomorrow."

"Veela?" Malfoy said, appearing at the cubicle wall. He wrinkled his nose as if such an assignment were miles below him. “We’re Aurors, not magizoologists.”

"You're the most competent team for the case," Robards said. "Potter's psychological profile shows a degree of resistance to compulsion and you're, well."

“Sir…are you implying I’m gay?” Malfoy said, putting his hand over his heart. "Wouldn't it be smarter to send me with someone else, then? Like a straight woman? Sir?"

Robards was already walking away, though. Malfoy pulled a face at his back.

Malfoy's mood had only soured by the time they Portkeyed out to the site of the disturbance the following evening, a terraced house on a wizarding block of Upper Flagley. It had recently been rented by the veela coven, and from the thumping bass it was emitting, it appeared they were having a do.

“These veela better have committed bloody murder,” Malfoy griped. “If we’re just dragging some randy mouth-breathers out of an orgy, this is a total waste of time.”

“What’s the issue?” Harry asked. “Are you afraid of women or something?”

“No, don’t be homophobic. I resent when I’m made to work evenings. I have a life.”

Harry put on a Healer’s clinical curiosity. “Tell me, do your nightmares often feature huge, insatiable maws that want to devour you?”

A reluctant smirk pulled at the corner of Malfoy’s mouth. Harry’d actually managed to make a joke he found funny and he was trying not to give him points. “You don’t want to know what my nightmares feature,” he said dryly. “And I’m only scared of the women in my family.”

"Well, you are quite blond," Harry observed. "Any relation?"

Now Malfoy seemed to take true offense. “Do you not actually know what pureblood means? No, there’s no fucking relation.”

“Touchy,” Harry muttered.

“Take it back or I’m compelled by the ancestors to challenge you to a duel.”

“I take it back,” Harry said, as they took the stairs up to the house. “I’m sure that, unlike every other pureblood family, yours doesn’t have dozens of shameful cover-ups in the lineage, the resemblance is a total coincidence, and nobody ever fucked a veela.”

The door opened in their faces. "Nobody ever did what?" purred a stunningly beautiful woman.

"Er—" Harry said, caught off-guard.

"Degree of resistance my arse!" Malfoy moaned.

“Good evening, ma’am,” Harry said, ignoring him. “Auror division.”

“Oh no, has there been a noise complaint?” the veela said with coquettish faux-concern. Harry had never been so close to one before. She smelled incredibly nice and visibly glowed. It was obvious that she was not human. “We’re just having a little party for our sister Polina, she’s getting married.”

“We don’t respond to noise complaints,” Malfoy said. “We’re not cops. Do you live here, ma’am?”

“Who wants to know?” she asked, sizing him up.

Stonily, Malfoy flashed his badge. “I’m Auror Malfoy, this is my partner Auror Potter. We’re seeking information about some recent disappearances.”

The veela tossed her silvery hair over her shoulder, shifting her attention away from Malfoy and onto Harry. Harry was suddenly aware that he hadn’t had sex in something like eight months. “Not the Harry Potter?” she asked.

Harry smiled mildly.

Malfoy insistently spoke again. “Auror Potter had a few too many fan encounters in the aftermath of the war, and he now suffers a cognitive delay due to advanced venereal pox. So please do address all your questions to me. Now — ma’am — we've had reports that three young, single men have gone missing in this area."

“Oh no!” she said, with comically wide eyes. “How terrible.”

“All three were last seen with members of your household,” Malfoy said pointedly. “If you are indeed part of the coven that lives here.”

She smiled, brushing away the seriousness of the situation like an eyelash on a companion’s cheek. “What are you implying, Auror Malfoy? We treat our men very well.”

She locked in on Harry again. “I’d love to show you boys around the place and assuage your worries. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” Harry heard himself say. He caught himself. They did need to go in and take a look around, but his answer had a quality of eagerness that required curbing. Not to mention he felt like it had been rather yanked out of him.

“In a moment,” Malfoy said, and rudely pulled the woman’s door shut on her. They were once again alone on the front step. Harry felt the temperature drop several degrees.

He sighed. He knew he was about to be lectured. “All right, let’s go in. I’m fine. Let’s go in.”

“I think we should leave,” Malfoy said. “This isn’t safe. Your judgment’s shot, your focus is weak, you’re completely compromised.”

“I said I’m fine!” Harry said. “You’re being uptight!”

“That’s right,” Malfoy snapped. “I object to this stringently. If I have to see you in some kind of,” he waved his hand vaguely over Harry’s body, “excitement, I’m seeking workers’ compensation.”

“God, shut up,” Harry said, and pushed the door open again.

It certainly was a party. The dim lights caught the gleaming hair of at least a dozen veela — surely way too many for a house share? — who were all dressed for a nightclub in tight, short dresses. More than one wore high heels in the house.

“Cheers, шлюхи!” one of them screamed, and then a group of four threw back shots. At length, an incredibly voluptuous veela noticed Harry and Malfoy at the door.

“Svetlana, you didn’t,” she said, rushing toward them in a fashion that made it obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Girls! Sveta’s ordered stripper cops!”

“We’re not cops,” Malfoy seethed.

“We’re not strippers!” Harry further clarified.

“Боже мой, is this one meant to be Harry Potter?! You’re the living end, Sveta!”

“I am Harry Potter!” Harry shouted. “We’re here from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement! This coven is under investigation!”

Harry’s outburst did not land with the gravity he’d hoped for.

“Oh, Polina should get first dibs, it’s her hen do.”

“Don’t be shortsighted, whoever’s ovulating gets first dibs!”

“We’re all ovulating, Meglena, the coven’s synced!”

“I think the other one’s cuter.”

“Он голубой.”

“Like I can’t close a conversion, Borislava! What is this, amateur hour?”

Harry got the impression from this frank discussion that there was little concern about what the Aurors overheard. Maybe the veela had nothing to hide. Then again, maybe they didn’t plan for any revelations to leave the house.

Malfoy hmphed in impatience and took from the inner pocket of his robes three photos from the case file. “If you’d take a look at these. Are any of these men familiar to you?”

A veela leaned over to look closer, allowing her fragrant hair to spill over Malfoy’s arm. “Couldn’t say,” she said airily. “Cute guys come and go around here.”

It was so hot in this room. Weren’t these creatures from Siberia or something? Wouldn’t they like the cold?

“Ma’am, take a step back,” Malfoy said firmly. He had his hand out in front of Harry, preventing one of them from sidling up to him. His harsh tone sent up a chorus of giggles.

“How about that tour?” purred Svetlana, who’d opened the door for them.

“We’ll go alone, if you don’t mind,” Malfoy said.

“Not at all,” she said. “It’s yours to explore.”

Malfoy dragged Harry out of the room, up a cramped staircase to the second floor.

“Merlin, Potter, are you even trying?” he hissed.

“I’m fine,” Harry said again, irritated. “You think I’ve never held off a groupie before?”

“If this is your best effort I’m surprised you don’t get slapped with a paternity suit every month!”

Harry ran a hand through his hair with a heavy exhale. It was harder to concentrate than he’d anticipated. Again his long dry spell pushed into his mind and he pushed the thought away. He pictured a quill writing in large cursive the word maneater, imagined it hung behind his eyes. There were missing persons here who needed his help, there was danger.

Malfoy fished from his robes a Peril Pointer, a small dowsing rod that was meant to lead them to someone in trouble. Trouble was, ‘trouble’ was so subjective and so pervasive that the tool was rarely worth using, and indeed it led them back and forth in the narrow house, turning them round and round across the same space like a magnet switching poles.

“Piece of shit,” Malfoy said. “I think it’s just pointing to you.”

“Sod it, get your wand out,” Harry said, and opened the first closed door he saw.

Within was a gauzy bedroom. From sounds alone, obviously occupied. At length, diaphanous drapery revealed three naked veela converging on a naked man.

Harry looked at Malfoy and gave a helpless grimace. Malfoy fished out the photos of the men they were looking for and held them up against the writhing scene. The veela-occupied man before them was a white guy with brown hair, which matched two of their missing charges.

“Sir! Pardon me, sir!” Malfoy said primly. “Are you Thomas Wolk?”

The man, who had a breast in his mouth, did not answer.

“Francis Higginbotham?”

Again, no answer. Malfoy looked at Harry, shrugged, put the photos away.

Harry cleared his throat. “Sir, if you could just give us an indication that this is consensual and you don’t require assistance, we’ll be on our way.”

The man’s raised middle finger broke free of the orgiastic mass and saluted them.

They found nothing else on the second floor. The missing men were not here, or else not here any longer.

“Like I said, waste of bloody time,” Malfoy said. “Now I’ve just got to get your dumb breeder arse out of here.”

But as they slunk down the staircase, the air was rent by a piercing, unearthly shriek of delight.

“TURN IT UP, Yevgenia! I LOVE THIS SONG!”

“Oh no,” Harry breathed.

All the veela were dancing. Not the choreographed movements he’d seen them do years before at the Quidditch World Cup: now they were dancing like drunk party girls, throwing their hair around and jumping and grabbing each other and squealing. But the effect was the same; in fact, Harry having finished puberty since then, it was stronger. It was like the air was spiced with sex. His throat worked. His mouth was open and he closed it.

“Potter, keep it together,” Malfoy said. He grabbed Harry’s face and turned it toward his own. “Don’t look at them, look at me.”

Harry’s breath came heavy. That wasn’t helping, being touched by Malfoy, whose hand was smooth and warm, unaffected by the winter dryness that had cracked Harry’s own knuckles.

Nor was it helping to be forced to look at him. He was no veela but he was very good-looking. His lips were slightly parted; Harry wished he would close them. Harry had the completely unwelcome thought that his eyes were the same color gray as Sirius’ had been. Because they were related.

“Stop,” Harry said, jerking his face away, and he heard the little note of desperation in the word and he could see that Malfoy heard it too.

Dignity had gone; retreat was the only choice. Harry put his eyes on the front door, willed everything around it into noise and blackness, and walked to it, through it, down the front steps.

He breathed, letting the cold air sting his lungs. Calmed down. It was humiliating, but it could have gone worse. At least the veela been drunk and inattentive, at least none of them had gone into bird mode. On second thought, Harry would have preferred that, it would have been straightforward. He saw no realistic path to ever getting laid again.

“You’re looking less spaced,” Malfoy said, stopping beside him. “Can we give up yet?”

Harry supposed he should have been grateful Malfoy wasn’t pressing him on what he’d just fled, but he felt incredibly flustered: hot, cold, embarrassed, lingeringly horny. Though sexual frustration was quickly giving way to frustration with the case.

“No, let’s interview the neighbors,” he decided.

But the neighbors, all suspiciously handsome young men, seemed somewhat the worse for their long-term proximity to the veela coven. Dozy and unobservant, they remembered little but their fondness for the girls next door.

The case was a wash. They’d need a warrant for Veritaserum and if the veela were smart they’d have moved on by the time it was signed. The missing men would probably die. At least it was a great way to go.

Harry was moments away from a demoralized Disapparition when he noticed himself not quite noticing an alley round the left side of the house. It had been there all along, but only with the forceful clearing of his faculties had he revealed it to himself. He fixed his attention on it. It resisted his interest, striking him as terminally boring. Classic Notice-Me-Not.

He nudged Malfoy. “I think we should go round the back.”

“What? Seems totally nondescript.”

“Exactly, look harder.”

“No, I don’t want to — aha.”

As they went around the house, dodging under the raucous shrieks coming from the windows, Harry’s mind kept jumping more and more frantically to nagging thoughts of unanswered correspondence and overdue paperwork. Good sign. They were moving through an enchantment.

“Look,” Malfoy said. A section of the shrubbery seemed dragged-and-dropped, a carbon copy of its surroundings. Malfoy waved his wand and it shrank back, revealing a slanted pair of metal doors. It looked to lead down into a cellar.

“That’s why the Peril Pointer was so fucked,” he said dryly. “The person in trouble was below us. What a piece of junk, it can’t point down?”

“Excellent,” Harry gushed, so thrilled to have at last made progress that he didn’t stop to consider how appropriate ‘excellent’ really was for someone’s unseen peril. “What’s the plan?”

Malfoy looked around. “One of us goes in, one of us keeps watch out here.”

“I’ll go in,” Harry offered.

“You’re useless with them, I’ll go in,” Malfoy said. He rapped the heel of his boot with his wand and cast a Tread-Lightly Charm.

“How will I know if you’re in trouble?”

“I don’t know, I’ll send up sparks. Or yell.”

“Send your Patronus,” Harry suggested. “Do you know how to make it speak?”

Malfoy blanched. “I can’t.”

“Well, just send it—”

“I can’t cast the spell,” Malfoy clarified.

From Malfoy’s tone it was clear he didn’t just mean he’d never tried.

Harry said nothing, which made the awkwardness more pronounced.

Malfoy huffed. “If I need you I’ll fly the Dark Mark.”

“What the fuck, Malfoy!”

“Just kidding,” Malfoy said, and dipped down through the cellar doors.

Harry cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself and backed up against the wall to wait. The brick was cool against his back, the air still. He felt like he could finally catch his breath, finally take a moment to think straight.

He felt bad about the Patronus thing. It was a dead useful spell, surprising for an Auror to try to go without, and Malfoy was handy with charms usually. The implication was almost too depressing to consider: that he didn’t have a happy enough memory to power one.

Harry had seen Malfoy happy plenty of times. Right? As he tried to call the memories to mind, he realized a lot of them were from a very long time ago, and they were more like petty pleasure at an enemy’s misfortune. He supposed that wasn’t really joy.

But if Malfoy had had anything Harry hadn’t, it was a comfortable childhood. Even away at school, his parents had spoiled him. Surely there existed happy memories of being cosseted and fawned over when he was young. Surely those sufficed.

Maybe Harry could coach him. Not out of pity or guilt or anything. Or, heaven forbid, a misapprehension that it would be at all pleasant going. Just because it was ultimately not smart, work-wise, to leave his partner with a known weakness.

The idea was almost delightful in its absurdity, him and Malfoy holed up in MLE’s spellwork range, him encouraging Malfoy to find his bliss and harness it. Harry imagined Malfoy’s face lit up in earnest happiness — he didn’t even really know what it looked like on him.

He wondered what Malfoy’s Patronus would be. A ferret, he supplied instantly, but that was more like what he’d say to Malfoy to insult him than a real answer. No, it’d be something pretty but famously mean. A swan.

Harry checked the time, but it was pointless; he didn’t know when Malfoy had gone down. They hadn’t actually decided on a signal. Harry decided he’d give it five more minutes and then follow.

The basement doors flew open. A man Harry didn’t recognize zoomed up, his feet thumping against each step, and Harry realized he was unconscious. Then came Malfoy, propelling the guy with his wand. He lurched out the doors and slammed them behind him.

“Potter! Let’s go!” he said in a panicked hush.

Harry ended the Disillusionment and picked up the unfortunate guy with his own wand. “Are there others?”

“Not anymore,” Malfoy said urgently. “We have to go now. I can’t help us.”

“I think we should make an arrest if we can,” Harry said.

“The basement is full of vampires,” Malfoy hissed.

The doors groaned back open and two tall, dark, very handsome, very unblinking men glided uncannily out. Harry stared hard at the ground.

“Oh, fuck me,” Malfoy said.

“Tempting,” said one of the vampires in a velvety, appealing voice. “You do color beautifully, Auror…?”

“Malfoy,” he supplied helplessly. Harry carefully looked up at him and saw he was locked into the vampire’s gaze. Great.

“The blood rises quickly…” the other one agreed, gliding closer to them, and then gasped in delight. “A pureblood, I’m certain.”

Harry stepped hard on Malfoy’s foot. “You need to break eye contact,” he instructed loudly, but was totally ignored.

“You’d like to come back inside with us,” the first vampire said to Malfoy. “Do I suppose correctly?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, sounding grateful for the invitation.

“Earth to Malfoy!” Harry said, knocking on his head like a door. “You’re about to get eaten for dinner!”

“Your partner’s jealous,” the second vampire said. “Should we have him in too?”

“Absolutely,” Malfoy said.

“You horny little traitor,” Harry muttered. Though he knew Malfoy must be under heavy suggestion to agree to his presence at what was being pitched to him as an orgy.

The vampires loomed closer; Malfoy was clearly done for and Harry was outnumbered. He hooked his elbow with Malfoy’s, hiked the unconscious man under his other arm, and Disapparated all three of them.

They reappeared in the chaotic reception area of St. Mungo’s, where Harry immediately dodged three jets of fire in rapid succession from a flame-sneezing child.

“Oh, Auror Potter,” said the harried intake Healer, Bledgely. Harry and Malfoy were known quantities here.

“This man’s been held prisoner by a veela coven, he’s been missing for days,” Harry said, passing the floating parcel into her care. Malfoy still seemed zonked. “And he may have run afoul of some vampires as well.”

“We’ll find him a windowless room while we assess. And, er — your partner?” she said, taking in Malfoy’s unfocused look with concern.

“He just needs a minute,” Harry said. “He’s slightly hypnotized.”

Healer Bledgely zipped the man away. Finally, Harry caught his breath, and unhooked his arm from Malfoy’s.

Malfoy blinked a few times, and at last looked at Harry lucidly.

He frowned; Harry grinned.

“Whatever you’re thinking of saying next is homophobic and I’ll get you sacked if you say it,” Malfoy said.

Harry smiled angelically. “You saved that guy’s life. Commendable work, Auror Malfoy.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I saved your life. So. You’re welcome.”

Malfoy gave him the finger.

“And. Listen.” Harry hesitated. This was the unwisest part to rehash, but he did want to offer. “About the Patronus Charm.”

“Don’t,” Malfoy said.

“I can teach it to you,” Harry ploughed on. “I’m a good teacher. I got one out of Neville Longbottom.”

Wrong thing to say.

Malfoy hissed out a breath through his teeth. “You’re so bloody full of yourself.”

“So you’d rather go out defenseless?” Harry snapped. He said it before he could help himself. He redirected, trying to bring the hostility down. “Listen, it’s a hard spell—”

Malfoy held his hands up as if to keep Harry at bay. “I told you to leave it out but you just can’t, can you — you’re terrified of anybody anywhere forgetting for one second that you’re so special—”

“What’s your problem, mate?” Harry said, voice rising to meet Malfoy’s. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“I’m not your fucking mate,” Malfoy spat. A sneer of disgust crawled onto his face. “The only way you could help me with that spell is by dropping dead.”

Healer Bledgely rounded the corner then, returning toward them. Malfoy took a step away from Harry. “Aurors, we’ll need one of you to brief us a bit further on his condition, please.”

“I’ll go,” Malfoy said at once.

Disappointment sliced through Harry as he watched Malfoy stalk off down the corridor with the Healer. Only now that he’d trod on it could Harry see that something had started to grow — and that it had been delicate.

Chapter Text

Harry was just like any other junior civil servant: underpaid, overworked, near the bottom of a convoluted hierarchy. Except that he also meant something to the wizarding world. He had a symbolic worth, a sentimental value, that was sometimes at odds with being a paid employee who clocked in, got orders, and (mostly) followed them. The office of the Minister was hosting a Christmas party, in celebration of a peaceful year and remembrance of the many who weren’t there to see it, and not the lowly junior Auror but the beloved war hero Harry Potter had been asked to prepare some remarks.

It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. They were just about halfway through a year of fifth anniversaries. Many depressing, some happy. Last spring had marked five years since Dumbledore’s death, which Harry had played his part in commemorating. This spring would be the fifth anniversary of Victory Day, where he would also be prominently featured.

It made people happy, he knew, seeing him, hearing him honor their loved ones. There was a sense in which he owed it to them. The war had been about much more than him, of course, but it had been his to end. The final burst of sacrifices that last night: those had been for him.

It helped people heal, so he had to do it, but Harry found his place in these proceedings unbearably lonely. All he wanted from peacetime was to be with people he loved. But instead he was down in front, the figurehead. Sucking down icy spray on the prow of a ship where everybody else was on deck partying.

No, that wasn’t fair. Mourners weren’t partying. But he was a mourner too, he missed people, he needed healing. He missed Sirius. At Christmastime he really missed Sirius.

Peace isn’t the same as victory. It’s not something we merely achieve; it’s something we have to cultivate. And that cultivation, when it’s attentive and loving, leads to beauty and new life.

What the hell was going on with this metaphor…?

It was past midnight, he was crammed into the floorspace between his lumpy couch and particleboard coffee table, and he was getting nowhere with this speech except deeper into a black mood.

His pride had caused him to decline a “collaboration” with the speechwriter the Minister had recommended, a now-obvious mistake. If speeches by public figures always cleared a bar of legibility and poise, that was because they were always secretly written by professionals.

“Peace…is like a garden,” he reasoned aloud. “A Christmassy sort of garden.”

“Like a holly shrub or something?” said Ron’s voice from his fireplace.

“Thank God,” Harry said, shoving his parchment aside. “Thought you’d never get here.”

“Hermione’s coming,” Ron said. “She’s yipping like a fox.”

“It’s homework,” Hermione snapped, her face emerging next to Ron’s. “Kitsunetsuki is so hard for me to get my head around. I’m trapped in Western frameworks. It bears no resemblance to Animagus theory, like, none.”

“My wife is an adult who does homework,” Ron said.

“I’m also doing homework,” Harry said. “Mine is a patriotic exercise in becoming stupider.”

“Not another public appearance,” Hermione said, slumping in sympathy. “You said you were going to stop saying yes to them.”

“I am,” Harry said. “After June that’ll be the last five-year anniversary. Then I’ll retire.”

“Five years since Hogwarts reopened is still after that,” Hermione said. “Then they’ll start gearing up for ten years since Voldemort’s resurrection. There’ll always be something, Harry, you have to dictate how you let yourself be used.”

“Yeah,” Harry said vaguely, bristling at this unfollowable advice. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I were allowed to have any fun.”

Allowed. Even hearing himself say it made him feel worse.

“I really miss you guys,” he admitted. “I wish you were coming.”

“Bail on it if it’s so awful,” Ron said, admirably taking the Harry’s-interests-at-all-costs position. “Tell them your charitable efforts require you elsewhere. Or don’t. Fuck ‘em. It’s your holiday too.”

“It’s very late notice to back out of a commitment,” Hermione said. Of course she was right.

“I should have become a total recluse,” Harry moaned, indulging himself. “Gone and lived in the rainforest and befriended the boa constrictors to simulate human contact.”

Ron shrugged. “Twenty-two cards.” When neither of them responded, he looked between them. “You’ve never heard that?”

Hermione shook her head and Ron assumed the bashful excitement that it always gave him to explain some obscure bit of wizarding culture to them.

“It’s just a saying. ‘There are twenty-two cards in the major arcana.’ It’s sort of like, ‘hey, it could happen,’ in the context of the Tarot, like, don’t forget there are a lot of stages in life. And, y’know, a wizard’s, whatever — odyssey — will transform him many times.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Hermione said. “I think a Muggle once wrote, ‘There are no second acts in life,’ or something.”

“‘Life’s short,’ I’ve certainly heard,” Harry said.

“Ours are longer,” Ron said. “I mean, of course life’s still short unless you’re Nicholas Flamel or something. But the point is that life’ll take you on a journey, y’know, you’ll wear a lot of funny guises.”

Hermione looked sort of watery. “It does ease my mind, thinking of it that way. Mum and Dad accused me of degree-collecting.”

Ron scoffed. “My second cousin Boethius was still changing careers past sixty.” He leaned into her confidence. “Although the thing to keep in mind is how small our world is. You think you’ve had your last midlife crisis and you’re settling in as a special envoy to the fair folk and then a decade later your least favorite coworker from three continents ago catches an errant Shrinking Spell and decides he’s going to live among them.”

“Speaking of which,” Hermione said, turning back to Harry. “How is your least favorite coworker?”

Harry let himself be dragged from one stressful topic to another. “Fine. I dunno. Horrible.” He sighed. “It’s fine for a while and then it turns horrible again. I don’t think he’s speaking to me right now.”

“He hasn’t got you killed yet,” Ron offered.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Harry said, realizing that he actually did trust Malfoy at least that far. “He says he can’t let me get killed because it would make him look bad.”

Ron guffawed. “That ship’s sailed. Might think about getting himself disowned if he wants to look good.”

“I think he might be,” Harry said. “Slightly disowned, that is. Did you know he’s gay?”

“What?” Ron said, at the same time as Hermione’s, “Of course.”

“You did?” Harry and Ron both said.

“Well, yeah,” Hermione said. “This was a big debate at Hogwarts. Amongst the girls, anyway.”

Ron recoiled. “You mean you were speculating about Malfoy as if he were just some…boy?”

“He was a boy!” Hermione said, defensive. “He did nothing for me, obviously, but a lot of girls thought he was good-looking…and he did play Quidditch…and he was so rich…” She cast an uneasy look at Ron and hastily concluded. “Anyway, the gossip was still interesting.”

“Go on,” Harry said.

“Well, he sort of dated Pansy Parkinson, but the rumor was they never did anything. He always seemed a lot more interested in picking on…” She looked between Ron and Harry. “…boys who bothered him.”

Ron looked disturbed at the implication. Harry was skeptical of this pigtail-pulling theory; Malfoy had tried to Cruciate him, which didn’t leave a lot of room for subtext.

“Anyway, Parvati had it from Padma, who heard from Lisa Turpin, who had a cousin who went to Durmstrang, who told her he definitely was.” Hermione paused, mulling over the international cooperative of teen girl gossip. “Although I don’t actually remember why the information was coming all the way from Durmstrang.”

“I know why,” Harry said. “His parents sent him to some kind of camp related to Durmstrang. To, you know. Get straightened out.”

Ron snorted.

“How awful,” Hermione said. “But — if he’s telling you personal stuff like that, that sounds like progress!”

“I thought he was joking, to be honest,” Harry said. “It’s not like we have heart-to-hearts. I’m not talking about the twenty-two cards of life’s winding journey with him, believe me.”

“Joking, though, that’s still something.” Hermione looked between them. “Right?”

Harry didn’t know what to say. He agreed: it was something. Or it had been, anyway. Now, he didn’t know.

Malfoy was the person he talked to most over the course of a day, by far, and there were days, miraculous and pleasant like days of perfect weather, when his company wasn’t so bad.

Even the constant insults Harry minded less and less. Malfoy had the kind of knowledge of him that only his close friends had: from the grand contours of the legend, to the trivial memories of adolescence, to his everyday behaviors. And yet all of it was used for a singular purpose — taking the piss. Openly, to his face, and often. Especially now, when Harry was feeling sorry for himself over his figurehead duties, there was something refreshing about it.

But there hadn’t been a perfect weather day in weeks. Ever since Harry had offered to help him conjure a Patronus, Malfoy had been surly, avoidant, acidly mean when he did speak. Harry almost wished they’d get more dangerous missions, or mess them up worse, so they could go back to patching up holes in each other and yanking each other back from the brink of death. That had inspired a kind of truce.

“I don’t see why you’re encouraging it,” Ron said to Hermione. “The guy’s a complete piece of shit. I mean, he’s a racist.”

“I know, I know!” she moaned. Then she actually began to tear up. “I just can’t bear it if your job is miserable, Harry, after everything!”

“Oh…” Harry said. “Oh no, Hermione, I’m not — it’s not miserable—”

“We didn’t mean to leave you all alone for so long!” she went on, eyes shining. “We thought you’d have Ginny!”

Harry felt a lurch of discomfort. Sorry, Ron mouthed.

Far be it from Harry to tell her she was making him feel worse. “I’m not all alone…” he said. “I see everybody all the time…and Ginny and I are still friends…”

These were perilously close to total lies. The person he saw most regularly was Arthur Weasley, who worked on the same floor as Harry and to whom he waved when he saw him in the corridors. Luna Lovegood had been recruited as an Unspeakable two years prior and was apparently thriving down in the lower levels, but she wasn’t exactly someone you could arrange a standing lunch date with; Harry’s interoffice memos to her usually got lost on the way and came slinking back. Outside work, he spent time mostly with his godson, Teddy, who was a very active four-and-a-half years old.

Pretty much as soon as Ron and Hermione had left the country, Ginny had gently let Harry know that their engagement was coming to an end. He’d been devastated beyond all thinking, so it took him a while to see the implication of the timing: that she’d wanted to, planned to, end things for a while, but decided to get through her brother’s wedding first, where she was the maid of honor and Harry was the best man. Figuring that out had brought a whole new wave of devastation. Harry could only look at the photos if he used a thumb to cover his own face, which wore the smile of an absolute fool.

Ginny had indeed assured him that they would remain friends. But she also traveled a lot for work and, like Ron and Hermione, wanted to put some distance between her adult life and her war-torn adolescence. So it had been a while since he’d seen her.

“I do see people,” he insisted, putting some weight behind a change of subject. “I’m going over to Andromeda and Teddy’s for Christmas Eve. What are you guys doing?”

“Christmas Eve is like St. Valentine’s Day here,” Ron said. “It’s for—”

His head jostled subtly in the fire. Unseen, Hermione had kicked him. “—couples,” he finished.

The condescending gesture inflamed Harry. Why would he give a toss that they were a couple and did coupley things? He was so used to it. He’d been at their wedding, been central to it — another occasion that had required a stupid speech of him. They’d been together for a substantial portion of Harry’s friendship with them at this point. Call it yet another impending five-year anniversary.

Harry was aware that his raging mood was, at this point, irrational and irretrievable. He had a sudden flashback to being fifteen and screaming at them until he was hoarse at Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Where he would soon be spending his Christmas Eve because he had so generously given it to Sirius’ last living friendly relative, not realizing that meant he would have to go there all the time even though it reminded him of Sirius being depressed and made him want to cry. He could have just sold it. It was valuable London property. What the hell was he doing with his life?

“Maybe I’ll tell the Minister I want a bank holiday on my birthday in exchange for my continued service,” he mused. “Then at least I’d give people something they can actually use, a day off from their stupid jobs. And I’d get one day a year where everyone would have to leave me alone.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. What Harry wanted them to say, which they wouldn’t, was that he, Harry, more than them, more than anyone else in the world, deserved some distance from his war-torn adolescence.

“It’s just a speech, mate,” Ron said. “Just reuse whatever you did for the last one.”

His tone had a frankness bordering on impatience. Harry is being too dramatic, it said clearly. It wounded, it made Harry feel childish. It wasn’t the dead of night where they were; they weren’t sitting around on the floor letting the feral, lawless feeling of an all-nighter set in. They were freshly awake and ready to start a functioning day.

“Don’t mind me,” Harry said. “I’m just tired.”

That drained the energy from the conversation. They talked a bit more about Hermione’s fellowship, but the unwritten speech lurked on his coffee table, distracting him. He passed them a Christmas pudding and some crackers and they passed him a sweet little kurisumasu keki that Hermione had made herself. They wished each other a happy Christmas and said goodnight.

Immediately he was furious with himself. That was the last time he’d talk to them for the year, the next chat wouldn’t be for at least a month, and he’d been cranky and spoiled it. He was tempted to call them back, send his head all the way to Japan. Hi again! I’m ready to be normal now.

Peace is like a garden, he sleepily composed. And a garden is like a friendship. Love isn’t enough to make it flourish. There’s so much stupid toil.

The morning of the party dawned cold and cloudy. Cold in particular because somewhere in Harry’s house there was a window open. The sleek and unfriendly Ministry owl standing on his bed being proof.

Dear Mr. Potter,

I hope this owl finds you well! The office of the Minister is so delighted to host you this evening. Just wanted to check in about a few logistics…

Blech. Harry, supine, allowed the letter to slip from his hands and blanket his face. The owl pecked his toe.

“Nothing for you,” Harry said. “Go away.”

From under his parchment shroud, Harry spun fantasies of showing up completely pissed on eggnog, throwing an arm around the Minister’s shoulder and saying outrageously impolitic shit to diplomats, the Minister forced to smile and indulge his little war hero. Yes, Harry Potter’s very special to us, the Minister would say to them after, but there’s a sense in which he’s only now getting to be a teenager, you must understand…

Somewhere along the line Harry had got his wires crossed. When he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, he’d had a clear understanding of the Ministry of Magic: obsessed with appearances, allergic to decisions and their consequences, efficient at nothing but getting in his way. Now the bloat had expanded to include him.

His job as he daily experienced it had very little to do with the true purpose of Harry Potter, Ministry man. It was surprising that such a valuable asset was permitted to go into the field at all. Eventually some risk tolerance specialist would think better of it and promote him into a comfortable chair in a zoo-glass office. Or maybe the risk tolerance specialist had already calculated that Harry Potter had to be given occasional opportunities to get himself killed, else he would leave the job for redder pastures.

In crises of doubt, the thought always returned whispering into Harry’s mind that it had actually been the ersatz Alastor Moody to recommend him for this line of work. Crouch had had a limited amount of Moody knowledge to build his impersonation around. Doling out the compliment, which he had to more than one student, had probably been some combination of distracting them from pesky detective-work with praise, deploying one of a few known Moody-isms he had in the bank, and the twisted man’s own fixation on discipline and punishment. Nothing to take so seriously. Nothing to shape your life around.

This line of anxiety was not new to Harry; in fact it was well worn. A deep groove in his brain down which his thoughts flowed more easily each time. The first time he’d sunk this way — before he’d even applied — he had concluded that it was still the best option, and one had to choose an option. It couldn’t always be wartime, thank God, and one couldn’t just form a posse and mete out justice one’s own way. Harry had fought with his life for this society and he couldn’t retreat from it.

It wouldn’t be like this forever. Already he’d been at least three flavors of famous and infamous. Life was so long, memory so short. If he was lucky, someday he’d be a weird old wizard like Dumbledore, peculiar and timeless, filled with the strange secrets that got excised from history books.

There are twenty-two cards in the major arcana. Harry was twenty-two years old. It was young, he told himself, impossibly young: this was the voice of sensible people. It was even younger for a wizard. But it was still the oldest he’d ever been.

(Now he moved into the inevitable end stage of his morbid ruminations.)

It was older than his parents had ever been. At twenty-one, they had died. Every picture, every anecdote, captured people younger than he now was. He’d always thought of them as adults, completely built people. They moved with conviction, they loved each other, they made a home, they had a baby. Harry was not so self-effacing as to claim he hadn’t accomplished great things in his life. Miraculous things. But his friends were away, Ginny was gone. His parents’ life, at twenty-one, had been full of friends and family and principle and solidarity. Harry was drifting toward solitude.

Drift out of this bed, then, you great mope.

That was enough wallowing. So what if he had tedious obligations? He was fortunate to be alive for them to attach themselves to.

Downstairs in his arctic kitchen, Harry discovered the open window. “Couldn’t have shut this, could you?” he said to Roger, knowing it was an unfair expectation of a barn owl weighing half a kilogram at most, and particularly of his barn owl, who had taught Harry the hard way that not everyone was as smart as Hedwig.

But Roger did manage to bring his attention to the fact that there had been another owl, with another delivery: he was screaming and bouncing on top of a parcel. An unmistakably-shaped parcel.

“No,” Harry muttered. “Bugger. No.”

In time for Christmas, he’d been sent direct from the manufacturer the just-released, impossible-to-find, backordered-to-hell Firebolt 3.

When they’d got word that Harry had lost his Firebolt during his year on the run, Evoker had sent him a Firebolt 2, which was at the time still months from being released. Harry had been grateful, overwhelmingly excited to fly it, but wary, too, of the new place of privilege that this seemed to herald for him in the wizarding world.

He hadn’t been wary enough. He ought to have declined it, sent it back. But it had arrived on his doorstep — the Weasleys’ doorstep, where he’d been crashing, still trying to get his feet under him and a house bought — at an exact moment of receptiveness. The dust had cleared from the last battle and he’d just committed to a gap year by letting the application deadline pass for Auror training. He’d been determined to take some time for hardcore relaxing, for frivolity, for clocking as many hours as he could with Ginny, who was getting serious about Quidditch. So he’d kept the broom. He’d let himself be seen on it, even photographed. Inadvertently, the suggestion that Harry Potter was open to brand ambassadorship had been made.

That impression had taken a long time to correct, and Harry had, on occasion, had to be ruder than he liked. But the gifts and promotional swag had stopped, bit by bit. Until now. It seemed Evoker wanted to make a tradition of it.

Maybe it was that it had been delivered to him at a low point in his vacillating tolerance for being a celebrity, but Harry felt something approaching revulsion at this gift. He was sure it flew spectacularly, as the 2 did, but this was a professional-grade broom, and he didn’t even play Quidditch competitively anymore.

Could he give it to Ginny? He recoiled from that idea; it was too much. Between them it had gone silent with polite “space,” and he suspected it would stay that way until Ron and Hermione came back to help them. He couldn’t give her a lavish gift. Besides, this was her profession, and her team provided her with gear. It was overstepping for him to position himself as some kind of benefactor when she was, at this point, the better athlete.

Ron would like the broom and would make use of it, but Harry would have to wait months to give it to him; he wanted it gone now, before Evoker had a chance to follow up with marketing schemes. He could give it to Teddy…if he wanted to make an enemy of Andromeda.

An insane notion came to him. He could give it to Malfoy.

If it was too much to give his ex, it was surely completely inappropriate to give to someone who despised him, someone whom — the sudden memory made him laugh aloud — he’d been in a physical brawl with on the Quidditch pitch. No, in that light, Harry began to feel the idea was funny. It would catch Malfoy off-guard: he hated Harry, but loved nice things; he hated charity but loved special treatment. It would make his head explode. It was the first cheerful thought Harry had had that morning, and it delighted him.

Harry smuggled this plan into the office like delicate contraband. He gave it the morning; in the early afternoon, he popped his head over the barrier between their cubicles.

Malfoy was grinding away with a mortar and pestle; desiccation had come back into vogue among the nation’s drink-poisoners, and he was trying to develop a faster-acting Plumping Potion for seedy pubs to keep behind the bar.

“Hey. What broom are you riding these days?” Harry asked.

Malfoy looked up at him sharply; he had goggles on. He pushed them up his forehead, which directed his hair up and over them like a fountain. “What?” he demanded.

Malfoy’s hostility seemed to prematurely close the conversational path to offering him the broom. “Just wondering,” Harry said, resting his elbows on the barrier. “New generation’s out and all.”

Malfoy glared at him with suspicion before replacing his goggles and looking back to his work. “I’ve got my Nimbus if I need it.”

“But that broom’s a decade old!” Harry exclaimed.

Belatedly he realized how he sounded. Rich. Out of touch. It wasn’t his fault he’d had to replace his broom so often, nor his doing that he hadn’t once paid for one himself…and he was used to the professional players he’d met through Ginny, who were constantly destroying their brooms and getting new ones.

Malfoy shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really fly anymore.”

Harry watched him put more shoulder than was needed into his grinding. There was something distressing about this. Malfoy had been a decent Quidditch player before he’d quit the team to devote himself to evil. It was sort of heartbreaking to think he had never picked it back up. Soaring on a broom was one of Harry’s simplest, greatest pleasures.

He remembered the Patronus and Malfoy’s lack thereof, and spoke rashly.

“Do you want a new one?”

“What? A new broom?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, feeling his confidence eke away under Malfoy’s judgmental scrutiny. “They’ve sent me a Firebolt 3 but my 2’s broken in perfectly, I don’t really need it. Figured, maybe, if you wanted to upgrade. We could, y’know, race for a Snitch sometime, you might stand a chance on a next gen broom.”

Each swerve of what Harry had just said was increasingly mortifying: from the awkwardly generous offer, to a wild suggestion that they hang out socially, to the lame little insult to try to get it back to safe ground.

Malfoy took the goggles off and set them down. His brow creased. “You’re trying to give me a Firebolt 3?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. He was impatient for Malfoy to say yes and move them through this. “Do you want it, or what?”

Malfoy continued to look at him with irritated uncertainty, like Harry had just made an inappropriate joke and couldn’t be trusted to continue the conversation. He went back to his work without saying anything.

“Well, think about it,” Harry said, beating away the embarrassment that threatened to engulf him. “I’m sending it back otherwise.”

He sat back down in his cubicle, listening to the soft, rhythmic crunching of Malfoy’s potion prep. Malfoy was so annoying. Harry was just trying to be nice, what was so alarming about that? Harry was nice, Malfoy was the one who made everything weird and combative…

“Hey.”

Malfoy was standing at the barrier, hair falling over his face as he looked crossly down at Harry. “Are you going to this thing?” he said.

“What?” Harry said stupidly, not following.

“The thing tonight.” Malfoy pushed his hair back. “The party.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “They’re making me give a speech.”

Malfoy nodded solemnly. “I knew it would be painful, but I didn’t think to expect torture.”

“Wait — you’re going?”

“Robards said anyone could go. We’re a prestigious office.”

Harry looked hard at him. Was he looking down his nose in some kind of defiant dignity, or was he just looking down? How much concept did he have of who he was and what people thought of him? Surely not…none?

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Harry said finally.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You do understand that the war will be a major theme? That’s why they’re having me speak.”

Malfoy gave him a look that said, And?

“The war you fought on the wrong side of?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Oh, not that again. It’s a Ministry party, I work here!”

Harry felt a tick of irritation that Malfoy could refer to the defining mistake of his life as not that again. “I’m just looking out for you. People will be in their cups reminiscing, and they might get hex-happy if they catch sight of certain Marked Death Eaters standing around enjoying the canapés.”

“I paid my debt to society,” Malfoy said unconvincingly. “I think my being there makes a positive statement.”

“Malfoy, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you must know that most people…who know who you are…dislike you.”

Malfoy’s face settled into a scowl. “I don’t expect you to understand the dynastic timescale I’m working at. It’s a one-hundred year chess match for the family reputation. I have to make opening moves.”

Harry thought it was rather more like last-ditch efforts in the ninety-fifth year after he and his predecessors had spent half a century absolutely fucking it, but he didn’t have the chess knowledge to wittily extend the metaphor. And anyway, Malfoy was starting to look really agitated. In his heart he probably knew he was cruising for a bruising, but he’d never take Harry’s advice.

“Heroic,” Harry said. “Just don’t be shocked if someone throws a drink on you. Maybe wear dark colors.”

Malfoy, looming imperiously at the cubicle wall, considered Harry with narrowed eyes. “Despite yourself, you do present a solution. If I spend the evening stuck to you, no one will harass me.”

“I’m a bit central to the proceedings. You’ll attract more attention hanging around me.”

“Good attention. War hero attention.”

“I see now,” said Harry, whose spirits were by this point higher than they’d been in days. And he’d tricked Malfoy into speaking to him again. “You’re using me to clean up your image.”

“Potter, let me explain something to you about my culture. When a Slytherin uses you, it’s a compliment. It means you’re of use.”

“So did you orchestrate us being partners in the first place?”

Malfoy looked completely disgusted, and backed slightly away from the barrier. “No!”

Comfortably back on the terrain of Malfoy’s ruffled anger, Harry swiveled cockily in his chair. “Really, Malfoy, I’m flattered…”

“Shut up!” Malfoy said. “I was minding my business, trying to get my life back on track, until you walked in and ruined it!”

He exhaled sharply through his nose and collected himself. “I’m Flooing to your house at eight so we can go together.”

He dipped back behind the cubicle wall and Harry heard him sit heavily down. Then there was a mild explosion, and a plume of cerulean smoke billowed up. “Ugh!”

Hours later, Harry was reading over his speech for the tenth time, wolfing down plain slices of bread to prevent getting too drunk too fast, when he heard the fwump of his fireplace roaring up in the other room. He went out, a final slice of white bread between his teeth.

The sight of Draco Malfoy in his own home was unsettling. He looked austere and almost supernaturally pale in dress robes of rich, inky black. An elaborate design, also black, ran along the hems; they looked quite high-end.

“So much square footage and so little taste,” Malfoy said, looking around. “Fate really is cruel.”

“You can’t wear that,” Harry said. “You have to change into another color.”

“What the fuck, I look nice,” Malfoy said. He looked down at himself.

“It’s not appropriate. It’s funereal. People will think you’re, like, mourning for Voldemort.”

Harry saw his neck tendons flex as he almost completely succeeded at not flinching at the name.

“I don’t agree,” Malfoy said. “Black is always appropriate, it’s formal. What do you know about fashion?”

“I’m just telling you what people will think,” Harry said.

Malfoy looked down his front again. “Black’s my favorite color,” he sulked.

Harry shrugged.

“Fine,” Malfoy said, and left. Harry grinned at the fire, picturing Malfoy stepping through and waspishly going to his wardrobe to follow Harry’s instruction. There was something very satisfying about bossing him around. He could admit it.

Malfoy returned a few minutes later in a velvety midnight blue that was technically not black. It too looked extremely expensive. Privately, extra privately, Harry thought he was too fair and the black washed him out, the deep blue was only marginally better, and the dove gray of their uniforms suited him better than either. But what did he know about fashion?

“Nice threads,” Harry said. “Thought you weren’t meant to have any money.”

“Yeah, well, you look like shit,” Malfoy countered. “Your glasses are dirty and you should murder your tailor.”

“I don’t have a tailor,” Harry said, smiling. He’d hit a nerve with the money comment. He took off his glasses, breathed on them, rubbed them on his sleeve.

“Fucking Muggle,” Malfoy sneered, and rapped Harry’s glasses with his wand. “Might consider combing your hair as well.”

Harry didn’t have to take this in his own house. He slid his glasses back on, beaned Malfoy with his half-eaten bread slice, and pulled him into a Side-Along.

Harry’s speech was passable; more importantly, it was over. As he stepped away from the dais and rejoined the crowd, a number of people swarmed to give him their well-dones and best wishes. Chief among them, smiling maliciously, his insistent companion for the evening.

“Horrible,” Malfoy said. “Inarticulate doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“Hasn’t anyone thrown you out yet?” Harry said, and heard himself echo through the room. “Oh, hell. Quietus.”

“I realized why the Minister is so keen on having you do these things,” Malfoy continued, grabbing himself a drink from a tray as it floated by. “Day and night he’s gripped with terror that you’ll try to take his job. So he arranges these public demonstrations of your stupidity to make sure it’s always fresh in everyone’s minds. But,” he took a sip, “he underestimates the commensurate stupidity of the public. Vastly.”

“That’s really nice that you thought up a little story about me,” Harry said. “I get letters from very young children who do the same.”

He felt a hand at his back. “Harry, if I may…”

A mountain of small talk stood before Harry; dutifully he began the climb.

Malfoy actually proved useful. When Harry was asked how he was getting along in his new work, he introduced his partner, whose surname caused the interlocutor to bristle, then control themselves, then remark on what dangerous work it was, what unusual people it attracted. When they surmised that Malfoy would be joining whatever conversation they wanted to have with Harry, they usually excused themselves.

Eventually, for a while at least, they were left alone. Harry had had a certain amount to drink; Malfoy, he was pretty sure, even more.

“So,” Harry said lightly. “Seeing family for Christmas?”

“My family doesn’t observe Christmas,” Malfoy said. “It’s Yule. Not that I have any problem with wizarding spaces becoming dominated by Christian holidays. There’s room for everybody.” He wrinkled his nose and smiled.

“Very good,” Harry said. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No.”

“No, you didn’t answer, or no, you’re not seeing family?”

“Both. Neither.” He snatched another champagne from a tray and took an ample sip. “Swill.”

Harry tried to sense Malfoy’s mood. He seemed tetchy because of the parade of slights and snubs he was fielding, but loose from the drinking. Maybe even talkative. And he’d already announced his intention to continue hanging out with Harry for the remainder of the evening. Harry decided to chance it and ask his real question.

“Are you estranged from your parents?”

Malfoy didn’t freak out. He sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Estranged is a strong word.”

“I see.”

“But non-estranged would also, I think, not describe it.”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t uh huh me, you don’t know anything about parent-child relationships. It’s complicated. There were some wounds, and now there’s a bit of emotional rapprochement. But at the same time, some — political drift. And physical drift. I mean—” He shrugged, weighing his phrasing. It seemed that now he’d been asked, he did sort of like talking about it. “The physical drift has facilitated the emotional rapprochement.”

Interesting. Harry had many questions.

“Where do they live?”

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “That’s not quite any of your business, is it?”

Harry re-angled. “Does your father know you’re—”

“A queer? He’s aware, but we don’t discuss it.”

“I was going to say an Auror.”

“He’s also aware of that, and we also don’t discuss it.”

“So what do you discuss?”

“Finance, the markets, you know, investment, stuff like that. Money.”

Harry’s expression must have given away that he thought this sounded bizarre and boring. His own money was still sitting in the same loose stacks in the same vault in Gringotts that he’d been shown at age eleven.

“Don’t they need you to have children with a pureblood witch? To continue the family line?”

Harry didn’t rightly know why he was asking; something between schadenfreude at the idea of a Malfoy family extinction event, and a growing hope that he could get Malfoy to admit he didn’t care about or abide by these strictures anymore.

“No, there are whole branches of French cousins. Did you imagine the living balance of la Maison impeccablement propre de Malfoy was me and my dad running around with a psychopathic snake guy?”

The last phrase turned some heads in his direction. He smiled blandly and redoubled his eye contact with Harry.

“But you’re also the end of the line for the Blacks, no?” Harry continued. “Sirius, Regulus, Bellatrix…your mum’s the only one who had a pureblood son.”

Malfoy’s eyebrows shot up. “I had no idea you knew my family tree so well. Be careful, this is considered courting behavior where I’m from.”

“It’s my family too, nearly. You know I’m Teddy Lupin’s godfather. I think he’s your nephew or something.”

“First cousin once removed. Though technically he’s quite disowned. Halfblooded on his mother’s side, and on his father’s…” Malfoy grimaced. “Well, best of luck to the young scion of the House of Black. Hopefully he at least walks on two legs.”

“Do you want to meet him? He’s right over there.” Harry nodded over Malfoy’s shoulder to where Teddy was chucking hors d’oeuvres at his grandmother and laughing madly. “With your aunt.”

Malfoy’s brow seized together like he had received a sudden injury. He cast his eyes far to the side without moving his head. “Why would my aunt be at this party?”

“Because her daughter is a dead war hero,” Harry said.

“Oh, yes, sure, yes,” Malfoy said. In the space of two seconds he drained his glass and traded it for a new one. “Did you ask if I wanted to meet them? I don’t especially.”

Harry caught Andromeda’s eye and waved to her. “Whoops, I think you’re going to.”

“I hate you,” Malfoy whispered through his dull smile.

“I know,” Harry assured him, smiling back.

“HELLO HARRY!!” said Teddy. He was wearing a very small, adorable set of red dress robes with a matching pointed hat, and quite resembled a squeeze bottle of ketchup. “Are you the Minister of Magic?”

“No, just an official mascot,” Harry said, snatching the hat off Teddy and popping it on his own head. Teddy’s hair matched the hat and robes exactly, tomato-red. “You look spiffing in those robes.”

“Spiffing?” Teddy squealed, giggling. “Gran, you look spiffing.” He laughed harder.

“Darling,” Andromeda said, placing a warm hand on Harry’s cheek. “The speech was lovely.”

“Thanks, Annie,” Harry said. “You didn’t have to come. I know it’s a late night for some people.”

“I told him it would be a lot of boring grown-up business, but he was excited to see the pictures we donated of his mum and dad hung up.” She smiled sadly. “And he wanted to see you speak to everyone.”

“Harry is famous,” Teddy explained proudly to the stranger in the group, Malfoy. “He’s my godfather.”

At last Andromeda glanced at the person Harry had been talking to, looked away, looked at him again. “Sorry, you’re not — Cissy’s son?”

When Harry looked back to Malfoy, his whole bearing had changed. His hair was precise and he seemed at least an inch taller. Family really did have some kind of profound effect on him. He nodded, giving the ghost of a bow and a tight smile. “I am, yes, I’m Draco. What a pleasure to meet you at last, Andromeda.” He nodded again at Teddy. “Edward.”

Teddy scooted slightly behind Andromeda’s leg, saying nothing. His hair turned the same shocking white blond as Malfoy’s as he regarded him with skepticism.

“Merlin, you look just like your father. He wasn’t much older than you the last time I saw him,” Andromeda said, looking a bit disturbed. “And you’re…here on purpose?”

“Yes, I’m an Auror.”

“We’re partners, actually,” Harry said as lightly as he could. He couldn’t tell on what side of cordial they were going to land.

“How funny,” Andromeda said. “Draco, forgive me, I must ask — do you speak to your mother?”

“From time to time.” He glanced at Harry. “But I’m not apprised of her current location.”

“Noted,” Andromeda said dryly. “Is she a fugitive?”

“No, nothing like that,” Malfoy said. “Only, she might have…left the country against certain recommendations.”

“I see.”

“She’d love to hear from you,” Malfoy blurted. “Really. She was always terribly unhappy to have lost you. And now Bellatrix is gone and, and, you know.” He gestured to the festivities around them. “And so much has changed. I think she’d be ready to mend things and even, perhaps. Apologize. For some things. Maybe.” He finished his drink again. “Well, I’m prattling on. Excuse me.” And he left.

Andromeda’s gaze followed him a few seconds. “Poor kid. He loves his mum. Too bad she’s such a bitch.”

Teddy cackled. “Gran swore! Gran swore! Harry, did you hear!!”

Harry flopped onto his bed. The speech he’d dreaded was over, all the chat was over. The war was back to being over. Christmas was ahead of him. Content, he closed his eyes.

But the room began to tilt, gently at first but eventually too nauseatingly for him to drift off. He sat up. He was a little drunker than he’d thought.

He stood, stumbled just slightly, took the stairs with slow, correct steps, and got a tall glass of water from the kitchen. He stood at the sink, resolving to sip it slowly, wait it out another thirty minutes before sleeping. Responsible. He’d thank himself.

He felt a playful, detached sort of annoyance with himself for getting sloshed — like it was some bad child he was supervising who had done it, not himself. It wasn’t his habit; it was Malfoy’s fault. Malfoy was dangerous to drink with, Harry could see now, because you couldn’t be sure how much he’d had: he left each empty glass for the help as soon as he was finished with it, and maintained good posture and crisp elocution until the end. One shouldn’t try to keep up with him. Harry had learned this lesson long ago with Ron, who was practically twice his size, but Malfoy was sly.

Sly, sneaky, but Harry was learning to read him. Malfoy was funny. It wasn’t that he had such masterful restraint over himself; he was actually quite moody and didn’t stop himself going into a strop if one came on. Harry remembered Moaning Myrtle describing him in an infatuated rapture long ago, though Harry hadn’t known at the time who she was talking about: sensitive, not afraid to show his emotions…

But his signals could be strange, too. When he was quiet, it was almost never because he was calm, and politeness was a sure sign of grave emotional distress.

Harry dizzily replayed the winding conversation they’d had tonight, handling the details covetously: he’d chosen his moment well and finally got some answers out of Malfoy about his family. Political drift, he’d said…whatever that meant. He really couldn’t imagine Malfoy scolding his father for an anti-Muggleborn crack. Or arguing with him at all. Silence, more likely. Drift.

Political drift, and physical drift. Malfoy had admitted to Andromeda that his mother wasn’t even in the country. How far away were the Malfoys, and how long had they been gone?

Harry sipped his water. He hadn’t spent a Christmas alone in his wizarding life. Over and over, he’d been embraced and accommodated by people with families. His friends had even skipped out on their own holidays more than once to be with him.

Before he knew it, he and his glass of water were sitting at the little writing table under the front window. He pushed the window open and yelled out into the dark: “Rog!” He heard the strange, unpleasant scream of his dim-witted son, and loaded a quill.

The brisk air from the open window pressed against his face. Yeah, it was sentimental, it was sort of forward. So what! He was drunk!

If you’re looking for plans, there’s Christmas Eve at Teddy and Andromeda’s in London. Feel free to drink steadily.

He hesitated before signing it. Harry? Harry Potter? He wrote the single letter H. and was instantly horrified. Incredibly affected. He turned the splotched period into a P and rolled up the note before he could second-guess any further.

“Take this to Draco Malfoy,” he told Roger. Roger’s giant eyes were black holes of noncomprehension. “I don’t know where he lives exactly,” Harry added. “It’s a flat. I think it’s in London. It’s not Andromeda’s house. He has, like, white hair. Like white-yellow.”

Roger hopped to the window with the confidence of someone who didn’t understand the task well enough to see the challenges.

“Don’t come back without an answer,” Harry added on impulse.

Laughing at himself, he slugged the rest of the water and went up to bed.

In the morning he had only a mild hangover, the kind that could be staved off by eating aggressively all day. Only in the course of a medicinally heavy breakfast did he remember what he’d done, but the fear didn’t hit him. In fact it still felt sort of funny and cheeky. Roger was perched cheerily in the tall tree in the yard, waiting for him to open the window.

Harry couldn’t believe it: he had an answer. He supposed he’d demanded Roger get one. “Good man,” he said as Roger tracked dirt all over the table, positioning himself to peck at the yolk of Harry’s runny eggs.

I endure your company strictly in exchange for a pay packet.

Unsigned, but Harry recognized Malfoy’s penmanship, a confident, slightly careless cursive. Funny that Harry knew his handwriting. Just one of those things you knew about someone having gone to school with them, even someone you hated.

He grinned at the reply. Roger had been up in his tree when Harry had awoken; he wondered if Malfoy had written it drunk, late last night, or sober this morning. He was proud of his own audacity, to have written to Malfoy with this invitation. Of course Malfoy had replied with an insulting rebuff, but that was to be expected. It was still good to have offered. And, he realized, Malfoy had avoided actually saying no.

He wrote back:

Then why did you spend an entire evening getting pissed with me at a party? Let me know if we’re setting a plate for you.

PS: Here is your pay for the time you’ve spent reading this.

He put a single Knut into the letter. “It’s funny,” he told Roger, who looked nonplussed. “Trust me.”

It was an hour before he realized he hadn’t told Roger this time to get an answer no matter what, but deep in the afternoon, Roger returned in a state of total frenzy. He was being tailed by another owl, almost twice his size, which Harry recognized as the same eagle owl Malfoy had had at school. It must have been at least twelve years old, but it projected dignity and strength, especially with Roger stamping about screaming and bobbing his head in wild circles next to it on the windowsill. They both came in the open window, and Roger knocked over everything in his path delivering Harry the reply, emitting another long scream as he extended his leg to make sure it was clear he was the one carrying it.

Noctua will collect the Christmas present you owe me.

See you next year.

“Christmas present?” Harry murmured, turning over the note.

The eagle owl flew with elegant entitlement into Harry’s dining room, waited on the table for Harry to follow it, and closed one talon neatly around the brand new broomstick that he’d left there to languish in its wrappings.

Chapter Text

Malfoy, as a rule, did not avail himself of the Ministry of Magic’s employee lunchroom. Harry didn’t know where he went, as they worked hours that varied widely and sometimes broke for “lunch” when little else would be open. But he had never seen Malfoy working through the buffet line trailed by a floating tray of serviceable cafeteria food. If it was good enough for most people, generally, it was not sufficient for Malfoy.

Harry preferred to eat there alongside other Aurors if he could; if he looked like he needed an invitation to join someone, it was the gladhandingest sorts of bureaucrats who always seemed to have room for him. Today, though, there was a quorum of Aurors around the office when Zenobia called out that she was starving and heading down to lunch. Harry slid onto a lunchroom Formica bench along with Zenobia and her partner Gudrun Galdursdottir, an imposingly large but soft-voiced woman who went by “Dot,” and Wayne Frond, a forty-something man with a bulbous quality about his bald head, protruding Adam’s apple, and swollen knuckles.

It was pleasant and illuminating, talking to the other Aurors, and Harry didn’t do it as often as he ought to. The department had lost a lot of manpower in the Second Wizarding War: some had been terminated under Thicknesse’s tenure as head of MLE, and some, like Proudfoot, Savage, and Dawlish, had taken early retirement after some back-breaking years. Some, of course, had died.

Zenobia and Dot, like at least half a dozen others, had enrolled directly after the end of the war. Robards had recruited hard to rebuild his ranks: Frond’s partner, a seldom seen man named Jack Tarasque, had been poached from the Obliviator squad, and Frond himself was a veteran hit wizard who’d been persuaded to take on the additional qualifications.

Dot and especially Zenobia were unfailingly warm to Harry, but it was Frond’s infrequent conversation he really coveted: apart from Robards himself, who discouraged chat, Frond was the longest-serving MLE employee, and could give Harry the anecdotes he craved about Tonks and Mad-Eye; could even repeat the odd secondhand tale about the Longbottoms and other legends of the office.

“Dawlish’s brains were confunded Swiss cheese by that point,” Frond was saying. “No offense to the old chap, I hear he’s doing a lot better. But Tonks did him no favors changing her looks all the time.”

Harry’s heart swelled, thinking of her changing her nose to a duck’s bill and sending the girls up in shrieks. When Teddy was a little older, Harry would have to get him and Frond in a room together somehow.

Behind Frond, in the doorway to the lunchroom, a head of white-blond hair pulled Harry’s eyes to it as soon as it appeared. Malfoy found him back.

“She started doing it on purpose, reintroducing herself every time they met,” Frond said. “Eventually Jack did some light Obliviating and he actually showed improvement.”

Whatever Frond said next, Harry didn’t hear. Malfoy was heading for them. Did he want to hang out? Did he want to have lunch?

“Hey Malfoy,” Zenobia said as he arrived at their table.

“Robards wants to see us,” Malfoy said to Harry.

“I’m just finishing lunch,” Harry said.

“Obviously,” Malfoy said. “Hurry up, I’m not taking some backwater assignment just because you kept him waiting.”

Rather than leaving the way he came in, Malfoy Disapparated as he turned on his heel, a dramatic little flair whose resounding crack disturbed all the soft conversations in the lunchroom. Harry snorted.

“Still not very nice, is he,” Zenobia said in a sympathetic sort of voice. “Could’ve just sent you a memo.”

“Hang in there, Harry,” Dot agreed. “Next year there’ll be a new crop and you can pawn him off.”

“Oh, I’m used to it,” Harry said. “I’ve known him forever. Anyway, I always knew Aurors could be a crotchety bunch. Like Mad-Eye.”

He knew it was a weak rejoinder as he said it; Moody would roll in his grave to know there was a Malfoy in the department, pardoned or not.

“Mad-Eye wasn’t like that,” said Frond, apparently thinking the same. “Loyalty was important to him. Respect for your comrades. That Malfoy — he’s surly. Dunno how he passed the character evaluation.”

“Maybe he is a character evaluation,” Dot said. “On how Aurors should be prepared to accept how justice is ultimately served, even when it’s a bit soft…weeding out vigilantes…”

Harry gathered it wasn’t the first time they’d gossiped about Malfoy. He felt a guilty pang being included, advancing socially where Malfoy wasn’t. Talking of loyalty, what did it say about Harry that they felt comfortable talking shit about his partner in front of him?

“His marks were very high across the board,” Zenobia said fairly. “Apparently.”

“So Robards says,” Dot said. “You know he made some kind of special arrangement. He might not have taken the same tests as everyone else.”

“You’d think he’d make a little more effort,” Frond said. “Considering his background.”

Harry frowned down at his food. He was surprised at how defensive he felt. They don’t understand him, he thought.

It just wasn’t accurate. Malfoy did make an effort; in seeking out a fight against Dark magic he was subjecting himself to an elaborate penance after he’d already been let off. He could have gone away to lick his wounds like his parents had, but instead he was carving out a future for them, and taking lumps doing it.

Not to mention that putting himself in harm’s way went against his nature. The four of them, sitting there in the cafeteria, were all former Gryffindors; the Auror office was something like two-thirds Gryffindor in total, including Robards. It made sense considering the nature of the work. But Robards hadn’t been wrong to seek out other sensibilities; that was just good strategy.

Malfoy wasn’t friendly, that was true. So what? He came to work, he did his job. He could be funny, if you knew how to talk to him. Harry felt a perverse little pride: maybe he was the only one who did.

“Jack’s theory is that his real sympathies are elsewhere,” Frond said. “And Robards is sussing out who he’s really working for.”

“With Harry Potter’s help, innit,” Dot said, turning to Harry with a grin. “It begins to fit together.”

“If Malfoy were a double agent, he’d be more eager to pump people for information,” Zenobia said. “He barely talks to anyone.”

“Apart from Harry Potter,” Dot said, with a conspiratorial quirk of the eyebrows.

“Har har,” Harry said, collecting his tray and standing. “I’ll leave you to your speculations.”

In the lift he thought of the theory of social maneuvering that Malfoy had laid out before the Christmas party. A hundred-year chess match for his family’s good name. Harry wanted to warn him that he was neglecting the present year, and his own name. Only after logging fifty hours of conversation with him — which had taken Harry five months — could you be 75 percent sure he was no longer a fascist ideologue. Which was not 100 percent, by the way.

You should be nicer to me in front of people, Harry imagined explaining to him. It’s not that I need you to, it’s just that it doesn’t help people’s preconceived notions when you’re rude to Harry Potter. Yeah, that line of advice was a complete no-go.

Having been told by Malfoy to hurry up, Harry was not surprised to find Robards alone in his office when he knocked and entered. Two minutes of businesslike silence passed before Malfoy sauntered in and joined them; Robards began as soon as Malfoy’s backside touched his chair.

"It says in your file you speak French, Malfoy, is that right?"

"I wouldn't have put it down if it weren't, sir," Malfoy said.

Robards nodded as if Malfoy had said something normal instead of something annoying. “I’m sending you two on special assignment. You’ll depart from Portkey Authority off the books.”

“Special assignment?” Harry said.

“To Paris,” Robards said.

Harry pushed up his glasses, alert. Traveling abroad for work, and to a lovely destination where he’d never been. This was the kind of perk he’d hoped for when landing a good job. He looked at Malfoy, who seemed less than impressed — stonily unmoved, in fact, by the information.

“Wicked,” Harry said, feeling that one of them should express some enthusiasm before the special assignment was given to someone more grateful. “What are we doing?”

“As you know,” Robards began, as he often did when he was about to tell Harry something he didn’t know, “hardcore Dark Arts practice is down since the war. Your average Dark wizard is feeling a little cautious about what spells they want traceable to their wand, and what groups they want expecting their loyalty. What’s gone up in its stead is artifact smuggling. Folks are more eager than ever to get their hands on objects that’ll do the cursing for them.”

He passed them a succession of photos that looked like the contents of a treasure chest, or a rich wizard’s bank vault. “We’ve gone as far as we can curbing domestic trade, and the problem’s only growing. Hardly any of what’s in circulation in the UK originates here anymore.”

“Who’s importing?” Harry asked. “Borgin?”

“Borgin’s our best guess,” Robards said, nodding. “But he runs a legitimate shop. We’ve raided it twice in the last two years and everything in there’s got papers. He’s very careful.”

Malfoy’s own father had had a major interest in Dark objects, Harry remembered, and a substantial collection. But Malfoy was content to sit there in judgment like Robards was pitching this to him rather than assigning it.

“The next step is to target the exporters. Almost everything that reaches the UK passes through Paris first. It’s time we begin constricting this route.”

Harry looked at Malfoy, who was still projecting boredom rather loudly, and back to Robards. “All right,” he said, hesitating. “But — it seems like overreach, no? Does the Minister know we’re operating on foreign soil?”

“Why don’t you worry about your assignment and I’ll worry about our department’s reach,” Robards said, not entirely reassuringly.

Malfoy leaned forward and spoke at last. “I’m comfortable spying on a friendly nation. Rule Britannia. Only, do you think it’s wise to have the most famous face in the Ministry fronting the operation? Should you consider sending me with someone less recognizable?”

One of them finding a way to request the other be removed from the assignment had become almost ritualistic by this point. Everyone ignored him.

“It’s not spying,” Robards said tartly. “Don’t use the word spying again. The gendarmagie française is cooperating fully. They’ve shared a good deal of intelligence with us.” He slapped a thick folder on the table in front of them. “Which you’ll familiarize yourselves with.”

“They’ve shared this in exchange for what?” Malfoy asked, cracking the file open.

“For solving a problem. It’s in our mutual interest.”

Recoiling, Malfoy let the file fall closed. “What are we, assassinating foreign arms dealers? For that you’ll need someone else. I paid through the nose for a clean sheet, I don’t kill people.”

Harry was sort of impressed that Malfoy took an explicit stance. Then again, how like him not to object to an assassination in its entirety, just his own part in it. It was all about personal hygiene with him.

“MLE does not conduct assassinations!” Robards roared. “If you’d shut up for two seconds!”

Malfoy slumped into his chair. “Can’t believe my boss told me to shut up,” he muttered.

“Your old boss threatened to kill you every other week,” Harry pointed out, and received a raised middle finger.

Robards flicked his wand; the file snatched itself away from Malfoy and opened to an image of a grandfather clock.

“A Ticking Clock?” Malfoy asked, properly excited for the first time since he’d sat down. “Oh, gorgeous.”

“It’s not gorgeous, psycho,” said Harry, who didn’t even know what it was.

“One of the finest still out there,” Robards said. “A Parca original, works ruthlessly. The gendarmagie believes it’ll be landing in Paris in the next week and they want it recovered.”

“And you want it recovered for them?” Malfoy said, raising his eyebrows. “Or recovered for us?”

“I want it destroyed,” Robards said. “The gendarmagie will be content with the smuggling ring apprehended if the Clock is, say, wrecked in a firefight. You’ll have authority to make arrests and turn over suspects.”

“I see,” Malfoy said, disappointed.

“It’s not worth the risk,” Robards said. He tapped the photo with a wide finger. “This does not enter the country.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, “but what does it do?”

“What it sounds like,” Malfoy said irritably. “You curse someone’s name with it and then twelve hours later their time runs out.”

“Very clean,” Robards said. “Very untraceable. And very risky to try to take away from someone if you aren’t quick enough. Obviously the smugglers must remain unaware of your presence until the crisis moment. Potter, plan to bring your Cloak.”

Harry nodded. Privately, he saw the especial disadvantage of having a famous name and a lot of Dark enemies with an object like this in the wild, and agreed with Robards that it was better destroyed than turned over to any righteous authority.

“When do we leave?”

“As soon as possible. The earliest Portkey would be tonight, or else the morning after next if you need time to arrange for a housesit or make your excuses with friends. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you your travel plans are sensitive information.”

“I can take the early Portkey,” Harry said, having no need to arrange anything with anyone.

“Same,” said Malfoy.

“Fine,” Robards said. “Pack Mugglewear. You’ll likely be gone at least a week. The Muggles have changed their currency, Middleoak will provide you with spending money. If you’re both going early, you’ll have a day to yourselves before the shipment comes in.”

He stood; dismissed, they stood.

“Regarding overseas travel, sir,” Malfoy said.

“It’s been seen to,” Robards said, and Malfoy nodded.

The exchange was almost lost on Harry, before he remembered that Malfoy was technically a convicted felon and was subject to a suite of Death Eater regulations, including harsh curtailment on travel. As Malfoy left Harry to collect the case file, left the office with no further questions, Harry understood why he had been so indifferent to a holiday to the continent: he was trying not to seem eager.

Roger would quite possibly die if Harry left him alone for a week, so Harry sent him to Andromeda’s with a bag of treats and his thanks in advance. Then he returned to the Ministry with his overnight bag.

“That’s all you’re bringing?” Malfoy asked. “You’re not gonna change your clothes?”

“I’ve got a change of clothes,” Harry said, holding up the bag. That was what was in it, after all.

“But what about—” Malfoy looked at him warily. “Never mind, I shouldn’t assume there’s a logic.”

“Aurors, gather round,” said the Portkey attendant, pushing up her shirtsleeve to examine four different watches. “You’re traveling directly to Paris Portkey Station, where you’re expected. Time change of one hour. You’ve both got passports?”

“Yes,” they both said.

“And you,” she said, addressing Malfoy. “Are you aware that—”

“Yes,” Malfoy said. “I’ve been cleared.”

“You have to let me finish,” she said sternly. “Are you aware that, because you have been found guilty of terrorism and sedition, if you were to attempt to make contact with, or accept attempted contact from, any member of any organization that any wizarding government has designated a terrorist organization, that would be considered an act of aggression against Great Britain and the British Ministry of Magic?”

“Arresting someone is a form of making contact, no?” Malfoy said. “I do have a job to do, that’s the whole point of going.”

“You need to answer my question in the affirmative,” she said. “Or else we can’t move on.”

“Yeah, all right, I’m aware,” Malfoy said.

She smiled a bureaucrat’s bloodless smile and held up a tarnished shoehorn. “Aurors,” she said, and arranged them facing one another. “Place your hands on the Portkey.”

Harry and Malfoy each held onto the shoehorn, and she let it go. She checked her armful of watches again. “Thirty seconds.”

“Have you not taken an international Portkey before?” Malfoy asked Harry. He took in Harry’s posture, which was evidently wrong in some way.

“No,” Harry admitted.

“It’s not instant. We’ll be airborne for a few minutes. You’ll want both hands on the Portkey.”

“Oh.” Harry put his other hand on the shoehorn. He felt guilty thinking it, but it was notable how a public humbling had caused Malfoy to do him an unexpected solid. Maybe he needed them more often. “Thanks.”

“All right, Aurors, have a safe trip,” said the attendant. Then she looked up from her watches. “Auror Potter, you might — removeyourglasses!” She finished in a rush, trying to get it in under the wire.

Harry went to take them off, but both his hands were stuck to the Portkey.

As he felt the wrenching hook behind his navel and the floor of Portkey Authority fell away, he watched Malfoy retrieve his own right hand from his pocket, bring it up to his forehead, and make the shape of an L.

The howling air was far too loud to do anything more than glare at Malfoy with increasing frustration as Harry indeed felt his glasses begin to slip little by little out of position. He had resorted to wrinkling his nose and contorting his features to try to keep them from flying off into the Channel by the time he felt smug fingers close on the right frame rim and lift them off his face.

Malfoy smiled and tucked them into the front inner pocket of his robes.

Of course Malfoy landed perfectly, and made no move to steady Harry as he stumbled to a halt in the French Portkey station, feeling like his stomach was half the journey behind him.

"Bienvenue à la station parisienne de Portoloin," said an officious man whom Harry could barely see.

Harry made sure he wasn’t in danger of vomiting before he attempted a "Bonjour," which was about the limit of his French. “I need my glasses,” he said to Malfoy.

“You’re welcome,” Malfoy said, slapping them into his hand. “And say bonsoir, it’s night.” He gave the Frenchman his papers.

The official looked at the documents too long and too closely, and then at Malfoy, and then back down at the documents. He said something, and Malfoy produced his badge.

The official looked at it for a moment, and then said something in a very curt voice. The only word Harry caught was "Mangemort."

Malfoy, equally curtly, replied with a firm "Non," and the official gestured to his arm, looking and sounding more and more agitated.

With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Malfoy pushed his sleeve up and showed his Dark Mark.

Harry tried not to stare; he didn’t think it would help Malfoy’s argument if his partner seemed surprised by his Mark. He’d known it was there, of course. But he’d never actually seen it.

It no longer thrummed with the sinister aura of a pledged life and an exigent master. It was just a remnant now, something between an old scar and a fuzzed tattoo. But the Mark still stood out starkly against Malfoy’s pale skin, and it still had the look of a wound: not right, not healthy. The eye snagged on it; it was ghastly.

Malfoy always looked so finely put-together, and this hateful thing lurked beneath his clothing. Ragged, frightening, and permanent. Harry had never noticed his diligence in wearing long sleeves: even making potions, he never rolled them up. As Snape hadn’t.

The official shook his head, speaking in rapid French to someone near him. Malfoy interrupted, raising his voice. Finally, he pointed to Harry and said something about "Arree Potteur."

All eyes turned to Harry. The first official held his hand out for Harry's papers and looked them over.

"Monsieur Potter," he said in a heavy accent. "This man is, eh, law enforcement?"

"Yes, that's correct. We're Aurors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

The man gave Malfoy a skeptical once-over. "He is a Mangemort, no?"

"No. I mean, yes, in the past. But not anymore," Harry said. "The British Ministry of Magic employs him. We’ve come here on Ministry business."

The official shook his head again and spoke to the man who'd come over, who then walked away. He returned with a supervisor, who also demanded to see Malfoy's Dark Mark and then also got into a shouting match with him.

"For fuck's sake," Malfoy said.

"I thought Robards arranged it," Harry said to him.

Malfoy sneered. “It doesn’t matter what was arranged. The point is to shame me.”

Eventually, Malfoy was taken to a holding room while Harry firecalled Robards, who got it sorted out in a few minutes. Robards didn’t exactly fall over himself in remorse; in fact, he seemed to think it was somehow Harry and Malfoy’s fault.

“So is there a single employee of Paris Portkey who wasn’t made aware of the two British Aurors entering the country?” he demanded.

“I thought it was all arranged,” Harry said, trying not to get too defensive. “I don’t even understand the issue, I don’t speak the language. Do you want to talk to Malfoy?”

“No,” Robards said, and ended the call.

"I hate these people," Malfoy said with a deep scowl as they checked into their hotel an hour later. "I hate this country, I hate my boss, and I hate working for the fucking government."

"I’d say you got lucky," Harry said. "If we hadn’t arrived together they might have detained you."

"Oh, and of course I hate my partner."

So much for a holiday.

To make things worse, the Ministry had skimped on their accommodations. It was a Muggle hotel, far from Paris’s wizarding district, and their room was tiny.

"Only one bed," Harry observed.

"Guess you're on the floor, then," Malfoy said, throwing his cloak on it.

"You're not even going to offer to share?"

"Fuck off," Malfoy said, and then proceeded to use all the hot water for his shower. Harry resigned himself.

Something cold, soft, and insistent nudged Harry in the nose.

“Remember when I stomped on your face like a crunchy leaf? So satisfying.”

Harry’s eyes shot open. He was lying on the floor, where he’d slept. Malfoy was standing over him, pressing his cashmere-socked toes into Harry’s cheek. Harry was alone with Malfoy in a small room in a foreign country.

Barely awake, Harry grabbed his ankle in both hands and pulled. Malfoy flailed and fell on his arse.

“What time is it?” Harry managed. He sat up and put on his glasses. Malfoy was completely dressed, in Muggle clothes all in black. His suitcase was transfigured into a smaller overnight bag.

“It’s morning,” Malfoy said. He got up again with what dignity he could and slipped on a pair of oxfords. “We’ve got twenty-four hours. I have some business I need to see to, but I’ll be back in time to get to work.”

Harry threw off his thin blanket. His mind was moving sluggishly, but picking up speed. For some reason he was being ditched. “What the hell are you talking about? You have business in Paris?”

“Not in Paris exactly.”

“Okay…” Red flags were beginning to rise; Harry prepared himself to argue as well as he could in an undershirt and boxers. “So what is this business?”

“That’s my business. As in, none of yours.”

Harry stared at him, blinking and trying to suss out the situation. Malfoy’s concealed eagerness to take the trip. Gushing gorgeous over the Clock. Frond’s froglike voice pushed into Harry’s mind: Jack’s theory is that his real sympathies are elsewhere. “No, sorry. I don’t accept.”

“Well, you’re not my superior, so I’m not asking permission.”

Harry stood, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t be fucking sketchy. You’re out of the country on a very rare exception to a strict rule about your movements, and the absolute first thing you want to do is disappear somewhere undisclosed, for undisclosed reasons. With a bunch of privileged information about a Dark artifact smuggling ring. No, Malfoy. It’s not happening.”

Malfoy sneered. “Potter, you twat. Put some clothes on before you get sanctimonious with me.”

Despite himself, Harry flushed. He swiped his trousers up from where they lay crumpled next to his non-bed and put them on.

“All right,” he said as he fastened them. “The answer’s still no.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I assure you I can.”

Malfoy glared at him for a moment and then lunged for the door.

Harry clawed for his wand and shot a Leg-Locker Curse at him, which Malfoy blocked silently, then a Full Body-Bind that went wide and turned the towel hanging on the bathroom doorknob into a rigid tripping hazard. Malfoy stumbled over it, kicked it aside, and threw the door open. Harry envisioned a balled-up handful of Malfoy’s shirt at the nape of his neck and yelled, “Levioso!”

Malfoy was yanked into the air. “Fucking prick, you’ll rip my clothes!” he cried, kicking out.

Harry inched around him, taking an off-balance but vicious brogue-tipped kick to the shoulder, and closed the hotel room door. Keeping his wand trained on Malfoy, he let him drop.

Malfoy looked homicidal. “The worst thing is, when I explain to you what a tit you’re being, it won’t even make you feel bad. Nothing makes a dent.”

Harry waited, not moving from in front of the door.

“I know you sustained a lot of brain damage as Dumbledore’s human shield, but try to recall, if you can, a few obvious hints. Like, ‘My parents have left the country.’ And, ‘There’s a branch of the Malfoys in France.’” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Oh,” Harry said. “I guess, in that case.”

“Yeah, in that case it’s all perfectly innocent, and none of your business, and you’re an arsehole. So fuck off.”

It wasn’t perfectly innocent, Harry stopped himself from pointing out — since Malfoy had, unsurprisingly, been lying about not knowing where they were, and had arranged to get something personal and mildly forbidden out of his work trip on the state’s Galleon. Still, it was just the sort of prohibition-for-his-own-good that Harry had always flouted as often as he could and wished to thumb his nose at even oftener.

“So,” Malfoy said, tugging his clothing back into place. “Being that I have a rare opportunity, I am going to see them, alone, and you’re not going to tell anybody. Even if I have to beat the law and order out of you first.”

Maybe Harry was under-caffeinated and revved up from the row, but something like fondness rose up in him. All this bluster and rage just because, despite everything, Malfoy loved his parents. If one ignored who they were, it was sweet.

“Any fight between you and me, with or without wands, ends with me winning. As you know,” Harry said, unable to resist getting in another shot. His shoulder hurt from being kicked, after all, and he’d woken up with Malfoy’s foot in his face. He cleared his throat annoyingly and stepped aside, gesturing to the door with a magnanimous bow. “So I elect to let you go.”

Malfoy shoved past him and left.

For a few moments, Harry let silence settle in the small hotel room. He half-expected Malfoy to burst back in, snarling, “And another thing!” But he was evidently so anxious to get on with his clandestine plans that he’d let Harry get the last word. Again it struck Harry as sort of sweet.

He laughed at himself. His partnership with Malfoy was warping his entire emotional landscape. Being yelled at could mean ten different things, and being ignored ten more.

There was a knock at the door, far too timid to be Malfoy. It was the Muggle housekeeper. As far as Harry could tell, she was alarmed by the noises from their magical scuffle, which had resounded all down their floor.

“Ah, oui,” Harry said, waving her in. “Just le toilette. Boom! But,” he flushed the toilet with pride, “très better now. Voila. Non problem. ”

Their lodging had been chosen for its nearness to the shipping port along the Seine, so it took Harry about an hour’s walk to get to the entrance to the Place Cachée, Paris’s wizarding district tucked away in Montmartre. There he found many of the shopping comforts of the wizarding neighborhoods he knew — Quidditch outfitters, potions suppliers, a wandmaker.

With difficulty he bought a tiny little coffee and an enormous croissant and spent a few pleasant hours people-watching. He was less famous outside of Britain, known more by name than face. Only occasionally did someone’s eyes narrow as they tried to figure out where they knew him from.

He wondered where Malfoy was, if he’d yet made contact with his family, if they were having a lavish midday meal at an estate that the Ministry didn’t know about. He could easily picture Malfoy settling in for a continental afternoon of doing absolutely nothing.

Then again, he could also recall his nervous chatter to Andromeda, his laundry list of things he and his parents didn’t talk about, the many times over the years Harry had seen him brought to heel by Lucius, Bellatrix — a constellation of frightful adults who didn’t seem easy to relax around. For God’s sake, he addressed his mother as “Mother.”

In truth, as soon as Malfoy had said he too would take the early Portkey, Harry had made peace with the idea of spending the day off more or less together. Even before he knew Malfoy had something like a summer home in France, Harry had assumed that a child as wealthy as Malfoy had been would be familiar with all the wizarding districts in Western Europe.

Harry, on the other hand, had traveled almost exclusively as an enemy of the state. Not that anyone was counting, but this was the first time he’d ever left the British Isles.

And Malfoy wasn’t here. Which meant Harry could be honest about some very basic, very Mugglish desires. Magillard magical bookshop was one thing, but Harry really wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower and see the Mona Lisa.

His feet ached badly as he climbed the stairs back to their hotel room hours later with a belly full of coq au vin from a randomly selected Muggle restaurant; he’d spent at least half of the Euros he’d been given for the week and seen the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Tour Eiffel. More than was reasonably packed into one afternoon. He’d have liked to tick off the Catacombs as well, but you had to leave something for next time.

He was surprised to find the room dark; it was late, and they were meant to start first thing next morning, but Malfoy had not yet returned. For the first time in a long time he thought of the Marauder’s Map, and how he’d once been able to keep track of Malfoy anywhere he went.

Harry threw off his street clothes, fatigue descending on him in the small, dim room. He looked at the bed, snorted, climbed in. If Malfoy wasn’t here to defend his territory, Harry wasn’t going to sleep on the floor like a well-trained dog. He pressed his face into the pillow, expecting the smell of Malfoy’s hair. But the pillowcase had been changed while he was out.

Harry started awake. Someone was fiddling with the door to the room; instantly he had his glasses on and his wand drawn, before realizing it could only be Malfoy.

He strode to the door, hearing the placid not quite beep of an unsuccessful keycard swipe, the doorknob jiggling, another unsuccessful swipe. “You little fucker,” he heard Malfoy say, at volume. “Alohomora.”

The keycard reader gave an impinged-upon sort of beep and the door flew open, only missing Harry’s face because he reared back.

Malfoy wasn’t surprised to be greeted at the door. “This thing doesn’t work,” he said, and handed the keycard to Harry as if he were the help. It was possible, Harry thought, that he was drunk.

“I’m drunk,” Malfoy said, pushing past Harry into the room. “I can work tomorrow, I just need a few hours.”

“Overdid it with the Dom Perignon?” Outside the doorway, the card reader chirped and flashed green as soon as Harry touched Malfoy’s card to it. He came back in and shut the door.

“Don’t talk Muggle shite to me right now,” Malfoy said.

Then, thankfully, he went straight into the loo. Harry knew Malfoy would try to reclaim the bed from him and, drunk or not, that wasn’t on. Harry slid back under the covers and prepared for a fight.

When Malfoy emerged, he noticed at once the warlike maneuver. “Out. Out! No!” He actually stamped his foot. “Out, Potter. That’s my bed.”

Harry pulled the blanket up under his chin and closed his eyes. “I can’t hear you, I’m asleep.”

“Noooo,” Malfoy moaned. “I’ll die sleeping on the floor. Come on, you’re so much more suited to squalor and suffering.”

Harry pretend-snored.

“Oh, fine, shove over,” Malfoy said, and Harry felt the covers being lifted off him.

Harry opened his eyes, hesitating. In all honesty he didn’t really care about sharing the bed — he’d suggested it in the first place but Malfoy had refused. But maybe the giddy unsupervision of the trip and Malfoy’s brief absence had made him too fond. Maybe he was supposed to get serious and outright say no, defend a boundary against friendliness. This was not someone to trust, he dutifully reminded himself, but it felt forced and tedious.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Malfoy said, slumping into the bed beside Harry. “It’s an emergency.”

“I know you’re a blanket hog,” Harry said. “I can tell. I won’t take it lying down.”

He rolled over and leaned onto Malfoy, who cringed away. “Get it? Lying down?”

“Stop touching me, you freak,” Malfoy said. “I have to sleep now or I’ll die.”

Harry snorted. That was the second time in two minutes he’d threatened to imminently die. Malfoy’s tendency for melodrama had always been one of his most annoying qualities — his ‘injury’ from Buckbeak sprang to mind — but in the right circumstances it was pretty funny.

Malfoy snatched one of the stiff decorative pillows from against the headboard and wedged it between them. “Stay away,” he said, and turned his back on Harry.

Harry didn’t fall asleep quickly. The weight and warmth of Malfoy next to him was unnerving, strange, but not bad. Harry listened to his breathing drop into sleep, becoming slow and deep. There was a slight whistle to his nose on the exhale.

Harry lightly touched Malfoy’s shoulder, curved away from him in the dark. Then he let his hand rest a little harder. Solid.

In the morning, the barrier pillow was still between them where Malfoy had planted it. Only Malfoy was now wrapped around it. He was on his side facing Harry, and had trapped the large pillow in a full-body bear hug, tucking it under his chin, hugging it to his chest with both arms, a leg thrown over it for good measure. A bare leg, Harry noted. He couldn’t remember what Malfoy had worn to bed the night before — maybe he’d gone right to sleep in his clothes — but he seemed to be wearing less now.

Harry sat up and put on his glasses. Malfoy was sleeping hard, mouth slightly open, breathing slow and heavy. He had disrobed in sort of a confused, drunken way, stripped down to boxer briefs on the bottom but with socks and a jumper still on. He was exposed to the room; it seemed that Harry, in fact, had been the blanket hog.

He let Malfoy sleep for a bit longer, dragging the case file onto his lap and reviewing it. When the sun started to push more insistently against the room’s curtains, though, he gave Malfoy a nudge.

“Oi,” he said.

Nothing.

“Malfoy, time to get up,” he said a bit louder.

Malfoy shivered and squeezed his pillow. “No,” he croaked. “This isn’t happening.”

“It is,” Harry said. “It’s time to work.”

“I need a hangover potion. You have to get me one.”

“Pretty sure I don’t have to do anything.”

Malfoy sobbed. “Out of everyone in the world, how is it you splashing about in the puddle of my misery? My life is a fucking nightmare.”

“We’re miles from the apothecary,” Harry said.

“So Apparate there, squib.”

Malfoy opened his eyes at last, looking at Harry. Even though he was already acting as bitchy as usual, there was something innocent and pitiful-looking about him. It was working. Harry slid on a pair of trousers and stuffed his wand in the back pocket.

“What’s hangover in French?”

“Gueule de bois. Get two. Three.”

“All right,” Harry said. “Try to make some progress.” Malfoy pulled the blanket over himself.

When Harry reappeared, Malfoy was still motionless under the covers. “Up you get,” he said. He flicked his wand and the blanket flew off the bed.

“Bastard,” Malfoy said. He put the decorative pillow over his face and moaned into it in agony, long and loud. He indulged in a few weak thrashes and his jumper rode up, revealing a flat, pale expanse from hips to navel.

Finally Malfoy sat up. He looked a mess, eyes shot red, hair in a rare state of greasy dishevelment. He shot a cranky glare at Harry. Then he finally noticed he was in his underwear.

He splayed his legs lewdly. “Keep staring, see if I care.”

Harry averted his eyes, overcome for a moment with embarrassment. Determined not to let Malfoy win, he turned back and flung the hangover potion at him, aiming for his crotch.

“Missed,” Malfoy said, uncorking the vial and throwing it back.

“Small target,” Harry shot back.

Malfoy grinned. “Keep paying it so much attention and see if it doesn’t grow.”

Harry’s face went hot. He’d followed this back-and-forth way out of his depth. “You’re so unprofessional,” he managed. “Get moving, please. We’re already running late.”

Paris was an inland river port; it was small and simple compared to the massive operation in a real port city like Marseille. But in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower there were plenty of tourists, which meant plenty of blending in material for two underslept foreign agents on stakeout.

The port was almost entirely Muggle, but every once in a while a smaller ship would chug through, oddly undetected and untended to, often looking as if from another time, and dump out wriggling cthulhus and vacant-faced pirate ghosts, gold bullion, treasure chests. These were the wizarding ships. They were dwarfed by the Muggle container ships that loaded and unloaded slab after massive, efficient container slab; but the wizarding world, here as everywhere, was a strange and tiny ecosystem thriving and conniving in the cracks.

“Intel says the shipment’s coming from Bilbao. Home of Maestro Parca, master builder of Ticking Clocks. Don’t know yet who’s the Parisian buyer.” Harry adjusted himself on his elbows; they were peering at the pier from a park across the Seine, as great a distance as their instruments would allow. The dock smell of algae slime and bird shit barely reached them. “Are you listening to me?”

“No,” said Malfoy, who was watching the action from a pair of Omnioculars in Falmouth Falcons gray that he’d probably bought at a match; it was a given round the office that almost any commercial gadget worked much better than almost anything Ministry-issued.

Malfoy wore a luxurious dark gray wool coat with the collar turned up dramatically. He pulled the Omnioculars away from his face and squinted into the sun. Wearily, he pulled the second vial of hangover remedy from his pocket. “These are weak. Did you pay a lot?”

Harry’d got the cheapest ones, assuming Malfoy was exaggerating his condition. Which he still assumed.

He stooped to pick the empty vial off the ground where Malfoy had littered it, and straightened to see Malfoy was lighting a new cigarette off the butt of the previous one. His hands weren’t shaking, but he didn’t exactly seem well.

“So, what, you were pounding kir royales with Lucius and Narcissa late into the night?”

“Certainly not. I bade them goodnight after dinner.”

“And then you came in six hours later.”

Malfoy cast a Warming Charm on himself, then groaned in frustration and unbuttoned his coat.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I was just wound a bit tight after all the quality time. So I went out for a drink and met up with someone.”

“Met up with someone, like, someone you know?”

“Like someone I met. Jean-Michel, or…Jean-François…” Malfoy cringed. “Or something.”

“Was he a Muggle or a wizard?”

“Un moldu.”

Don’t talk Muggle shite to me right now, Malfoy had drunkenly told him the night before. Having just got done with one.

“Jeez, Malfoy. I have to say, your type is kind of surprising.”

“It’s just easier,” Malfoy said. “With people who don’t know anything.”

“Muggles don’t not know anything, arsehole.”

“I meant they don’t know anything about me and my poor choices. Arsehole.” He put the Omnioculars up to his face and tightened in. “I’d like to change the subject now. This is sexual harassment in the workplace.”

That was rich, considering the off-color invitation he’d given Harry that morning. But Malfoy had perhaps been loopy with hangover at the time. And anyway, pointing out he was being hypocritical never seemed to even break his stride.

“So have you never had, like, a proper boyfriend?” Harry asked.

Malfoy put down the Omnioculars. “Stop talking to me about this.”

“Sounds like a no,” Harry said.

“Piss off. Of course I’ve had a boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah, called what?”

“Called your dead dad in hell, dickhead.”

“Careful,” Harry said. “I don’t care if you’re ill, I’ll still crack your skull if I need to.”

“Aguamenti,” Malfoy said, and cast a thin jet of water directly into his own mouth. “Gods above, I feel like shit.”

“Moral turpitude will do that,” Harry said.

Malfoy ignored him, looking through the Omnioculars down at the pier.

Malfoy’s sordid love life was kind of fascinating. After all those years of obnoxious wizarding pride — which he didn’t seem altogether rid of — it seemed like he only went out with Muggles. Maybe he got off on feeling superior, manipulating and confusing them, telling them they must have imagined it when they saw something strange.

Or maybe the opposite. Me and my poor choices. Maybe he was some kind of masochist, seeking punishment for his past. Letting Muggle guys treat him roughly, make fun of his weird name and weird clothes, balk at all the basic things he didn’t seem to know.

Although his cultural literacy had to be pretty high to carry on a conversation with a Muggle in his second language, and close the deal at that. Harry was impressed.

Then again, maybe the conversations weren’t that long. Harry was imagining Malfoy chatting these people up, charming them with arrogant ease, but he was good-looking and young, and with his coloring he stood out in a crowd. Maybe he just sat there and the men came to him.

Maybe he was popular. Maybe these guys were interested in seeing him again and he said no, or stopped taking their calls, or just Obliviated himself out of their minds. Maybe Malfoy was some kind of heartbreaker.

If you spent enough time with him, though, you were bound to eventually notice his personality. Charitably: a bit difficult. But Harry had no idea how he acted around these people. Maybe he was capable of being nice.

“Wrong again,” Malfoy muttered, and for one icy second Harry was fully convinced Malfoy could hear his thoughts. But he was still looking through the Omnioculars.

“Hm. All right,” Malfoy finally continued. “The intel we got is for shit. This guy…” He handed the Omnioculars to Harry, who looked through them and saw a close-up of one of the people down on the pier, a burly fellow wearing a fisherman’s cap and hauling boxes. “…is Lévi Mermaudit. He used to supply to Borgin, but they fell out during the war. I really doubt he’d let Borgin get a piece. So I think the UK contact is someone else.”

He grabbed the Omnioculars back and refocused them. “And this woman my father knows personally. Warda Hamdi.” He handed them back to Harry again. A North African woman with long, dark hair was ordering people about. “In fact I shouldn’t even be running around looking like him. Maybe I ought to wear that Cloak of yours for a while.”

Harry could smell his ulterior motives. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” he said, “but over my dead body will you ever wear my Cloak.”

Malfoy pulled a face, and tapped his own head with his wand.

His hair darkened to dirty blond and his complexion took on a tan. His face rounded, his nose shortened from long and aristocratic into a friendlier button, and freckles spread from the bridge to his cheeks and forehead. Harry tried not to stare. He looked really different. Building and banking a few quick disguises like these had been part of Auror training, but the scar on Harry’s forehead never cooperated and always gave him away. So he didn’t bother.

“Dunno why you’re so precious about that thing,” Malfoy said, his snobby sneer much less natural on this ingenuous face. “It’s a family heirloom, big deal. I teethed on more expensive antiques than you’ll ever lay hands on.”

Harry almost countered with a bratty reminder of the Cloak’s true pricelessness. But Malfoy didn’t know the whole story of the Hallows. He was part of the public in that regard. He knew about the Elder Wand, of course, had been bizarrely involved. But Ignotus Peverell, the Cloak of Invisibility, that was between the Master of Death and his two best friends.

It left Harry feeling weirdly troubled. Only days before, Harry had been congratulating himself that he understood Malfoy so much better than everyone else. But since they’d got here, he’d had one rude reminder after another that he knew very little about Malfoy’s private life. And he had massive secrets from Malfoy as well. There was something vaguely taunting about the fact that, thanks to Malfoy’s disguise, Harry was now alongside a complete stranger.

“Hamdi’s a potions dealer out of Tunis,” Malfoy went on. “So, one, I think that’s where they’ve come from originally. And two, I don’t think the Ticking Clock is the real prize.”

“But they’ve got the Clock with them,” Harry said.

“Yeah, it’s flashy, it’s what got MLE’s attention. But her game is controlled substances. I’d wager the real money’s in those sacks she’s screaming at everyone to be careful with.”

For another hour they watched the smugglers. Malfoy dictated identities, descriptions, and speculations to a Quick-Quotes Quill while Harry strapped a foot-tap-activated camera to the toe of his shoe, arranged his Cloak so it ever-so-subtly peeked out, took sixty or seventy inadvertent pictures while creeping over the bridge to the loading dock, and snapped some photos of their targets.

After a while he sneaked back to Malfoy. Then it seemed like they were going so Harry sneaked back to them, but they weren’t. The targets arranged and organized and argued but didn’t make moves. They were waiting, so Harry and Malfoy were waiting. The sun moved into higher position. Harry began to get hungry. The hard truth was that stakeouts were boring.

Malfoy let down the Omnioculars and shielded his eyes with a limp hand. He squinted down at the pier for a few seconds. Then he closed his eyes completely, rolling the back of his hand onto his forehead and giving up. “I’m dying,” he said. “My condition is worsening.”

“I think you just need some food,” Harry said.

“Bet there’s stuff on that ship that would put me out of my misery.” He tapped himself on the head and his countenance returned to normal. If not slightly more wan. He thrust the Omnioculars at Harry. “These are making me ill, you do this.”

Harry tried to, but Malfoy continued to piss and moan. “This sun is unbearable. Am I burning?”

“It’s February,” Harry said, not bothering to check.

“I’m very fair! I can’t take direct sunlight!”

“It’s good, it’ll burn off the alcohol,” Harry said. “Put that tan back on.”

“No, I hate that one. I can’t breathe out of that tiny nose. Soliscutum.”

Malfoy tapped his wand to the back of one hand, then the other. “Soliscutum,” he muttered again. He got his neck and face. With each casting, the area glowed ghost-white before the sunblocking spell sank in.

“Oh, do me,” Harry said. “Do the back of my neck.”

He expected Malfoy to refuse him, but instead he felt the wand touch his skin. “Can’t believe the Dark Lord had a hard time with this,” Malfoy said. “Easiest shit in the world.”

“If you could do it, you already would’ve,” Harry said, putting down the Omnioculars. “They’re moving, come on.”

Harry took blurry, low-angle photos as the smugglers loaded their goods into a white van that had pulled up to meet them: stacks of crates, large sacks of what seemed to be grain, and a heavy canvas-wrapped package that required four people to carry and was undoubtedly a grandfather clock. Then they split up: Harry followed while Malfoy poked around their ship.

“Alohomora,” he said guiltily to somebody’s bike lock, and tailed the smugglers out of the port.

Fucking terrible plan. He didn’t stop cycling for miles. Promptly he was winded — he’d barely ridden a bicycle since childhood, never done it in the middle of a city, and had no idea it was such a hot war with cars, all the better that he didn’t speak the language motorists were screaming at him. Harry was just beginning to fear the smugglers would lead him all the way out to the banlieues when they pulled into a winding and uneven alley.

Discarding the bike, wrapping his Cloak tight around himself, Harry scoped the building from the front: a locksmith on one side, a brasserie on the other, and in the middle a huge set of double doors with a dozen buzzers. Round the back: a graffitied service entrance, through which dipped four shifty smugglers and their haul, and one invisible Auror.

“These are really bad,” Malfoy said, kebab in one hand and one of Harry’s photos in the other, squinting at the blurry, shifting shapes. Harry had spent an hour locked in the bathroom with the lights off, elbows-deep in photo-developing potion, before Malfoy had knocked to let him know that his food was getting cold and that the potion was quite toxic. “Did your foot fall asleep?”

“Look at the ones of their HQ,” said Harry, whose head was out the window to recover from the fumes.

“Looks like a lab,” Malfoy said. “That tracks, check out what I found.”

Harry pulled his head back into the room. Malfoy held out what looked like a waterlogged caraway seed. “They’re smuggling Lethe seeds. These are the best, they’re so hard to come by. You saw the size of the sacks they were hauling.”

“What’s so great about them?” Harry asked.

Malfoy pressed his thumbnail into the seed, pinching it in half.

Harry stood there a few seconds, waiting for anything, then looked up at Malfoy’s face. Malfoy’s expression was expectant. Harry realized Malfoy had just asked him some annoying question, but he couldn’t remember what it had been.

“Did you just ask me something about…?” he said, blanking.

“What?” Malfoy said crossly. “What are you talking about?”

“What?” Harry said, completely confused.

Malfoy looked down at his hand. “Oh yeah — Lethe seeds. They make you forget.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He tried to probe the missing time, but there was nothing there. He didn’t even have a sense of how long it had been. Unnerving that they’d just had an exchange supervised by neither of them.

“They’re really hard to farm,” Malfoy said. “Because when the crop’s good you forget to harvest them.”

“Obliviating people seems much easier,” Harry said. “And more controllable.”

“That’s just what they do raw,” Malfoy said, dropping the two seed halves into an evidence phial. “They make great ingredients, most plants this potent aren’t nearly so inert and handleable. You can add them to Pensieves and alter the memories — absolute miracle for a legal defense.”

Harry decided he was happier not knowing anything about Malfoy’s legal defense.

“Psychopomp’s Shortcut has one Lethe seed in it when it’s made properly,” Malfoy went on. “If you can remember how to read when you’re peaking, you know you got ripped off.”

“I never did Psychopomp’s Shortcut,” Harry said. Was there any stereotype of a rich party boy Malfoy didn’t embrace?

“Slytherin was mad for it. But it was shit quality at Hogwarts, of course. You really never tried it? What about Apoplexy? Western Sunrise?”

“So they’re drug dealers,” Harry said. “The Ticking Clock still seems more urgent.”

Malfoy shrugged. “More urgent, less important. Lethe in quantities like this is unheard of. It’s not out of the question that the entire European supply traces back to this group. Anyone moving it at scale, at least.”

They discussed the hideout — the lab meant the smugglers were cooking and possibly distributing locally — and the Ticking Clock — still no buyer on the scene; maybe they should sniff around the local artifact shops? — and when to liaise with the French authorities — not until they had to and certainly not yet. The ideal order of operations, if it were somehow achievable, would be to sabotage the Clock unsupervised and maybe even undetected — maybe while it changed hands? ID the buyer and work out the English connection? — and then raid the potions lab with gendarmagie support. There were angles to consider and speculations to argue through. They forgot to be mean to each other for minutes at a stretch.

“Right,” Harry said eventually, rubbing at a tired eye under his glasses. “I should go return the bike I stole.”

“I’m for bed,” Malfoy said. “I’m still portlagged.”

“It’s a one-hour difference,” Harry said. “It’s earlier at home than it is here.”

“I meant I’m still hungover,” Malfoy said.

After the initial flurry of progress, nothing moved for a while. Harry and Malfoy spent days alternately watching the smugglers’ hideout and getting hunks of bread and brie for each other to eat. Harry inhaled more secondhand smoke than he’d probably done in his whole life to that point.

And they chatted. It was because they were both facing the same direction, Harry decided, looking at the same building. The chat helped to focus their eyes on it, and their averted eyes allowed the chat to slip past instead of snowballing until they screamed at each other.

Harry learned weird things about Malfoy: he had been on an aeroplane before but had potioned himself so heavily before the flight that he had no memory of it. He had his own magic portrait, abandoned in storage at Malfoy Manor, that spoke and moved in a pretty good rendition of him at age fifteen. His new wand was made of beech, with a unicorn hair core like his first, and he nursed a conspiracy theory that it worked better when he was “a good boy.” He didn’t ask whether Harry still had his old wand, which was just as well because Harry had no idea if he did.

Malfoy tried to evict Harry from the bed, but he’d already ceded the ground. They continued to share. It was awkward, mostly because Malfoy was rigid and prudish about it. He went to sleep with his back to Harry and cast a Silencing Charm to blot out any sleepy sniffles or shifting bedclothes.

The only time Harry saw him with his guard down was if he woke up in the night, which he did most nights at least once. On these occasions Malfoy was turned toward Harry, asleep with his face half squashed by the pillow, hugging a gathered-up bunch of blankets to his chest.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen Malfoy in a vulnerable or unselfconscious state: he’d hauled him zonked into a Side-Along, he’d zapped reenervates point-blank into his temple. Harry was, after a fashion, pretty familiar with him: in a few months of work, they’d physically handled each other more than Harry had done with anyone apart from Ron and Hermione in crisis situations — or, well, his ex-girlfriend. But catching him asleep was the only time he’d ever seen Malfoy in repose.

Sozzled nights out with Muggle hookups notwithstanding, Malfoy was an early riser. On the fourth morning Harry was awoken by the door to the hotel room slamming, and craned his head up to see that Malfoy hadn’t left, but returned. Harry had slept through his absence.

He let his head fall back onto the pillow, then strained to look at Malfoy again. “Oh my God,” he said, horrified. He put on his glasses to be sure. “Have you been jogging?”

Malfoy was wearing a white pullover, white shorts, tall white socks, white trainers. He looked ready to throw you out of the gentlemen’s club for blood impurity. The only indication he was already finished exercising was the sweat and damp hair gathered at his temples.

Of course Malfoy was the type to work out on holiday. Body fascist.

He set down a baguette he’d got on the way home. “How do you think I maintain my figure, magic?”

Cigarettes and mental illness, Harry almost said, but thought better of it. “Can’t say I’ve noticed your figure.”

“Pfft,” Malfoy said, holding up the back of his hand and tapping it. Then he went into the bathroom to shower.

Harry thought at first that the gesture had been meant to indicate a watch, as if to tell Harry to hurry up and get out of bed. But as Harry reached to check the time, he realized the back of his hand said, almost illegibly for its years of healing, I must not tell lies.

“Owl,” Harry said, sitting upright. He scrambled to his feet. “Hey! Owl!”

“Try for a complete sentence,” Malfoy said.

“There’s an owl delivery incoming,” Harry said. He snatched the Omnioculars, inadvertently yanking Malfoy toward him by the neck. “Only it’s landed while you were being a prat. We need to intercept before someone lets it in.”

The owl was sat high in a thick tree across from the building’s second floor. Typically French, it didn’t seem pressed about hasty customer service, and was taking a moment to preen rather than catching the attention of its intended recipients.

“Stupe—”

“No!” Harry pushed down Malfoy’s raised wand arm and the Stunning Spell went harmlessly into the dirt. “Are you thick?”

“What’s your great idea, then?” Malfoy said, hackles rising. Harry felt a grim sort of satisfaction: evidently this was a gap in Malfoy’s mysterious, potentially self-administered Auror training. Harry had spent days squatting in hedgerows coaxing training owls to give up letters to him. Not something you could easily learn alone.

He didn’t exactly hate getting a moment’s superiority over Malfoy in the field. From illegal potions to local language proficiency, Malfoy had been rather too essential to the team’s success the past few days. “Missed a day of school, I see,” Harry said. “If the owl is mussed up they’ll know someone’s seen the letter. Obviously.”

“Obviously!” Malfoy rubbed at his neck, flustered. “I’d have set it right when we were done!”

“You’re pants at animal handling anyway, I remember,” Harry said. He wasn’t usually a sore winner. Malfoy’s embarrassment provoked him.

“No I’m not! The class was taught by a bloody animal!”

“I can’t hex you right now, we’re at a critical juncture,” Harry muttered, crouching to get a good vantage.

“Owls like me,” Malfoy insisted. “You’re such a jerk. I have an owl who loves me.”

“Murisortia!”

“That won’t work,” Malfoy hissed. “They can tell it’s conjured. You don’t know anything.”

Harry ignored him, and rightly so. He concentrated on sending his mouse through the grass at the base of the owl’s roosting tree. “Oh — yes, perfect…”

The owl’s swiveling face had caught on the shifting grass where Harry’s mouse was scuttling. He tugged it back toward them, slowly, slowly, then unleashed it in a sudden dash.

The owl swooped.

“Yes!” Harry whispered. “Impedimenta!”

In a swift single movement, he lunged forward, threw his Invisibility Cloak over the owl like a net, and plonked back down on the park bench, cradling the bundle as its squirms began to regain speed.

“Right,” he said, motioning for Malfoy with a scrambling elbow. “Get under here.”

“Ha,” Malfoy said, scooting in and ducking under. “Over your dead body! Knew I’d get to wear it.”

“Hold the owl, then, owl whisperer,” Harry said, wishing he’d sought out more seclusion for this stage. Two grown men under the Cloak did not work, as he’d learned many times. He and Malfoy were huddled together like the world’s two most inept surgeons, heads bowed as all four of their hands attempted to soothe and restrain the intercepted owl. “Impedimenta,” Harry whispered again. The owl hooted in sedate misery.

“I know, he’s so beastly,” Malfoy said, cradling it. “We just need to see your foot there, sweetheart.”

Malfoy extended one of the owl’s downy legs and Harry removed the note.

“It’s in French,” he determined.

Malfoy tsked theatrically and traded him the squirming bird for the scrap of parchment.

“You’re okay,” Harry said, determined to calm it at least as well as Malfoy had. He stroked the owl’s head while Malfoy read. The owl bit his finger and he winced in silence, not wanting Malfoy to notice.

“They’re setting up a meeting,” Malfoy said. “‘Come round the shop, tomorrow, quinze heures. UB.’ Bet you anything they’re buying the Ticking Clock.”

“Nice one,” Harry said. The owl bit him again and drew blood.

“I’m so sorry, love, some people are just pants at animal handling,” Malfoy said, touching its writhing head. “I’m putting your letter back now, I just wanted to read it.”

Harry sucked on his bleeding finger.

“You won’t tell them I read your lovely letter, will you?” Malfoy said, running hands down the owl to ensure its feathers weren’t out of place. “You love having a little secret, don’t you, my darling? Because you’re so gorgeous and smart? Oh, I’ve got something for you, I think.” Out of a pocket he retrieved an inexplicable owl treat, which the owl promptly took.

“You could’ve led with the treats!”

“Post owls won’t trade a letter for a treat,” Malfoy said. “They’ll only take it after. Or don’t you know the first bloody thing about them?”

He tossed the owl out from underneath the Cloak. It went back into its tree and regathered its dignity.

Harry and Malfoy sat on the park bench, watching the owl. At length the second-floor window opened and it was ushered in. The message was delivered. Three o’clock tomorrow. A break in the case. The owl emerged, letter gone, and took off for home. Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and became aware that he and Malfoy were still pressed together under the Cloak, shoulder to knee, and had been for some time.

Chapter Text

“No, I won’t. I need real food. We’re in Paris, let’s go out. I bet you’ve never even had haute cuisine magique, have you?”

They had been surviving on pastries and street-cart food for days, and Harry’s bloodstream had gone a bit oily. And there was a feeling of pause, of preparation: they knew where they were going tomorrow. UB, they had learned through an afternoon’s digging, was Ursule Belcier, proprietor of an artifacts shop in the Rue des Voiles, the Place Cachée’s sophisticated and gothic answer to Knockturn Alley. They’d scoped the shop, found that the back office’s dingy window was a serviceable perch for an Extendable Ear. Now they were only waiting. Why not, Malfoy demanded, do it in a more cultured fashion?

Because they were on the clock, for one thing. Because they were, respectively, somewhat famous and somewhat infamous.

“We can’t dine at the finest restaurants of wizarding Paris,” Harry said. “We’re working.”

Malfoy gasped, ignoring him. “Let’s go to Récolte! Oh, we must. It’s so fucking expensive.”

“And you’re so fucking broke. I suppose you think I’ll pay?”

“You hopeless bourgeois.” Malfoy grinned maliciously. “The Ministry will pay.”

In the end, Harry agreed to it. He didn’t know when he’d be back in Paris. He didn’t know when he’d again do rich people stuff with Malfoy, who would never in one million years bring Harry to a restaurant he liked in London. Malfoy hogged the bathroom mirror in their hotel room for half an hour and went Mediterranean, giving himself olive skin, dark eyes, dark hair almost to his shoulders, and a charming gap between his front teeth; he always put in the effort to make his disguises rather handsome. In the black mirror of their unplugged television, Harry did his best to recreate the longlost Weasley cousin he’d Polyjuiced into for Bill’s wedding.

“Merlin, how grotesque,” Malfoy said when he emerged from the loo. “That’s not what you’re wearing, is it? Don’t you have something formal?”

“You’re asking whether I brought dress robes for a work trip? No, I didn’t.”

Malfoy looked over Harry’s bag. “Did you hang up your other things?” he said, crossing to the wardrobe. “You brought no wizardwear?”

“I really don’t tend to wear robes,” Harry said. “Apart from when we’re in uniform.”

Malfoy’s mouth twisted unhappily as he considered his options. “All right, fine. We’ll be clueless nouveaux riches who don’t know how to dress. But we’ll have to spend twice as much to seem like we belong there.”

“I’m sure you’ll have that covered,” Harry said.

“No, the trainers I can’t abide, you’re making me sick.” Malfoy snatched the one Harry hadn’t yet put on and held it up against one of his own fine leather shoes. “It’s like half a size’s difference. If you stretch them out I can just bill you for replacements.”

Harry was certain any single pair of Malfoy’s shoes cost more than Harry had ever paid for any personal item. He was also certain, as he lost circulation in his fingertips cramming his heel into a sleek oxblood loafer, that his feet were more than half a size larger than Malfoy’s.

“Can’t I make them slightly bigger?”

“Is that a real question? No,” Malfoy said, throwing on a coat. Harry did it anyway behind his back.

Récolte was in the Place Cachée, which made Harry doubly glad they were disguised. The stone farmhouse was set back a ways from the street so as to show off its abundant and lush front meadow, which resounded with cicada song and glowed with firefly light. It all looked so out-of-place in Paris’s dix-huitième that it exuded not authenticity but pristine, total, very expensive artifice.

Everyone except them, as Malfoy had predicted, was wearing dress robes. Harry affected a bland smile to defend himself from snobby sidelong glances as Malfoy spoke to the maître d’hôtel, touching his ginger hair to make sure it continued concealing his stubbornly untransfigured scar.

There was a second’s delay before Harry remembered the dark-haired man turning back toward him was in fact Malfoy. “So, he said they’re full up,” Malfoy started.

“No problem,” Harry said, relieved. “We can get kebabs for the room.”

“But I told him I was with Harry Potter and he found a table,” Malfoy finished. He rapped his wand on each of Harry’s cheeks, his chin, and the top of his head, and Harry had the melting sensation of his face returning to normal.

“What the hell,” Harry said dully, not even surprised. He fished his glasses out of his breast pocket so he could glare at Malfoy with more precision. “I thought we agreed to keep a low profile.”

“Relax,” Malfoy said. “Discretion is part of what you pay for at a place like this. I told him we needed to be seated invisibly.”

“Oh, that won’t arouse suspicion. Now the staff will gossip that I was here and I didn’t want anyone seeing me!”

“Are you going to keep them waiting or what?” Malfoy said. “They made special arrangements for you.”

“You have to look normal too, then,” Harry said, poking Malfoy’s face with his wand. “It’s too weird eating with a random guy.”

They were sat in a rustic, sandy-walled room, at a table carved from a single slab of wood. An actual butterfly rested on the delicate spray of wildflowers in a vase. A massive paneless window next to them spilled golden hour light, birdsong, and a view out onto rolling hills dotted with grazing cows in rich, precisely bred colors. It was already dark outside and they were in the middle of a city, so all of this was sort of unnerving.

Harry stuck his hand out the window and felt the mild country breeze slipping between his fingers. He didn’t know whether they were alone in some kind of pocket dimension or if there were other diners here, discreetly hidden from them. The whole thing was bizarre. Was there going to be butter-churning?

“All right, er, what about this?” he said, pointing at some words shaped like words he knew on his menu.

“No, we don’t choose,” Malfoy said, looking over his own menu. “We’re having all of it.”

Harry looked it over again. At nine items, the list had seemed short; now it seemed wildly long. Almost everything on it was impenetrable. Foie gras was coming at some point; fair enough. He supposed he’d have to have faith.

“The somm’s being a bit playful tonight,” Malfoy said, clearly meaning tasteless. “Think I’ll see the wine list, actually.”

He spoke in French and script began to seep through the verso of the menu he was holding.

Harry studied his own newly conjured wine list, which, like the rest, offered him little. “Never had elf wine,” he said. He hoped it wasn’t foolish to assume it was made by elves and not of them. “Should I try it?”

“You should never pair elf wine with cooked meat,” Malfoy said.

“What do you pair it with?”

Malfoy looked at him like he was completely stupid. “Raw meat. Tartare.” Seeing Harry’s expression, he waved a hand. “Never mind, I’ll get a bottle.”

Malfoy prodded what he wanted with his wand. Then a healthy breeze swept their menus off the table and out the window. The sunset had not progressed at all into night.

“Have you been here before?” Harry said.

“It’s only been open since I stopped traveling,” Malfoy said, which was a rather euphemistic way to put it. He took out a cigarette, but it wouldn’t light. “Bet they’d let you smoke,” he said crankily, and held it out to Harry.

“No, thank you,” Harry said, startled by the overfamiliarity. Malfoy had just offered him something he’d had in his own mouth.

“No, light it for yourself and then give it back to me,” Malfoy said.

“Oh.” This still felt very chummy. But if Malfoy was fiending so badly… Harry put the cigarette between his lips as dryly as he could, lit his wand, sucked in once without inhaling so it caught. He handed it back to Malfoy. He was so perturbed by the exchange, the procedurally generated special treatment he had indeed just received, and the fact that Malfoy actually muttered thanks that he missed the appearance, between them, of something like a snowglobe, or a small terrarium filled with rocky dirt.

“Is that the food?” Harry asked.

“No, it’s the terroir.”

A gentle shifting of light began within the globe; Harry could see clouds forming and dissipating at great speed. He was watching something grow, he realized, accelerated to a blur. Tentacular little branches sprouted and curled, getting more robust and more laden with what he could just make out as tiny clusters of dusty, plump little orbs.

At length the globe filled with a roiling sea of mashing grapes, then went opaque. Its glass surface creaked into a small oaken barrel. Then, with a noise like a forming ice sheet, it was a handsome greenish bottle. Voilà. The wine.

“Neat,” Harry said, reaching for it.

“Don’t rush,” Malfoy said. “It’s aging.”

Harry stared at it for another few moments, but whatever was happening was now totally beyond his observation. Then it uncorked itself loudly and a fat glass appeared before Malfoy with a splash of wine in it. Evidently the table knew Harry was not the decision-maker.

Malfoy, without an iota of self-consciousness, did all the bizarre things wine people knew to do: he smelled it, tossed it around in the glass, sipped it in a weirdly loud way, finally threw it back.

“Ça ira,” he said dispassionately, and then Harry finally had a drink in front of him.

Malfoy held his glass by the stem, so Harry did too. He momentarily thought Malfoy would cheers him, or that he should cheers Malfoy, but that lapse of judgment passed and he took a sip.

It was rich. ‘Full-bodied.’ He sipped again. Rich but it went down easy.

Harry was certainly no wine snob — he could sometimes tell French wine from South American or, more reliably, white from red — but he could sense that there was something particular to this: it had a powerful and pleasant infusion of weather, diverse years’ worth, a fullness of time freshly stacked on top of itself.

“Good, eh?” Malfoy said. “It’s one-of-one. No one’s ever had it before and you’ll never have it again.”

“Is this the most expensive one on the list?” Harry asked, grinning.

Malfoy grinned back. “Oh, naturally.”

Something was crawling in the window beside them: a vine. A perfectly round cherry tomato dropped onto the sill. Harry leaned his head out the window and saw a riot of plants below, growing at inches per second. He was so engrossed watching an aubergine balloon into existence that he didn’t notice the miniature cloud forming directly over him until it started to dump rain onto the blooming garden and his head.

“That’s the food,” Malfoy said unnecessarily as Harry wiped off his glasses.

Foie gras, Harry remembered, suddenly horrified. “Surely we won’t watch the meat’s — life? And death?”

“They understand the modern palate doesn’t really favor the full show,” Malfoy said, delighted by Harry’s horror. “But you can request it. Your plat principal is probably being conceived at this very moment.”

Helplessly watching bees pollinate what was going to become an aspect of his salad, Harry realized he’d seen magic along these lines before: in the depths of the Department of Mysteries, under a bell jar, a looping bird being born and unborn. Evidently, for the right price, there was a commercial use.

It made him sort of queasy, in all honesty; the artificial treatments Muggles did on their food seemed harmless compared to this. “Is this stuff safe to eat?” Harry asked. “When it’s made so unnaturally?”

“What do you mean?” Malfoy seemed genuinely confused. “It’s magic, it’s good for you. An enchantment a day keeps the reaper at bay.”

Harry’s doubts were not assuaged. There were plenty of types of magic that were bad for you. And he was dining with someone who had never exhibited a healthy aversion to the most sinister of them.

On the other hand, having hesitantly tried it: the food was magnificent. It began and then it kept coming. Haricots verts that numbed his tongue pleasantly, white asparagus in white sauce, then some kind of hot, brothy soup, slick with dots of spiced oil. A lot of edible flowers.

“Oh my God,” Harry said involuntarily, around a mouthful that was almost narcotic in its intensity.

“Have some dignity, Potter, don’t moan at the table.”

Evidently Malfoy thought the way to savor a once-in-a-lifetime meal was rigidly and in oppressive silence. He actually moved his soupspoon away from himself rather than towards. Rich people were insane. Harry laughed, and then his plate changed again.

“Potter—” Malfoy grimaced again and he touched anxious fingers to his hairline. “Please don’t blow on the food. It’s charmed, it couldn’t burn you.”

Harry grinned. Maybe he was drunker than he felt on Father Time’s own priceless non-vintage, but he found it very amusing that his table manners embarrassed Malfoy to the point of upset.

“I thought we’re invisible,” Harry said, smirking.

“Well, yes, but — look, it’s bad enough we’re not dressed appropriately—”

“You could’ve come alone,” Harry said. “You insisted on making a date of it.”

Gratifying little smudges of pink rose on Malfoy’s cheeks. Buzzing, Harry returned to medallions of probably the rarest beef he’d ever eaten. He wished he could Vanish everything in his stomach, become famished again, and keep going on this food forever.

“No one’s going to take it away,” Malfoy blurted quietly, almost sulkily, like he couldn’t stop himself making another remark.

“I just eat fast,” Harry said. “I always have.”

“You eat like a starved animal!”

Harry shrugged and continued to tuck in.

Malfoy watched him warily. “Is it true, what they say about your childhood?”

“Depends what they say,” Harry said.

“That it was…harsh.”

Harry swallowed his mouthful. He saw the connection Malfoy was making, that he ate quickly because he’d often gone hungry. Or because he hadn’t been made to feel welcome at the table. Both, he supposed, were true.

“Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged again. “But what can you do. Except eat fast when the food’s good.”

Malfoy hesitated before he spoke again. “Did you really live in a cupboard?”

“Yeah, under the stairs,” Harry said. He found he didn’t dread talking about it. Normally this was a subject he did not like getting into with anyone and especially not people who couldn’t be trusted not to generalize about Muggles. But it was relaxing to know that if Malfoy said something to piss him off, he could act exactly as pissed off as he was, no need for a strained little smile and deflection. There was something funny, in fact, about fielding these questions from the richest, spoiltest person his own age he’d ever met.

Malfoy’s brow creased. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d say he looked disturbed.

“I don’t think about it that much anymore,” Harry said. It was what he always said when people pitied him for his time with the Dursleys. “I’m just good at a bunch of chores I’ll never have to do again.”

Malfoy snorted. “Please, it would take a lot more than some sob story I’ve heard for ten years to make me feel sorry for you.” He scrutinized Harry again. “I’m just trying to figure out what other of your antisocial qualities are borne of deprivation and cruelty. The poor dress sense, certainly. Lack of impulse control. Maybe the weird hair.”

“They tried to fix the hair,” Harry said. “Everyone has.”

“No one’s tried hard enough.”

Harry smiled to himself. He’d come far in understanding Malfoy’s sense of humor. It was very similar to being insulted in earnest.

It didn’t escape him, either, that this was the first time Malfoy had expressed some curiosity about him. He peppered Malfoy constantly with personal questions, but Malfoy never asked about Harry in return. Until now.

And now he seemed emboldened.

“So,” Malfoy said, leaning forward. “Are you celibate or something?”

“What?” Harry asked, a laugh bubbling out uncontrollably.

“I don’t think you’ve had sex the entire time we’ve worked together. Am I wrong?”

“That’s none of your business,” Harry said, reaching desperately for his wine.

“Oh, I see,” Malfoy said. “Your love life is none of my business. But mine, well, that’s not the same, is it? It’s a bit of a joke, right? It’s so weird and frivolous and gay. Not like yours, which is meaningful and serious, and none of my business.”

“I didn’t say any of that,” Harry said. Malfoy’s absurd manipulations, paradoxically, helped him to recover his bearings. “And I know far more than I want to about your love life. You’re totally indiscreet.”

Malfoy didn’t dignify that with a response; they both knew Harry had been nosy on this point. “So what really happened between you and Ginny Weasley?” he said instead. “Is it true it’s compulsory lesbianism on the Holyhead Harpies?”

“No,” Harry said, laughing nervously again. “We just — it didn’t work out.”

“Uh huh,” Malfoy said. “So are you waiting for her to realize her mistake and come back to you?”

Harry’s heart lurched. Most people, with no other details, assumed Harry had done the breaking up. Maybe because he was famous, or because the story went that she’d held a torch for him for so long. Was Malfoy perceptive, or did he just start from a different basic assumption than most people: that Harry was a loser?

“No…”

“So what are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“Exactly!” Malfoy said, grinning. “So I’m right, you don’t have sex!”

“Lower your voice!”

“So sorry,” Malfoy said, and cleared his throat. “Attention à tous: Harry Potter—” (at this point Harry cast a Muffliato) “—ne baise jamais, son corps est aussi sacré que son âme et personne ne peut l’avilir. Vous êtes tous sales et indignes.”

“Whatever you said, fuck you.”

Malfoy smiled horribly and quirked his eyebrows. “Ça te plairait,” he said, which very clearly meant You wish.

Despite everything, despite half a bottle of exquisite wine and literally the best food Harry had ever eaten, the meal’s final course was something he was not prepared for and could not cope with. A tar-black snail shell as big as an apple, covered all over with inch-long spikes that screamed venomous.

“Escargot?” he asked, steeling himself. Nauseating, but of course it was a classic; he supposed he’d have to try.

“No,” Malfoy said, taking up his knife and fork. “Lou Carcolh.”

The black shell on Malfoy’s plate lifted. A fanged, tentacled face emerged. Malfoy, raised elbows precise, crossed his knife and fork and neatly severed the head.

“What — the fuck,” Harry said.

“I know, now I sort of wish we had gotten elf wine…”

Malfoy began to fucking eat it. A raw slug almost as thick as his wrist.

Harry’s own snail-serpent had emerged. It looked into his face and hissed.

“It’ll leave if you let it,” Malfoy said. “I mean, not quickly, but.”

“I’m not eating this,” Harry said. It was making eye contact with him. There was slime on his plate.

“It’s the speciality of the house! This is the climax of the meal!”

“I’m vegan as of right now.”

Malfoy leaned forward with his silverware brandished and decapitated Harry’s snail.

“There, chicken, now will you try it?”

“I’m not scared,” Harry said. “I’m revolted.”

“You liked everything else, didn’t you? You’ll insult the chef.”

Harry looked down at the headless mollusk. It had a certain amount of coarse hair running along its spine — no, what was he thinking? It had no spine. He looked back up at Malfoy and shook his head.

“You can lead a parvenu to water,” Malfoy sighed, and finished his own carcolh in a tidy bite. “Dessert?”

“No,” Harry said shakily. “No, I don’t think so.”

Malfoy made Harry light him another cigarette and smoked it in happy silence for a while. Finally, the endlessly hanging golden hour outside faded into dusk. Two glasses of port appeared before them, along with a note that Harry assumed was the astronomical bill. He sipped his drink, aware that he was already sliding past tipsy, and let Malfoy handle charging the meal to the department.

As Malfoy read over the note, he was overcome by a look of evil delight. The tip of his tongue touched the point of a canine, and he looked at Harry. “They’re not letting us pay,” he said. “It’s their honor to serve you.”

“Oh,” Harry said, feeling almost crestfallen. He hated when this happened. All the worse for it to happen in front of Malfoy. “Uh, merci,” he said miserably to no one, assuming he was being listened to ultra-discreetly by an army of perfect waiters. “Merci beaucoup.”

Malfoy openly appraised Harry, as if he were coming to an all-new understanding of him. “Do you get in free anywhere you go?”

“No,” Harry said at once. It wasn’t quite a lie. Often he was able to insist. It was a moot point, anyway, he didn’t go to places like this.

“Oh, I’ve wasted months,” Malfoy said, sitting back with his drink and his cigarette. He looked at Harry in a very objectifying way. “I let personal feelings blind me to the true nature of what’s come into my life.”

“Stop.” Harry’s face was heating. “It’s really not like that. I’m just trying to get on with things.”

“The people’s prince,” Malfoy said dryly. “It’s not like you’re donating the special treatment to someone else when you don’t take it. They like doing it. They go home and write about it in their diaries.”

Evidently they were too dignified to gush to Harry’s face, and he was allowed to slink out behind Malfoy with a single warm nod from the maître d’.

It was full dark outside in the Place Cachée, as it had been when they’d entered, and they were too lazy to put their disguises back on, which meant they ought to leave. “Well—” Harry started on a sigh, but Malfoy cupped his hands around another cigarette, lit it, and set off with purposeful strides, his open coat flying behind him.

“I think home’s that way,” Harry said.

“We’re not going home,” Malfoy said. “We’re going to keep drinking.”

Harry had a giddy feeling, following Malfoy out of the Place Cachée and into Muggle Montmartre, that he was allowing something stupid to happen. Stupid, adolescent, laddish. He giggled at the back of Malfoy’s head, which confirmed for him that he was drunk. He had never had an irresponsible friend before. A bad influence.

“What’s so funny?” Malfoy said, turning around. He looked Harry up and down. “Lightweight.”

“Nothing,” Harry said, grinning. “I was thinking about that awful snail.”

“For the entire rest of your life you’ll regret passing that up,” Malfoy said. “Haven’t you heard the famous phrase? Carpe carcolh?”

Harry snorted and Malfoy, gratified, led on.

Malfoy knew Paris well for someone who had “stopped traveling” by age eighteen. Or maybe he just knew how to walk like he knew where he was going. He led them into a wide alley spilling with al fresco diners, down the treacherous rocky-lumpy steps to a basement bar, into a cavernous room that, as Harry’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, appeared to be an actual cavern. Like a wine cave, maybe. Very full, young crowd. Candles threw jumping shadows everywhere and cigarette smoke clogged the air. Hostile acoustics; the bar patrons were all yelling in an escalating attempt to be heard.

“Is this a place you like?” Harry yelled.

“No!” Malfoy yelled back. “It’s just a place!”

Harry sat, crammed in at a little corner table that rocked when he put his elbow down too heavily, and watched Malfoy. Malfoy inched toward the bar and shouted an order. He brandished a cigarette while he waited, and Harry smiled to himself watching Malfoy realize he couldn’t take his wand out to light it. Then his smile calcified as Malfoy leaned into the confidence of the bearded, turtleneck-wearing man on the next stool and asked him for a light. Fingers touching his mouth. Arranging his hair. Harry did not come here to be ditched.

Luckily the bartender returned to Malfoy at that point with a massive carafe of the house red and two glasses. For a moment Harry thought paying would perplex Malfoy — Harry himself had had some trouble with the quirky-colored Euro notes, which he’d never used before — but of course money was Malfoy’s native language.

Cig no-handed in his mouth, Malfoy returned to their table and poured them both incredibly healthy helpings. So healthy that when Harry accidentally rocked the table again with his elbow, both glasses sloshed wine on it.

Malfoy picked up his glass and muttered something, without doubt something unkind about Harry’s table manners, but it was too loud in the place for Harry to catch it.

“Do you mind if I turn it down a little in here?” he shouted. Malfoy shrugged and Harry slipped his wand down his sleeve to lower the volume around them just slightly.

Better. “Hey,” Harry said. “Cheers.”

He watched Malfoy nearly make fun of him and then decide not to. “Okay…” he said with sarcastic reticence. “To what?”

“To, I dunno. A break in the case.”

“Not work. Loser.”

“To your health, then,” Harry said. “You need it. Your insides must look like a pea souper.”

“Wrong. My insides are as gorgeous and pure as my outsides.” Malfoy touched his glass to Harry’s. “To my perfect health.”

Harry snorted, and they drank.

“Big step down, I know,” Malfoy said, indicating the wine.

Harry could tell it was less expensive, sure, but he couldn’t possibly care. And the evening’s progress had dulled his taste buds anyway. “Tastes fine to me.”

“That’s because you have no culture.”

“No, Malfoy, you are an inbred posh freak,” Harry said. “Ceremonially beheading your food in the middle of dinner is not normal. When I said you were bad at animal handling I had no idea how deep the aberration went.”

“I’m still angry about that,” Malfoy said. “How dare you? Noblesse oblige. A highborn wizard honors all of Gaia’s lesser magical creatures.”

Highborn, lesser, pure. Would Malfoy backslide into racist shit if he drank too much? Before, Harry would have been almost pleased to hear it. To catch him in it and be vindicated. Now he wanted to be proved wrong. He was rooting for Malfoy.

“Uh huh,” he said. “So how’d you do on the O.W.L. exam?”

“Don’t remember,” Malfoy said too smoothly, a sure sign he was lying. “Probably Outstanding, I got mostly Outstandings.”

“No you didn’t,” Harry said, laughing openly. “No you fucking didn’t. In what subjects.”

“Potions, Charms—”

“Charms? Malfoy, you fouled up your Charms practical trying to bother me, you think I don’t remember?”

“I persevered despite you, as ever.” Over Harry’s laughter, Malfoy went on. “Transfiguration—”

“You didn’t get Outstanding in Transfiguration!”

“Well, I would have,” Malfoy said, completely unashamed to cop to lying. “If the teacher hadn’t had it out for me.”

Harry remembered the look of unpleasant surprise on McGonagall’s face when Auror Malfoy had arrived at Hogwarts. But he also remembered her scolding him in sixth year when he’d pinned the cursed necklace on Malfoy. That is a very serious accusation, Potter. Even though he had been right.

“McGonagall was always fair,” Harry insisted. “Unlike Snape, who let you get away with anything.”

He left that there for Malfoy to pick up. Saying it gave him such a frisson. They would go into the meat of it now, the things they still didn’t really talk about because they couldn’t without fighting. But house rules were suspended: they were too far from home to hate each other. They were definitely too tipsy to duel, which was something.

“Ha,” Malfoy said. “Snape’s waiting for me in hell with a hot poker. He’s counting down the days.”

“He loved you.”

Malfoy scoffed. “No, it was all to do with my father. We were both trying to hide things from him and thought the other would observe and report.”

At first Harry didn’t understand what Malfoy meant. Snape would have been careful of how he behaved in front of Lucius Malfoy’s son, in the ambiguous interwar years and even more so once he’d resumed spying — but what had Malfoy had to hide that Snape would be in a position to know about?

Snape, the adult who supervised his dormitory. He meant his sex life. Which meant he’d had one at Hogwarts.

“So Snape knew about you,” Harry said.

“Oh, yeah. I must’ve heard a dozen lectures from him on the importance of discretion for a young man of station.”

Paranoid, closeted Malfoy would have taken these as veiled threats to stir up trouble with his parents. But to Harry it sounded like Snape had wanted to protect Malfoy — from his family, from the adulthood he’d been marked for and was naïve enough to embrace, from a milieu that would seize on any human frailty and exploit it. To Harry it seemed obvious that Snape had cared about Malfoy, had done what he could for him when everyone else had written him off as a bad seed. But Malfoy didn’t want to hear it.

Malfoy smirked. “D’you wanna know the worst thing I ever did to Snape?”

“Worse than forcing him to kill the only man who ever showed him kindness?” Harry asked.

Malfoy pressed his lips together. “I forgot you have no sense of humor. This story would be lost on you, never mind.”

“No, you can’t do that, you already started. Go on, then.”

“All right, but be forewarned, it involves the DEs and being gay, my two most hilariously stupid decisions.”

“Being gay isn’t stupid or a decision,” Harry felt obligated to say. “Those aren’t comparable at all.”

“Thanks, Saint Potter, at last I can love myself. Can I tell my tale or not?”

“Fine, but it had better not be gross.”

“It is gross,” Malfoy assured him. “So seventh year, you might know, was a bit of a joke, and I was called away from Hogwarts fairly regularly. But it was a huge pain in the arse to leave the castle at short notice, it was nearly impossible.”

He gestured at his forearm, thankfully without pulling his sleeve up. “The longer you take to go to him, the more it starts to hurt. So if you’re scurrying around trying to get off the grounds,” he indicated himself, “you’re practically crying by the time you get there. And then if you’re too late to arrive, he’ll — y’know. Really make you cry.”

As always, if Malfoy was going to talk about this, Harry was going to take a few shots to keep him humble. “Seems like the lesson didn’t take. You’re still chronically late.”

Malfoy ignored him. “Snape got tired of opening every meeting with me pissing myself under Cruciatus, so we made an arrangement. The Headmaster has certain privileges, y’know, for Disapparating, so he tells me if my Mark starts burning, I should always come straight to him, and he’ll take me along. And since the dungeons are so far from everything, he sets me up in a private room with a Floo so I can pop to the Headmaster’s office.”

“You got a private bedroom at Hogwarts?! For being a Death Eater?” Harry thought of Neville and the others, bruised to shit, camped out in the Room of Requirement. Not to mention himself and his friends literally camped out, surviving on boiled acorns in the woods. He was beginning to think the humor in this story would indeed be lost on him.

“Yeah, finally,” Malfoy said, oblivious. “I’d been asking him for one since first year. I had to get out of that dormitory, we all hated each other by that point.”

Harry could see them: knuckle-cracking Crabbe and Goyle, deranged Theodore Nott, silent and calculating Blaise Zabini — who, as the rumor went, knew a thing or two from his home life about getting away with murder — and in the center Malfoy, hands shaking, crumbling under the pressure of balancing his schoolwork with domestic terrorism. In Harry’s mind, they all wore matching pyjamas as they plotted to kill one another. That did seem funny.

“So anyway,” Malfoy went on. “I have my private room. It’s Friday night, nearly midnight, and I have, y’know, a guest.”

He meant a boy. A Hogwarts student. “Who?” Harry demanded.

“None of your business. But he’s, well, it’s been most of an evening, and he’s, y’know, seeing to me—”

“Eurgh, what does that mean?” Harry cut in again.

“Stop interrupting! He’s giving me head, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry said queasily.

Malfoy gathered his dignity and went on. “And I’m getting, y’know, pretty close, and then I start to feel my arm stinging.”

Harry tried to put aside how tense it was making him to listen to Malfoy talk about being close. He’d been warned there was gay stuff in the story. Harry could be mature.

“So at that point it’s a race against the clock — one, because in thirty seconds my arm’ll hurt too much to keep on, and two, because I’m expected elsewhere — but I’m so close, I just want to finish if I’m about to go be miserable for hours anyway, so I grab hold of his head and concentrate on really trying to get there, and then—” Malfoy started laughing, and took a breath. “And then the Floo kicks up and I hear—”

He dropped into a pretty good approximation of Snape’s imposing snarl. “‘Draco, for Merlin’s sake, hurry up!’ And I open my eyes, and there’s fucking Snape’s head in the fire, and my — companion — gets startled and pulls off and then Snape can see everything, and it’s just so shocking and mortifying that I just — finish.”

Malfoy cackled at his own memory. “Like, legs open, mouth open, eyes open. Making sustained eye contact with Professor Snape.”

“Oh my God,” Harry said weakly, trying to dwell on the outrageous story and not on the picture Malfoy had painted of himself having an orgasm.

“And. And. We still went to the meeting together after that. He never mentioned it. Potter — he died without either of us ever acknowledging this incident.”

“That might be worse than Dumbledore,” Harry allowed. “Sustained eye contact.”

“I know,” Malfoy said. He had curled his hands into fists and was pressing them to his cheeks to try to cool them. “When I think of him doing two hours of flawless Occlumency afterwards. The man made an art form out of repression.”

“What did the other student think of all this?” Harry asked. In truth, he was hoping Malfoy would let the bloke’s name slip.

“He certainly never mentioned it,” Malfoy said with dark amusement. “I made myself Unmentionable. Cast the spell pretty hard, too, I was in a dead panic. He probably still can’t say my name.”

“What spell?”

Under the table, Malfoy’s wand jabbed into his leg. “Noli dicere!”

“Hey!” Harry said, drawing his own wand, fumbling to keep it out of sight of the bar patrons. Far too slow. He hadn’t even known Malfoy had his to hand. A slight ache swelled in the glands of his throat, like he was coming down with a head cold.

Impishly, Malfoy prompted him. “What’ve I got on my arm here?”

A hideous, permanent blemish that serves you right, pervert, Harry tried to say. What he heard himself say was, “Nothing.”

A Dark Mark, he tried again, but again found himself uttering the word “Nothing.”

This was not bloody on. Harry concentrated hard. Any compulsion Malfoy could put on him, he could throw off.

“Nnnnn… Dddzzzzhh…”

“All right, don’t pop a blood vessel. Finite incantatem.”

“A Dark Mark. Dark Mark.” Harry cleared his throat. He’d have had it in a second more. “Jesus, Malfoy, that’s really dark.”

“Don’t mention it,” Malfoy quipped.

Harry realized that he had a piece of gossip — of a sort — to contribute in kind. A story that almost no one would find funny. “I also made sustained eye contact with Snape,” he said. “While he died.”

“Always with the one-upmanship.” Malfoy’s face twisted in distaste. “I thought he got eaten. Gods above, that’s bleak.”

“He insisted,” Harry said. “So he could die looking into my mum’s eyes. He was in love with her, that’s why he hated me so badly.”

“Oh Merlin, because you look just like the other guy.” Malfoy grimaced in mock-sympathy, for Snape or for Harry, who knew. “Your life is so fucked, Potter.”

“Thank you!” Harry exclaimed. “Only took you a decade to understand!”

Malfoy rolled his eyes, fighting not to smile. Harry looked away from him.

The silence seemed to underline the mood: dangerously friendly. Better to name it than sit there being scared; Harry spoke. “I can’t believe you told me a story about you having one, you degenerate. You’re getting too comfortable.”

“I’ve wanted to tell someone that story for years,” Malfoy said. “Snape took it to his grave, so you’re the only person who knows apart from Cadwallader.”

What Malfoy actually meant, there, was that he didn’t have any friends. It struck Harry with such sadness that it took him a moment to hear that Malfoy had let the name slip.

“Not Cai Cadwallader?”

Malfoy gave a cheeky faux-cringe. “Whoops.”

“But he plays for the Catapults! I’ve met him!” Another burly guy, Harry noted. Malfoy had a type.

“Of course you’ve met him, he went to Hogwarts,” Malfoy said. “He was only a year below us.”

“No, I mean, I’ve met him as adults,” Harry said. This was something Hermione often teased him about, that he had a poor memory for the population of their relatively small boarding school. Main character syndrome, she’d called it, which was mean but not inaccurate. Was it his fault he’d been more consumed with his personal problems than most students?

Cai Cadwallader, loud and gregarious Welshman and newly-signed reserve Chaser for the Caerphilly Catapults, Harry had met — as adults — through Ginny, at a party. He’d been sort of rowdy and clownish, actually, had started picking people up after tipping beyond a certain point of inebriation. Bizarre to think there was a gay hookup with junior Death Eater Draco Malfoy in his past that he’d been cursed into never speaking of. As Harry recalled, he’d had a girlfriend with him.

“I don’t think he’s into guys,” Harry said. “At least not anymore.”

Malfoy shrugged. “Not being into guys doesn’t necessarily preclude being into guys. Something I’ve learned on my journey.”

“Hang on,” Harry said, grinning. “He was a Hufflepuff, no?”

“Hufflepuffs were the strategic choice,” Malfoy said, refusing to be embarrassed. “They were least likely to cave your skull in if you had the wrong idea, and most likely to keep your secret. A Slytherin would be leaving money on the table not to blackmail you. Anyway, Cadwallader was a Quidditch player. And a pureblood.”

Irritation swept through Harry at the last bit. As if you really care about that, slut, he nearly said, then felt scandalized at himself. That was far too rude for him, even to say to Malfoy.

“A Gryffindor would keep your secret,” he said instead. “We’re gallant.”

Malfoy scoffed. “I caught a beating from a Gryffindor for trying it, put me off the lot. Besides.” He gave Harry a judgmental look. “It’s an annoying bunch. At least when a Hufflepuff has nothing useful to say, they generally remain silent.”

“Who gave you a beating?” It was school, Harry reminded himself, they had been teenagers, it was a long time ago. But still, that was a bit disturbing, wasn’t it? Would he have objected, if he’d heard about such a thing? Or just laughed because it was Malfoy? It was worse than that, he thought: he probably had heard that someone had kicked Malfoy’s arse, and had laughed about it.

“I snuck up on him and Obliviated him, so,” Malfoy quirked his eyebrows, “that one’s my secret.”

“But you’d tell me if it was someone I knew,” Harry said.

“Not necessarily.”

“Was it someone in our year?”

“No, older.”

This probably couldn’t have been earlier than fourth year unless Malfoy was a really early bloomer, no later than sixth if the other bloke was older. And a Gryffindor. That left about a dozen boys it could be, including multiple Weasley brothers, Oliver Wood, Lee Jordan…

Harry gasped. “Cormac McLaggen?!”

Malfoy snorted. “I wish. No one could get the wrong idea about him, he was such a pussy hound. No, it was, er. Kenneth Towler.”

Harry shrugged helplessly. He didn’t think he’d ever heard the name.

Malfoy looked at him like he was medically stupid: disdain mixed with a concern that bordered on fear. “Potter…he was Head Boy. In our fifth year.”

“You made a pass at the Head Boy?” Harry said. “Wait — you Obliviated the Head Boy?”

“I was a prefect too, remember. Thought I’d give him a chance to live up to his title.” Malfoy smiled darkly. “He didn’t like that joke.”

“So you told him to suck your dick and he thumped you,” Harry concluded. “This isn’t as tragic as you were making it sound.”

Malfoy shook his head. “It was completely tragic, believe me.”

Harry let out a little hum of amusement. He felt a sort of tenderness for the younger Malfoy, someone he not merely suspected but knew was annoying and terrible. To think of him navigating his dawning homosexual urges in a typically annoying and terrible way was sort of — charming.

Malfoy lit another cigarette. “Did you know Dumbledore was gay?” he said. “When you were his little protégé.”

“No,” Harry said. “I hardly knew anything about him when he was alive. I found out from that book.”

“Same,” Malfoy said. “Just when I thought I couldn’t resent him any more. Snape always told him every fucking thing about me, so I’m sure he knew.”

“And what?” Harry said. “You think he ought to have talked to you about it?”

“I don’t know,” Malfoy said, defensive. “Maybe, yeah. I never talked to a gay adult until I already was one. Would’ve been helpful, maybe.”

Harry pondered that one. He didn’t think it was realistic, Dumbledore initiating some mentorly relationship with Malfoy. He doubted Malfoy would have even wanted it. All these years later Malfoy was just trying to fit together some things in tragic misalignment: a secret he kept from his family, a family that got him stuck with a suicide mission, a suicide mission who understood his secret. But the pieces couldn’t really be organized into a different outcome without Malfoy himself having been different.

Malfoy shrugged. “Anyway. Neglecting to be the role model some miserable little poofter desperately needed — not something that could ever turn out to have repercussions for a great and powerful man.”

“Oi,” Harry said, sharp. “Out of order.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Malfoy sighed. “I will say he had good taste. You’ve seen the pictures of Grindelwald when he was young, haven’t you?”

“Sure, he was cute,” Harry said. “Too bad about everything else.”

“I mean,” Malfoy began, and the way his grin slowly split told Harry he was about to say something that crossed the line. “Have you ever seen what the Dark Lord used to look like? When he looked normal?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes back in his head and dropped his jaw in mock-ecstasy.

“God, Malfoy, shut up,” Harry said, covering his face.

A very wrong thought wedged its way in between his fingers. Sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle smiling down at him: “There are strange likenesses between us, after all…We even look something alike…”

“If God wanted me to be good, he wouldn’t have built the bad guys so lovingly,” Malfoy said.

“Haven’t you ever heard of resisting temptation?” Harry asked, shoving his own evil memory back into cold storage.

“Hmm, that sounds like Muggle God.”

On it went. Malfoy said something outrageous and then when he had Harry laughing he made it worse until Harry blushed. Eventually it was so late that it was early, which meant they were officially messing up the next day. Harry switched to Coca-Cola and tried to bully Malfoy into doing the same (“That stuff’s against nature,” Malfoy sneered), steered him out of the cavern, up the stairs, back onto the street. Harry feared that Malfoy would demand to escalate to a third location — Jesus, what if he liked dancing? — but he offered no resistance as Harry pulled him along in search of a discreet Disapparition.

Malfoy took out a cigarette as they walked. Another one. He was smoking more or less continuously this evening. Not that the drinking was healthy either but Malfoy was overdoing it. Harry began to feel a cat-herding exhaustion with him.

“No more of that,” Harry said, and snatched it from Malfoy’s hand unlit. “It’s time to be good boys.”

“Oh, is it then?” Malfoy said, towhead lolling.

“Yes,” Harry said firmly. “I’m putting us to bed.” And he hooked his elbow with Malfoy’s and Apparated them back to their hotel without another word.

The room was dark and clean. The din of the street all gone. Only now that they were here did Harry feel embarrassed that he had brought them so abruptly. Unilateral decision. Technically, drunk Apparition was not very safe. He extracted his arm from Malfoy’s.

Malfoy watched him and did nothing.

Harry went to the bathroom and filled a glass of water. He slugged it in the doorway. Malfoy was still watching him and still doing nothing.

“What?” Harry demanded.

“Right,” Malfoy said. Again he took out a cigarette. “I’m off.”

“You’re going back out?” Harry asked. It felt weirdly shocking. He could hear in his voice that that came across. Good. “Why? What are you doing?”

Malfoy gave him a look. “Don’t ask questions you know the answers to, it’s tedious.”

This time Harry schooled his tone. Irritation, not a sulk. “Last time you did this, you were completely useless for an entire day after.”

Harry watched Malfoy’s retreat into petulance; he lit his cigarette with his wand.

“As I recall,” Malfoy said, “I IDed the players in this operation and the goods they’re moving and kept this entire job from running aground on bad intel.”

“You can’t smoke in here,” Harry said.

Malfoy exhaled a thick plume. “I’m just leaving.”

“Malfoy, come on,” Harry said. It wasn’t totally clear to him why he was so opposed to Malfoy going. Just that it felt like a ruinous end to the long conversation, a bad swerve for the trip. “We’re working, mate, you can’t.”

He remembered that the last time he’d called Malfoy mate it had made him snap horribly. Perversely, that made him glad to have said it again.

Malfoy folded his arms over his chest. The wine flushed his face. “What are you, jealous?” he said. “Mate?”

“You don’t even like it,” Harry accused. “You have to get so drunk. You don’t even really like it.”

The upper corner of Malfoy’s mouth pulled. He was in his most venomous mode now. “And what the fuck would you know about what I like?”

Harry felt foolish. He didn’t know what he was trying to say, really, what advice he was really trying to give Malfoy, whose life was his own business. It wasn’t as if Harry’s life was something to aspire to. Maybe that was why he felt abandoned.

No. He knew it wasn’t that. He knew. He did know.

Malfoy looked down his nose at Harry. There was a lengthy silence. His lips were parted, teeth set.

Finally he smiled meanly. “You’re not as brave as you used to be.”

Malfoy meant to get the last word. He meant to leave now. But Harry had been provoked, and now he had been dared. Malfoy would be made to learn about playing with him.

“What the fuck is this, Malfoy? You got us drunk so it wouldn’t be anyone’s fault?” His heart hammering, he spat it out. “I don’t want you drunk.”

“I don’t want you at all,” Malfoy said. Too quickly and too coldly. Lie.

“Then off you go.” Harry returned his mean smile. “Have fun.”

And Harry turned away and dismissed him.

Chapter Text

Harry slept badly that night, anticipating Malfoy’s stumbling return, dreading that Malfoy would wake him up and say something cruel or foul to him, wanting to get it over with. He would have said he hadn’t slept at all, but he awoke to full morning light and Malfoy sitting where he normally did with a newspaper and a coffee. Dressed in new clothes, hair clean and dry. He seemed rested, lucid, properly arranged. As if to spite Harry.

Harry felt incredibly unwell. He sat in the bed with both hands gripping his head trying to put the following operations in order: fixing his hangover, drinking coffee, finding food, talking to Malfoy. In order to fix the hangover he had to Apparate to the Place Cachée. In order to Apparate he needed the hangover fixed. Talking to Malfoy he postponed indefinitely.

He Apparated to the apothecary with both arms wrapped around his gut to try to keep it in check, retched anyway, got the same bargain hangover potion he’d got Malfoy earlier in the week. If the woman at the till recognized him, judged him as a wino, he couldn’t tell because she was as impenetrable and unfriendly as everyone here. Harry drank the potion in the shop and knew immediately that Malfoy had been right about its insufficient strength.

“Gull de bwah,” he told the saleswoman, “très très plus,” and spent three times as much on a bottle half as big. She gave him dosage instructions that he could not understand. He took a big gulp. It tasted horrible, which was a good sign.

Finally his sour stomach settled, his brain resumed its normal size. Finally he could think.

What was he going to do about Malfoy?

The shared bed was such a problem. It was inappropriate and unprofessional that they hadn’t been given separate rooms; how bloody hard up for money could the department possibly be? And why hadn’t Harry just solved this problem on night one and bought a second room himself? It just hadn’t occurred to him, and then it had kept not occurring to him. Sharing the room had been fun until it wasn’t.

It was up to Harry to figure out how to go forward. That was clear. Not that it was fair; Malfoy was the one with experience. But in this like in everything else he was a psycho who alternately threw tantrums and pretended not to have any feelings.

If it were only that it was a man, Harry thought he could have coped easily. Who cared. Life doled you its little surprises. If it were a man who was nice to Harry and honest about himself it would be the easiest thing in the world to figure out together; they would just say what they wanted and learn what the other wanted and wherever there was overlap, whatever everybody wanted, that’s what they would do. Reality would be forced to absorb it.

But it was a man Harry had deep-seated problems with. Who could not get through a conversation without lying. Who thought hurting Harry was the funniest joke ever. A man Harry didn’t even like. But that wasn’t true at all, was it?

They had to get back to England. Finishing the job and making it home and dealing with it there, that was one path. Obviously not the one Harry wanted.

Would they deal with it, though? Harry had tried to confront him and he had completely denied it. Which was so stupid, but that was Malfoy. Malfoy who had been flirting with him more and more relentlessly all week. Was it just something he did to straight guys to make fun of them? Was it just something he did to Harry because it was so obviously and so ludicrously not real?

Harry got a ham and cheese croissant and ate it slowly on a park bench. He thought about how one of his very favorite things about spending time with Malfoy was that nobody ever had to devote any energy to pretending nothing was wrong.

He went back to the hotel. He Apparated to the building’s exterior, went in the lobby, up the lift, down the corridor, swiped his keycard, through the door. So Malfoy would hear him coming.

“Here’s this,” Harry said, putting down the other croissant he’d got.

“I ate,” Malfoy said.

“And this if you need.” Harry put the half-depleted hangover potion beside it.

“I don’t,” Malfoy said. “Are you ready yet?”

Malfoy put on a new face. He’d been doing it all week but again it felt spiteful. They Apparated separately to the Place Cachée and Harry only found him again once he started walking, by his posture and his gait. Malfoy was moving ahead, assuming Harry under his Cloak would follow.

At the windingest narrow end of the Place Cachée there was an alleyway with a wrought iron gate. Malfoy opened it and then paused in apparent distraction as he noticed a scuff on his expensive shoe and lifted a foot to fuss at it. It was then that Harry could slip past. He watched Malfoy as he passed close to him. Malfoy couldn’t have found his eyes but he looked up.

Crooked, dark, the Rue des Voiles. The temperature seemed lower here, the wind seemed to tunnel more harshly between the tall, leaning buildings. It was well populated but people moved fast. There was nowhere to linger around chatting and looking natural in front of Belcier’s shop, with its small dull sign that read Articles divers. Of course they would have to hunker down together under the Cloak. Whatever.

For a few minutes more there was work enough to busy them. Malfoy went into the shop and IDed Belcier, posed as a customer and started talking to her. There was a delicate little alarm spell on the window to the back office that Harry disarmed. He cracked open the window, fed in an Extendable Ear, nestled it behind the books on Belcier’s desk. You know, I’ve actually done this routine before, he imagined telling Malfoy. Only it was Hermione in the shop, and the person we were spying on was you.

Then it was time for the unnavigable question of personal space. They had reserved none from each other and there was more tension in hesitating and hanging back than there was in acting normal, so Harry put a hand on Malfoy’s shoulder as he strode around the corner, trying for a firmness that was neither startling nor aggressive, and swept the Cloak over him.

They were standing so close together. Fine. Harry led him back and they sat side by side under the Cloak, backs to the wall, the Ear between them, and waited.

Malfoy didn’t need to wear the disguise if they were both invisible anyway. Harry wanted to say that but he didn’t. He bounced his leg. He was filling up with jitters from everything he kept not saying to Malfoy.

“Stop,” Malfoy hissed. “You’re shaking the Cloak.”

You’re making me nervous, Malfoy wasn’t saying.

Malfoy thought he had an advantage, hiding behind this fake face while he got to look at Harry’s own, but the facial transfiguration was much shallower than a Polyjuice transformation. Harry could still see him. Malfoy still sat too upright, his hands were his own, his breath felt the same as always hitting Harry’s face. His voice was the same and he smelled the same.

“Tempus,” Malfoy whispered. 2:57.

Compulsively, Harry checked his own watch. Fabian Prewett’s gold wristwatch. Well-loved when he’d got it and beat to shit now, but still ticking. A watch was the traditional gift for a wizard’s coming-of-age, and the Malfoys stood on ceremony. It couldn’t be a happy story that Malfoy always cast a tempus when he wanted the time.

Harry squeezed at his forehead as if he could get in there and reshape his brain. The Malfoy-noticing machine was working in overdrive. He was never going to be able to return to having normal thoughts.

“Tempus,” Malfoy said again. Nervous, bored. Still 2:57.

“How come you don’t wear a watch?” Harry whispered, enslaved to his disease. “Didn’t you get one for your seventeenth?”

How come you don’t mind your fucking business? Harry anticipated. But Malfoy looked down at his own bare wrist and gave it a grim sort of smile.

“I sold it.” He didn’t look up at Harry but he was answering him. He was subject to something too. “I was trying to kill my father at the time. But I don’t think he ever noticed I’d stopped wearing it.”

I noticed, Harry thought. Did you notice that I noticed?

“Paid my rent for two years,” Malfoy said, turning his wrist over. “I’m sure I needn’t tell you it was an incredibly fine timepiece.”

Harry cracked a smile for the first time all day. He was so done for.

Finally, at fifteen past the hour, someone entered the back office. Someone came right up to the window and put the shades down, which impeded Harry and Malfoy not at all. They both leaned into the Ear to listen.

Harry couldn’t understand anything, but he recognized Warda Hamdi’s voice from having spied on her for days, low with a Tunisian inflection on her r. Belcier’s was high and prim and she spoke very quickly.

They talked at length. Harry listened without hearing, taking the time instead to watch Malfoy. Even his expressions were legible through the unfamiliar face if you looked carefully enough. The pinched brow of concentration that was mistakable for annoyance. The twisted mouth.

Malfoy stiffened.

Harry feared, for a second, that he had accidentally touched him. “What?” he asked. But he was ignored. The conversation inside flowed at a steady, businesslike pace; neither of the women’s tones were escalating.

This time Harry heard it in the spill of foreign words. It was hard to catch because they weren’t pronouncing it the way he was used to. They said the foy like fwah.

They said it twice more. The buyer. Malfwah.

“Oh you prick,” Malfoy muttered. “You fucking dumb bastard.”

He slipped out from under the Cloak.

“Malfoy,” Harry hissed through clenched teeth. “Malfoy!”

Malfoy was out of the alleyway, one hand on his hip, the other shoved into his hair.

Harry’s heart stuttered as a group of passersby filtered past the face Harry hadn’t yet had a chance to memorize. Briefly Harry couldn’t pick Malfoy out of the crowd. But the others walked on and Malfoy, brown-haired, square-jawed, unrecognizable, stood there squeezing his eyes shut, waves of anxiety pouring off him. He clutched his head in both hands. “Okay. No. Okay.”

“Malfoy—” Harry started.

“If we destroy the Clock then he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Malfoy said, fervent beyond rationality. “There’s been no exchange. He’s just a sketchy guy with sketchy business contacts. As before.”

“Well—”

“Please,” Malfoy said. “Please. Report me when you get back, I don’t care. I’ll resign tomorrow if you like. I’m not letting him go back to prison and I’m sure as shit not sending him there myself!”

When you get back. The situation was fraying. “But if he’s the UK exporter—”

“He isn’t!” Malfoy yelled. “The only person he talks to in the UK is me and the Ministry already surveils my correspondence so they already know that! He’s never coming home! He’s just a fucking private buyer. He just — he just likes stuff like that, he just wants it for his bloody house. He’s not — part of some — look, he’s not stupid, all right?”

“I mean, he’s not smart,” Harry said, indicating the circumstances.

Malfoy shook his head. “You fucking love this, don’t you.” He was pacing; he seemed near his breaking point of stress. “You the arbiter and me fucking pleading my case. Well I’m not lying,” he snarled, voice breaking, “and I’m not wrong. There is no bloody UK exporter — I mean there is, somewhere, but we haven’t come close — there’s been nothing to indicate any of this was meant for Britain, Potter, the intelligence was inaccurate and Robards was eager to meddle abroad, we knew that from the start—”

“What are you suggesting?” Harry demanded. “That we just go home?”

“I’m suggesting we take out the unholy Dark device posthaste instead of needlessly waiting for the buyer to be implicated, and let the French deal with the bloody French drug smuggling!”

Harry huffed out a breath. Nothing Malfoy was saying was wrong, but he was not objective in this matter. He was hysterical, he was far too emotionally involved, he needed to be taken off the case. But Harry couldn’t go on without a translator. And his translator was hearing things he might refuse to translate.

Malfoy was watching him hard. Reading him for signs, and seeing them. “What the fuck,” he moaned, before Harry had said anything. “You’re gonna fuck me.”

“No I’m not,” Harry said. “Just tell me what they actually said. Talk to me a second.”

“I have been talking to you! All I fucking do all day is talk to you, Potter!” He was panicking. He was going to bolt.

“Can you just—” Harry took his wand out; Malfoy moved away from him. “Can you just look like yourself for a minute so I can talk to you properly — please—”

He got Malfoy in his sights and swept the glamour away. Malfoy’s own face looked ten times angrier at him. Anger at Harry was so at home on it.

You fucking love this, don’t you. As a matter of fact, Harry did not. How quick Malfoy was to assume Harry did not, could not, care about helping him. That Harry Potter was a simple, brutal force that only behaved one way and would bring the boot down on his neck in the end. Whatever was going on between them was trivial and overridden. Malfoy didn’t trust him.

“What,” Malfoy said. “What do you want.”

This was so fucking far from what Harry wanted. Malfoy at his mercy, cringing from him.

“Just tell me what was said. I need to understand the situation.”

Hamdi was offering to cut Belcier in on a big sale, Malfoy explained. There was an interested buyer for a very rare piece of merchandise she was holding, a foreign collector living in France, but he was a snobby sort with people looking over his shoulder and he wanted things to look legitimate, no shady middle-of-the-night business. He wanted to come into the shop and buy a few things. The buyer would bring elf service and a bottomless trunk. Belcier would keep the money she made from his other purchases, plus a cut of the big sale for her trouble. He was a great man to know because he had as much money as ever but much less protection. At that point Belcier had asked the man’s name, and then laughed. Of course she already knew Lucius Malfoy. The day after next the shop would take a long lunch and she would welcome him in for a private tour.

“You visited him as soon as we got here,” Harry said. “And now he’s involved. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I told you I don’t talk about my job with him. I told them I’d petitioned for a visit for Mother’s birthday and the Ministry had granted it as long as I made sure to Port home by end-of-day.”

“It was your mum’s birthday?” Harry asked, head swimming in all the weird lies Malfoy spun up and kept track of.

“It was three weeks ago. I said they delayed processing my request for so long that the date came and went. The Ministry loves being a pain in the arse for no reason, it’s very believable. She wanted to believe it.” Malfoy’s Adam’s apple worked. “I didn’t tell them anything about the assignment. They don’t even know I’m still here. Legilimize me if you want.”

“No,” Harry said, because he wanted to so fiercely that it was obvious he couldn’t.

“Then you have to believe me,” Malfoy said. “You have to.”

“And your father never mentioned while you were visiting that he’d just arranged a rare and exciting purchase?”

“No! He never tells me anything! He’s extremely withholding!” Malfoy threw up his hands. “Why do you think I’m like this?!”

Harry laughed. He didn’t mean to. Malfoy was just funny.

Warda Hamdi, at that point, exited the shop and looked exactly, immediately at them. All pretense at concealment had been abandoned. Their Extendable Ear dangled from the window. They had been arguing in the street.

Her gaze settled on them, toggled between them, her brow creased as she puzzled it out.

“Obliviate,” Malfoy said. She Disapparated.

“Did you get her?” Harry asked. He hadn’t, Harry knew. Her eyes had been lucid as she was swept into nothingness.

“No,” Malfoy said.

“She recognized you,” Harry said, stomach dropping. Malfoy looked like himself because Harry had taken his glamour off. “The Clock’ll be ticking you down starting any second.”

“Yeah.” Malfoy’s affect had gone dull. “You fucked me, Potter.”

“I didn’t,” Harry insisted. Actually, he’d given him what he wanted. Now they had to go through with his plan, regardless of the truth about his father’s involvement. “3:31,” he said aloud so they wouldn’t forget. “Twelve hours. That’s plenty of time.”

“I don’t know if she knows my name,” Malfoy said, pushing an anxious hand into his hair. “She might think my father’s planning on crossing her and I’m working with him — she’ll take it out on him—”

“Best not chance it,” Harry said. “We’ll have to stop the clock anyway.”

Malfoy shoved his shoulder. “We have to stop it if it is ticking down my father, you fucking git!”

Then he steadied, looking at Harry. “So you’ll—?”

No one can help me. Malfoy, years ago, at the crisis point of his life. Face twisted up. No you can’t. No one can.

In the past, Harry had been accused of having a saving people thing. He was suddenly in possession of a dense little nugget of certainty. It recalled, of all farflung things, the Philosopher’s Stone dropping into his pocket. What a bizarre and wonderful life Harry had. He was about to make it more bizarre and more wonderful.

He barely stopped himself from laughing aloud in delight, and he did grin. “What else am I gonna do, break in a new partner? I’ve nearly got this one working.”

It was Malfoy’s turn to choke out a laugh. Then he frowned and looked at his feet. If Malfoy were a fellow Gryffindor he would have ended the impasse between them then, Harry thought. But he wasn’t brave like that. He needed Harry’s help.

Something within Harry ignited powerfully. Unsuppressable from this point.

“What about law and order?” Malfoy sneered, going defensively cold. “You don’t care about the assignment?”

“Malfoy,” Harry said. “I don’t care about the assignment more than I care about you.”

Malfoy stared at him.

Harry took a step forward. “I’m gonna kiss you now. Okay?”

Just to be annoying, Malfoy beat him to it.

Harry had meant for it to be sweet and reassuring. Brief, a promise for later. But Malfoy’s mouth was lush and hot, avid against Harry’s, opening for him like he wanted Harry’s tongue. Harry gave it to him and he made a wild little noise. After a few seconds it was already not brief, and from there it just kept on. No end in sight. Malfoy’s hands found Harry’s shirt and bunched in it.

Harry would have to keep kissing him until he ran out of breath. They would stand here until French people started to boo them. They would snog until twelve hours were up and the Clock chimed: forget something, dummies?

“We have to—” Harry tried, sabotaging himself by putting his hand on the small of Malfoy’s back. “Malfoy, we have to—”

“I know, we have to have sex,” Malfoy said, and licked Harry’s mouth. “We have to do it right now.”

“No…that’s…not…” Harry said, overwhelmed. Malfoy sucked at his jaw and somehow now had a hand up his shirt. They were in the middle of a pedestrian throughway. It was, as recently confirmed, three-thirty in the afternoon.

“Yes it is,” Malfoy said, arguing the point even though Harry hadn’t even successfully articulated one.

With effort, Harry pulled away enough to look at him and speak. That was a bad idea. Harry did not need to see Malfoy’s kissed-red mouth, the blond eyelashes that swept down as Malfoy’s huge-pupiled eyes looked from Harry’s eyes to his mouth, then still lower as he tried to subtly check if Harry had an erection. It wasn’t subtle, and yes Harry did, and Malfoy did also. Harry closed his eyes so as not to look at any of this because he actually had an important point to make. “Not until we deal with the Clock! We’re under a deadline!”

“So what? Haven’t you ever left your work to the last minute? What’s two or three hours?”

“Two or three hours?”

“What, you’re not up to it?”

“Malfoy, you could die,” Harry insisted. “It has to wait until after.”

“I could die anyway,” Malfoy said. “And then won’t you feel stupid you didn’t indulge yourself?”

Indulge yourself made Harry feel very overstimulated. He shook his head to clear it, backed away, went back around to the window to retrieve the pointless Extendable Ear.

“Let me touch your dick at least,” Malfoy said, following him.

“No! We’re in public!”

“Just for a second,” Malfoy said, crowding in so his body blocked Harry’s from public view. “I need to. For morale. I could die.”

He was only being obnoxious, but it was true that minutes ago he’d been ashen and tongue-tied with fear and stress, and now, well. Vim hardly covered it.

“Over the trousers only,” Harry said, and Malfoy’s open palm immediately pressed against him, fingers discovering the contours. Harry exhaled shakily.

“Feels kinda big,” Malfoy said, smirking. “For a guy your height.”

“My height is average,” Harry said, although he was undeniably glaring upward at Malfoy’s face when they stood so close together. “And it is kinda big.”

“You can touch me back. Aren’t you curious?” Malfoy breathed, tilting his mouth toward Harry’s, daring Harry not to kiss him.

Harry kept his hands by his sides. “No.” Over Malfoy’s shoulder he caught the eye of a Parisian passerby, whose judgmental frown told him that the nature of what was going on was eminently clear.

“Liar,” Malfoy said, his hand’s slow and lingering movements approaching handjob territory. “Such a bad liar. I can always tell.”

“I don’t start something unless I plan to finish it. When I’m done with you, everybody in our hotel will know my name.”

“Is that a promise?” Malfoy’s mouth, which he cruelly refused to close, widened into a condescending smile. “Potter, I’m gonna fuck you so hard your dead parents feel it.”

He squeezed. Harry’s eyelids fluttered but stayed open.

“Now are you gonna keep humping my hand until you cream yourself in the middle of the street or can we get to work?”

“Ingrate,” Harry muttered. He turned to face the wall and rearranged himself so his dick was trapped behind his belt.

An hour later — eleven hours remaining — they were back at Hamdi’s HQ. It looked lifeless, no cars, no hurrying, no Apparition noise. Malfoy was smoking in Harry’s close proximity, which Harry had decided to allow given the circumstances. Even though the smoke got trapped under the Invisibility Cloak, which they were again huddled underneath. Its timeless, mystical provenance meant that the smell would surely come out. Surely.

“We’ll go in through the back entrance,” Harry said.

Malfoy, agitated, sort of hiccupped. “Can you hear yourself?”

“Stop,” Harry said. “You must stop.”

“What a smart mouth I have,” Malfoy said. “It does need stopping.”

Malfoy had entered some kind of innuendo psychosis and would be of no further assistance. Harry suspected he could finish the job quicker and more safely — for Malfoy’s benefit! — if he left him behind. If only he didn’t secretly like it.

“They’ll know we’re coming,” Harry said. “But it’s too large to move before we close in. We’ll just need to be quicker than they are. Disarm and stun.”

He watched Malfoy take out a cigarette and then realize, as he lifted it to his mouth, that he was already smoking one.

Harry gave him a judgmental look.

“Sod off,” Malfoy said. “Something shocking is happening to me. I’m under tremendous strain. And I’m hungover.”

“Darling, you should’ve said,” Harry said, pulling the extra-strength potion from his pocket.

“Give me that before I fucking throw up.”

“All right,” Harry said, after watching Malfoy gulp down the potion with polite and totally feigned disinterest in his working throat. “Remember the floor plan?”

“No.”

Harry had drawn it for him three times in the last hour. “From the back, the stairs’ll be at the end of the corridor. Up to the second floor. The lab’s the fourth door on the left from the stairwell. Maybe the Clock’ll be there, maybe not. There are six of them all told. Hamdi’s in charge but the men are Mermaudit’s.”

“I can’t remember all that, let me Legilimize you,” Malfoy said.

“No!”

“Come on, it’s the easiest way for me to see the interior! Why not?”

“Because I know why you really want to! You have ulterior motives!”

Malfoy rounded on him. “So what if I do!” he said, shoving a finger into Harry’s chest. “I want some insight into the depth of your same-sex attraction! I’m not going through with it if you’re just expecting me to do stuff for you with no reciprocity!”

“I’ll do stuff for you!” Harry said, beyond insulted. “First of all I’m a gentleman, you fucking dick! And second of all, the — the depth is — significant!”

From the way Malfoy tilted his head back in smug satisfaction, Harry guessed that manipulating him into this confession had been the whole point.

“What does that mean?” he purred.

“I’ll show you later,” Harry said, drawing his wand and casting it along the doorframe of the service entrance. “Right now we’re working. Silencio.”

He cracked the heavy door open. Cool, thick fog hit him directly in the face.

Harry swore, shielded his face, reared back. He was pretty sure he’d blocked Malfoy getting hit. He raised his wand to slam the door.

“In, in!” Malfoy said, and shoved him hard from behind.

“What—?”

Harry stumbled over the threshold and landed hard on his knees, then was squashed flat by Malfoy falling on top of him.

“Jesus, Malfoy!” Harry growled. “Keep your hands in your pockets if you have to!”

“Get over yourself!” Malfoy said, climbing off. “You were about to blow our only chance. It’s Mislaying Mist.”

He was looking up at a thick layer of the mist that had billowed out the door. It lingered along the ceiling, making it seem like they were under a stormy, sunless sky rather than a roof. Harry sent a Banishing Charm through it to almost no effect; the fog crept immediately back over the thin slice the spell had cut.

“They’ve made it with the Lethe seeds,” Malfoy said. “We’ll be completely lost in here.”

“So why did you force us in?” Harry said, dusting his scraped palms. He stuffed the Cloak away; the element of surprise was forfeit anyway and the drop in IQ that wearing it created in them was too severe.

“Because you’d already breathed it, you got a blast to the face,” Malfoy said. “If you’d closed the door you’d have never found your way in.”

“Not even through the same door?”

“No, I’m telling you,” Malfoy said. He closed the door behind them and then reopened it. Where the bright afternoon outside had been, there was now a grungy toilet.

“What the hell?” Harry said. He took a step toward it.

Malfoy’s hand clamped down onto Harry’s fingers. “We have to stay together. If we split up we won’t find each other again.”

Harry shoved away the second meaning that came through to him more urgently than the intended one. Focus. Focus on work. “If we get separated I’ll send my Patronus,” he said. “It’ll find you and you can follow it back to me. It’s a stag.”

He was about to demonstrate it, but thought better as Malfoy’s face clouded with fury.

“That would not work,” Malfoy seethed. “Why are you so determined to shoehorn in your bloody Patronus? It has, like, one-and-a-half extremely specific uses! This not being one of them!” Malfoy paused, then thought of something else to yell at him about. “And I know it’s a fucking stag! Everybody knows that!”

Harry smiled down at Malfoy’s grip on his four fingers. Now that he knew Malfoy really wanted smooches and snuggles, it was sort of fun when Malfoy got way too angry at him over something pointless. He swiped his thumb over the back of Malfoy’s hand. “That’s okay, I like the hand-holding too.”

Disturbed, Malfoy released his fingers instantly. “Do not leave this area without me.”

But Harry was very soon forced to: they were not alone.

Harry felt the air sizzle before he heard the curse miss him. Then he felt the ground fall away as the next one hit him square and he was flung from the vestibule.

The last thing he saw, blurrily from midair, was Malfoy windmilling his wand arm like he was delivering an underhand pitch, screaming “Ventus!”

Harry heard the howling wind pick up as he slid to a stop on his back in the adjoining room. But when he stumbled back under the archway with his wand raised, he was in a completely different space. Carpeted and silent, filled floor to ceiling with file cabinets.

“Malfoy!” he called. “Can you hear me?”

He followed the howling noise of Malfoy’s High Wind spell to a rattling, ill-sealed window overlooking an alley — that wind tunneled noisily through.

Then he completely failed to retrace his steps, arriving in an unfamiliar corridor. So it was true. He was Mislaid.

“Point me,” he said, and his wand jerked to four o’clock in his open palm. He reoriented himself to it. That was north. The building as a whole faced north, and they’d come in the back, so they were moving north through it… Then he’d been knocked backwards left… He’d have guessed he’d been facing east. He went back the way he’d come, trying to look out the window at the sun or the street below. But that room wasn’t there anymore: now it was a seminar room with a long oak table and a blackboard. No windows.

He squashed his internal swearing and thought about his goals. One was to get to the second floor. Up and down were hard to get confused over: he just needed to find a staircase and then he’d be closer than he was presently.

The other goal, much more important but seemingly impossible, was to find Malfoy. He’d left Malfoy in a combat situation. Malfoy was a good duelist, good but not great. Why had he gone with wind?

Suddenly Harry had a brilliant idea. Malfoy, abandoned in peril. Harry fished out the Peril Pointer and held it aloft.

It did a lurching 180 in his hand and pointed at his own chest. He recalled: the Peril Pointer had never once helped with anything.

“Piece of garbage,” he muttered, and threw it aside to perish in the maze.

After fifteen minutes of tearing through the place, Harry remembered the advice for small children: if you get lost, stay where you are. After fifteen minutes pacing the bathroom where he’d ended up, imagining Malfoy being overtaken and knocked cold, Harry couldn’t stay still any longer and started searching and calling out with renewed vigor.

No stairs, no matter how methodically he worked through the first floor options. Which weren’t that many! And no Malfoy, either, and no enemies. Fear started to slice in. He was really lost, somehow. Perhaps he wasn’t even in the real building anymore, but some kind of labyrinthine joke resembling it.

Eventually he ended up back in the room with the file cabinets where he’d begun. He clung to the familiarity: that meant, maybe, hopefully, that they were real rooms in a real place. He parked himself in the cabinets room, unwilling to lose this minuscule progress. He opened a drawer, looked at the files (all were in French and pointless for him to look at), closed the drawer and opened it again. Same files. There was consistency. This was a real room. Harry was somewhere; he was just completely turned around.

He was absorbed in his little object permanence experiments when something incandescent and impossibly large exploded toward him.

At first Harry thought the door had flown open and admitted the moon. But he could see through the gargantuan shape to the still-shut door; it was translucent and shimmering with magic. The bright mass resolved before him as he backed away from it.

It was over a meter across, scaled, spiky, pinning him with eyes as big as quaffles: a dragon’s head, attached to a long neck that went right through the door. A life-sized dragon, he realized, composed of silvery light, so enormous that only the head was in the room with him.

There could be no confusion on whose this was.

“I knew a Patronus would work!” Harry exclaimed. “Jesus, it’s huge!”

“You’ll say that again before the day’s out,” came Malfoy’s voice from the dragon’s enormous maw.

“You can hear me?” Harry asked, half-expecting Malfoy’s blond head to pop out from between the rows of glossy fangs. “How are you doing that?”

“I’m excellent at charms, nitwit!”

“And yet this one eluded you for the longest time,” Harry said, smiling giddily as the full implication sank in. “You must have an exceptionally powerful, exceptionally happy new memory to fuel it.”

The dragon’s great face betrayed nothing. “I don’t think we’re at all far apart, I’ve still got the tail in here with me. I’ll pull it back and you follow.”

The dragon began to shrink back; Harry dived through it, receiving a dose of minty invigoration, and pulled open the door so he could keep it in view as it slithered backward down the corridor, losing size. He pulled open another door, maddeningly identical, as the now-hubcap-sized dragon’s head phased through it, and caught a last puff of smoke as its snout slipped back into Malfoy’s wand.

“Hello again,” Harry said, spreading his arms wide. “It’s me, your wellspring of happiness.”

Malfoy was plainly glad to see him, but gave him a withering look anyway. “Pretty smug for someone who needed help finding his way out of a ten by ten room.”

“How did you get to me?” Harry asked. “I couldn’t get anywhere.”

“I found this on the ground,” Malfoy said, brandishing the Peril Pointer Harry had discarded. “I knew if I tried to follow it I’d just get fucked again but thought maybe if I sent a Patronus straight in the direction it was pointing it would get someplace.” He raised a judgmental eyebrow. “I did think you’d be in a fight, though. You know, in peril. Not standing around wasting time.”

“I’ve been alone,” Harry said. “I assumed you were in a fight.”

“Pfft,” Malfoy said. “I blew the Mislaying Mist in their faces and booked it.”

Then why had the Peril Pointer, wielded by each of them, judged Harry to be in peril? He grinned. “I guess it’s only that every second I’m not with you is—”

Malfoy wheeled Harry around. “I’m already tired of this joke. Out.”

But though they had rediscovered each other, they were still afflicted. They couldn’t find anything remotely useful. Certainly not a staircase or a lift. Certainly none of the people they were in conflict with. And certainly not the Ticking Clock, which was still ticking. They’d lost another hour. Harry checked his watch. More than.

“Christ,” Harry said, throwing open a rickety lockless door and finding the blinding light of the bustling street outside. He swung it shut. The loose knob came away in his hand.

“As long as we’re looking for the Clock we won’t find it,” Malfoy said. “That’s why no one’s around, because they’re looking for us. We have to look for something else. What do you want to find?”

“I want to find the Clock,” Harry said, frustrated. “We can’t just stop needing to find it if it’s what we need to find.”

“No, we have to want to find something else.” Malfoy swatted Harry’s shoulder with the back of a hand, an idea dawning on him. “Let’s have sex, let’s find somewhere to have sex.”

“Are you having a laugh? What’s wrong with you?”

“No, unlike you, I’m trying to be serious.” Impatiently, Malfoy gestured. “I want to suck your cock, Potter, find me an empty room with no dangerous artifacts.”

“Okay, fine, sounds great,” Harry said, resentfully playing along even though this theory was nonsensical and Malfoy’s language was making him blush. “Let’s go.”

Malfoy hit him again. “It’s not acting, thicko! Can you understand what I’m trying to convey to you? We won’t be able to find whatever we’re looking for, so we need to look for something else.”

“I don’t think you can just trick a curse,” Harry said.

Malfoy hauled him closer by the front of his shirt. “Mind over matter, you twat. That’s the essence of magic. The triumph of the will.”

Harry’s jaw worked. “Don’t you ever say that to me again, Malfoy.”

“Or what?” Malfoy said, his face inches away from Harry’s. “You’ll put my mouth to better use?”

Harry had not a single thought in his head that wasn’t exasperation with Malfoy. He grabbed Malfoy’s hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m finding a bloody cupboard so you can suck me off. And it had better not take long, we have other things to do.”

“It won’t take long. I’m very good.”

As soon as Harry decided that he really was willing to do it — what would it take, ten minutes? And then they’d at last be able to concentrate? — he found that every door he could’ve sworn had been a broom cupboard was now too full to go into, or opened instead into a vast corridor. Finally, now that he no longer needed it, he discovered a stairwell and they bounded to the second floor.

But the second floor was filled with nothing but more bullshit. Harry tamped down on a fear that they were actually growing the interior of this building through this exercise.

Just a room with no windows, he bargained. Just any room with a carpeted floor and no windows and some privacy so we can get this out of our systems.

They barged into the lino-floored potions lab. Light spilled through the windows. And there was no privacy either: two people were in here packing up drugs and destroying evidence as fast as they could.

“Stupefy! Fucking Stupefy!” Malfoy screamed, and sent Lévi Mermaudit flying.

“Protego!” Harry said, pushing a shield out in front of Malfoy as Mermaudit’s associate tried to hit him back.

Malfoy said something unkind-sounding to the other man in French. The man, not one for banter perhaps, shot another curse at him as Harry threw his weight into the shield.

“Confundo,” Harry said, and while the henchman struggled to get his bearings, he thought Levicorpus! and swung him by his ankle out the door.

Malfoy slammed it shut. “Why did you confund him, idiot? Now he won’t concentrate on finding us which means he might be able to. Ugh. Colloportus.”

Keeping one eye on the crumpled Lévi Mermaudit, Harry took a look around. The room had been a Muggle office kitchen until the smugglers had taken it over, with a refrigerator, microwave, and café-au-lait vending machine pushed into one corner to make room for the potioneering gear. There was tons of delicate equipment and a strange, mild smell of almonds, but no Ticking Clock.

Malfoy crouched underneath the other end of the worktable. “Top flight,” he gushed. “Look how ingenious — this is the Mislaying Mist.” His hand appeared above the table and he sent what looked like a crude cannonball of brown clay rolling toward Harry. Harry lunged to steady it before it fell off the edge. “Cheeky little aerosol projectile.”

Harry shook it gently, hearing liquid sloshing within, and carefully set it down as Malfoy crossed to a stack of crates and pried one open.

“This is Psychopomp’s Shortcut, what did I tell you…” Vials clinked as Malfoy sorted through them. “Babeljuice, nice, this turns your speech incomprehensible… Oh wow, they’ve made a batch of Fugue, this is so fucking illegal… This I don’t know what the hell it is but it looks amazing…”

Harry was searching Mermaudit for a key to a hidden room or anything else that could possibly help them; as he looked up, he watched Malfoy’s hand, distinctly, go into his pocket. He decided to have seen nothing.

“Just don’t ingest anything, please,” he muttered.

“Are you kidding?” Malfoy said. “These are all downers. I have plans today that require a working dick.”

“Not if we can’t find that Clock,” Harry said. “If we revive Mermaudit, do you think he’d give us anything?”

“Maybe if he were under Veritaserum,” Malfoy said. He grimaced. “I do happen to have some.”

“We need a warrant to use Veritaserum,” Harry said. “We’re not even in our jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, but…” Malfoy said, reaching his hand into an open burlap sack beside him. “What if he forgot he’d been potioned? Then who would know we didn’t have a warrant?” He let the loose Lethe seeds tumble from between his fingers back into the sack.

“I’m not comfortable with that,” Harry said firmly. “There must be something in here that will point us in the right direction.”

“There isn’t,” Malfoy said. “There’s a hundred thousand Galleons’ worth of drugs and a coffee vending machine. Which is so sloppy, by the way, setting up your lab in a kitchen.”

It was notably sloppy to keep a Muggle machine for dispensing hot consumables in an active potions lab. Considering how clean the rest of their operation was.

Harry took a closer look at it and snorted. Twelve vending options. He tried to feed in a Euro coin and found that it did not fit in the slot. It wasn’t a Muggle machine at all. One gold bezant slid in perfectly. Harry pressed option number 12.

Like clockwork; like magic. He was looking into the face of an ornately carved wooden grandfather clock.

“Yes!” Harry whooped.

“Oh, what the fuck?” Malfoy whined.

The name glowing at the center of the face wasn’t Malfoy’s or his dad’s. It was Harry Potter.

“Fuck off!” Malfoy said. “Everything’s always about you!”

“It’s not enviable,” Harry said. He thought back to Warda Hamdi glaring at them in the street. Sure, she had probably recognized Malfoy. But why would that have stopped her from also recognizing Harry Potter? “It’s a curse on my name. I’m hours from dropping dead.”

Quite a few hours from it, really. Most of them. Harry was only trying to make a point.

But Malfoy ignored him. “If there’s adventure afoot, you can bet it revolves around Harry Potter, the specialest little lad who ever lived!”

Harry grinned. “This is why I was the one in peril. Unfairly maligned yet again, that Peril Pointer.”

“I’m sure it’s a dead useful gadget for people who work with normal people!”

“We’ve got to stop this thing working,” Harry said, looking it over. Malfoy’s tinkering skills could help. “Do you know a kill-switch spell?”

“What?” Malfoy balked. “No, fucking break it.”

He flipped the clock’s face open, revealing the delicate ticking metal within. He pulled a stick of Drooble’s Best from a pocket, gave it half a dozen vigorous chews, and wedged it into the clockwork.

“Why do you have chewing gum?!” Harry demanded, laughing. The Patronus, the dueling, now this. It was by far the most cavalier and risk-tolerant Malfoy had ever been during the fuckoed final stages of a field assignment gone wrong. He had an inner Gryffindor after all, and it was activated by horniness.

“Haven’t you ever seen a spy film? You should always bring chewing gum.”

“I haven’t watched a film since I was, like, ten,” Harry said.

“Arrogant and incurious, typical wizard,” Malfoy said. “Luckily I’m such a cultural ambassador. Watch this, I used to do this to people’s homework. I call it the Mangler.”

He sighted down his wand at point-blank range, balancing it on his other forearm. “Reducto,” he said, and a miniature blast went off within the clockwork. A few gears and pieces tumbled out. “Keep those,” he instructed Harry. “Reparo.”

The shrapnel in Harry’s hand glowed hot and tugged, trying to return to its place, but Harry held fast. The clock repaired itself without, healing into odd angles.

Malfoy flipped the face closed. The hands were spinning much faster, the minute hand whipping nearly invisibly and the hour hand inching steadily toward midnight. Harry Potter throbbed.

“Um,” Harry said.

“No, relax,” Malfoy said, opening the face again. “Reducto.” More metalwork fell out and Harry collected it. “Reparo.”

The clock groaned with the effort of mending itself, becoming even more malformed. The chewing gum was absorbed into the machinery, turning steely, flexing like a tendon.

Malfoy closed the face again. Now the hands drifted drunkenly backwards. Harry huffed in relief watching the hour hand back anti-clockwise away from doomsday.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “If it’s still counting me down and it’s going backwards, does that mean I can’t die?”

“Now you’re talking like the kind of guy who’d ruin my life,” Malfoy said, lining up again. “Very sexy of you.”

He reducted and repaired the Clock twice more. Now the hands were stopped, and they had assumed the terminal curl of an expired insect’s legs. The Clock’s innards looked like something from a dream: complete but nonsensical, defying visual logic.

“Irreparable,” Malfoy said proudly. “You’re welcome.”

“I’d have said thank you,” Harry said, shouldering the clock to tip it over. “Thank you.”

Malfoy hopped out of the way of the spill of splinters and clockwork. “Now what?” he said brightly.

“Now we extricate ourselves,” Harry said. “If we can be quiet about it, maybe the mission isn’t fucked. We can link up with the gendarmagie and raid this place properly before they clear it out.”

But of course it wasn’t that simple. The way out should have been obvious — there was more than one, on the front of the building and out the back into the alley. Harry could look out the windows and see the street. But every time he was positive he recognized a door to the exterior, it opened right back into the potions lab. He tugged Malfoy through a door baldly labeled Sortie d’urgence. Back in the potions lab.

He grabbed Malfoy’s arm and Disapparated. And received the queasy, chastising squeeze of an anti-Disapparition jinx keeping him planted where he was.

“Bloody hell,” he sighed. “We can’t get out. We can’t find the exit.”

“How many times do I have to tell you we’re Mislaid,” Malfoy said.

“I don’t know how to want to stay here,” Harry admitted. “When I want to leave. I really did want you to suck my dick, before.”

“Yeah, we all wanted that,” Malfoy said crankily.

“So we wait until the Mist wears off,” Harry said, pushing away his distress. “Hole up, wait it out. No one will find us.”

“It won’t wear off. It’s a curse, not a joke-shop prank.”

“So what’s the counter-curse?” Harry demanded.

“I’m thinking!”

“Don’t you have that little field guide?”

“It’s at the hotel,” Malfoy said. “I didn’t see any reason to bring it if we were just listening in on Hamdi and Belcier’s meeting.”

“Apart from the fact that you bring everything to everything!”

Malfoy shot him a surly frown. With a thumbnail, he picked at the surface of the lumpy Mist-bomb they’d left on the worktable and a few crumbly flakes came off.

He collected some scrapings on his finger and held it up to Harry’s mouth. “Try this.”

“No!”

“Come on! I think it’s a dried paste of borage, I just want to be sure. Test it for me.”

“I don’t even know what borage tastes like,” Harry said, but he held Malfoy’s wrist anyway and licked his outstretched finger.

Smirking, Malfoy pushed his finger all the way into Harry’s mouth. “Slut,” he said. “How’s it taste, are you dying?”

This was no time to get hot and bothered, Harry reminded himself, even if Malfoy was trying to destroy him. He waited for whatever deadly poison to set in.

“It’s sweet,” he said finally. “Like honey.”

“Knew it,” Malfoy said. “I can make Curse-Reverse.”

“You just wanted to make me suck on your finger,” Harry accused.

“Prove it,” Malfoy said, flashing teeth. “Cup your hands.”

He had his wand poised. Belatedly Harry understood what he meant to do. “You’re not using my hands as a cauldron!”

“Do as I say!”

“Let me wear your gloves at least,” Harry bargained.

“No,” Malfoy said. “The dragonhide will interfere with the potion.”

“And human flesh won’t?”

“Potter,” Malfoy said, a malevolent look taking over his features. “When have I ever let you come to harm?”

With a couple of huffing exhales to psych himself up, Harry put his hands together. Malfoy began casting at once — first a manus protego that Harry prayed would hold out, then aguamenti. As Harry clenched his fingers to keep the dripping to a minimum, Malfoy scratched at the Mist-bomb, flaking off more of the borage coating into the water.

“This should be fine,” Malfoy said. “Try not to breathe it.” Then, quietly, as though he thought Harry might not notice, he muttered an Instant Boil Charm. Harry forced himself not to snatch his hands back as the water bubbled violently to life, and shut his eyes tightly for a few seconds. It felt only pleasantly warm to his shielded hands, but it was terribly unnerving.

Malfoy pulled out his kit of herbological components. “Thickener, thickener,” he muttered, and snatched up powder of agar-agar. “No, come on,” he said, putting it back down in favor of arrowroot, which he tipped into Harry’s hands.

Malfoy put his ring finger in his own mouth and pulled it out with a wet pop. Then he worked off the ostentatious signet ring he always wore.

He levitated the ring and moved his wand in tight circles above it like he was stirring vigorously. The ring began to spin, faster and faster, until it took on an orange glow and sagged in on itself, the elaborate Malfoy crest liquefying into a molten blob.

Malfoy counted down from seven, reversing the spin of the blob several times, and then nodded for Harry to pour on the borage. The liquid in Harry’s hands had thickened into a runny rust-colored syrup, which he dripped as best he could over the melted ring. Steam billowed off.

“That’s enough,” Malfoy said, and banished the remaining contents of Harry’s cupped palms. Harry flexed his fingers and tucked them away under his arms before Malfoy could get any more ideas.

Malfoy examined the floating ooze. “We’ve got silver, syrup of borage, we need — tears of someone desiring vengeance.”

Malfoy looked over his shoulder at the still-unconscious Lévi Mermaudit, mouth twisting in indecision. They might be able to get him to cry, but only if they woke him up. And then he’d be their problem again.

Before Harry could formulate his opinion on what to do, Malfoy knocked his glasses out of the way and jabbed him in the eye with his dirty thumb.

“You fuck! You could’ve warned me!” Harry moaned, clutching his eye, which immediately started to burn powerfully. “If you blinded me I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Cry this way,” Malfoy said, yanking Harry by his hair toward the levitating blob of silver.

Harry’s eye was watering fiercely, and with a few blinks he landed two hot tears in the concoction, which instantly went black.

“Sealed with regret.” Malfoy looked at Harry, visibly hesitating.

“What kind of ingredient is that?” Harry said, still rubbing his eye. He could feel his pulse throbbing in it, but his vision was starting to return.

“The potioneer speaks aloud that which he most wishes he could undo,” Malfoy said. “Whatever, Potter, you already know it.” He leaned forward as if into a microphone. “I wish I hadn’t joined V-Voldemort’s service.”

The concoction popped like hot oil and began to hiss.

“Move back,” Malfoy instructed. “This is missing a couple of things so it’s not stable. But if the heat breaks down the borage suspension and the Mist comes into contact, it’ll Curse-Reverse. So the opposite of Mislaying is guiding us true. Right?”

He looked up at Harry, eyes blazing. “Right?”

“I have no idea,” Harry said. He was still wary and dazed from Malfoy’s potion-brewing offensive.

Malfoy’s crazed expression turned angry.

“What do you mean you have no idea?!” he snarled. “Why are you completely rubbish at potions?! We’re supposed to have a NEWT in it for this job! They said that a million times!”

“I don’t have any NEWTs,” Harry reminded him, a helpless laugh bubbling up. “Malfoy, I didn’t even graduate.”

“Neither did I!” Malfoy said, horrified. He looked back to his little experiment with new unease. “Guide my hand, Professor Snape.”

With a last flick of his wand, the black goo splatted onto the Mist-bomb he was holding.

Mist poured from it with the force of a kettle boiling, filling the room quickly enough that Harry was soon sure he’d already have died if the potion were ill-brewed and noxious. Now, instead of hugging the ceiling, it sank to the floor, obscuring it about a foot deep.

Like a word he’d been trying to remember all day, the way out came to Harry. Through this door, through the next, right, right again. It wasn’t the way they’d come in, he knew, but better. “Yes, got it, this way,” Malfoy said with equal confidence.

Harry took a few confident strides, then faltered. That wasn’t the only Lethe-induced amnesia the Curse-Reversed Mist had dislodged. Like a new tooth grown in at the back, there was a new memory slotted into Harry’s chronology of the week. In the hotel room, debriefing on the first day of the investigation.

“What’s so great about them?” Harry asked.

Malfoy was holding a single seed in his open palm; he pinched it in half with a thumbnail.

Then he looked up at Harry. “Do you ever think about fucking me?”

Harry backed away, put a meter between them. “Why are you asking me that?! Does it make you tell the truth?!”

“It makes you forget,” Malfoy said. His voice was calm and his eyes were steady on Harry’s. “We’ll both forget anything we say. I think about fucking you all the time. I want you very badly.”

Harry’s mouth hung open for several seconds. “I want you too,” he blurted. “Of course I think about — wait, we won’t remember this? I want you too! How can we remember? Should we kiss?”

“Yeah, come here,” Malfoy said, motioning for him.

“Why?” Harry said, confused.

“Why what?” Malfoy said, equally lost.

Harry stared hard at Malfoy. “Did you ask me something about…?”

“What?” Malfoy said, growing annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

“God, Malfoy,” Harry said. “You spineless little ferret.”

“What’s that for?” Malfoy demanded, before going distant in recollection. “Oh. Ha ha.”

“I’m torching all this shit,” Harry decided unilaterally. He cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself and another on Malfoy. “Incendio, incendio, incendio.”

“No! You’re wasting great product!” Malfoy wailed, his voice wobbly and thin from inside his bubble. “It’s unconscionable!”

“Sorry, babe,” Harry said, tugging him away by the collar. “We’re cops.”

Through the door, through the next. Before they could make a right, a curse zinged between them.

“Potter, you fucking knob! You burned up all the seeds and made them forget they were looking for us! So they’ve fucking found us!”

“This is so convoluted,” Harry sighed. But even as the magic at play got mired in stupid double negatives, the conflict was becoming straightforward. Now it was a firefight in which Harry would defend the life of his beloved comrade. Very comfortable territory. He took a dueling stance and observed that the adrenaline flooding his system had a tasty little curl of arousal in it.

“Go,” Harry said, turning toward the threat. “I’ll cover you.”

“Potter—”

Malfoy fell silent, struggling.

Despite the curses flying, Harry spared a look for him over his shoulder. The bubble around Malfoy’s head was causing strands of his fine, straight hair to stand on end. He looked so stupid and so lovely.

Harry smiled at him, and the weight of it knocked a shuddering sigh out of Malfoy. I’ve got him, Harry thought. If I live, he’s mine.

“You’re so annoying,” Malfoy managed. Then he hung a right and was gone.

Warda Hamdi, who apparently was one for banter, snarled something at Harry.

“Sorry, yeah, can’t understand you,” Harry said, and sent a file cabinet flying at her before zipping round the corner. She leapt over it and pursued.

“Petrificus totalus!” she screamed, and Harry blocked it. Then she screamed something in Arabic and Harry just barely blocked it again, feeling the air all around him go hot.

“Expelliarmus!” he tried, but it hit her glancingly and only knocked her wand to the ground at her own feet instead of pulling it to him. He sprinted round another corner and saw the door Malfoy had gone through, but was obliged to turn back and push up another shield.

Harry backed up as he fired off spells, groping blindly for the door. The Curse-Reversed Mist was still working, he had to hope, and would guide him true. Where that meant he’d end up, he had no idea. He just had to get somewhere he could Disapparate from. He had to get to Malfoy.

He felt the knob under his hand, turned it, fell through—

—and was in Malfoy’s London flat.

He slammed the door shut and flattened himself against it. “Malfoy?!”

Instantly he was beset by a pair of extremely aggressive hands. "What—?"

"Shut up, shut the fuck up," Malfoy growled, and popped the bubble around Harry’s head with his teeth.

"How did — ow, my glasses," Harry said. His shirt was being pulled off. He was completely disoriented, and breathtakingly horny.

"Oh yes," Malfoy said, sounding a bit mad. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

He fished Harry's glasses out of his shirt, which was now balled up in his hands, and snapped them clean in half. He spiked them to the floor and laughed in Harry’s face.

“Great, okay,” Harry said, and then Malfoy stopped his mouth.

It was very quickly a ferocious and aggressive kiss. They bit and sucked at each other’s mouths, and their teeth clicked painfully together, and the slide of Malfoy’s tongue against his own was so hot and wanton that Harry knew they were going to take this straight to its conclusion right here and now.

He curled his hands into the lapels of Malfoy’s shirt and pulled hard. Harry had never ripped open someone’s shirt before and the staccato tense-release of each closure giving way under his strength and the rain of buttons hitting the floor were exactly as thrilling as advertised — but they had nothing on the cry of shocked approval that Malfoy let out directly into Harry’s mouth. Malfoy who had probably thought himself the one more desperate for this. Well, he was going to learn.

Malfoy started trying to touch him everywhere at once: his hands curled over Harry’s bare shoulders and up his neck and around his back and then he scrambled Harry’s brain by putting one hand on his arse while the heel of the other pressed against the front of his trousers.

“Fuck,” Harry said, his hips leaping forward. His dick was unbelievably hard and Malfoy’s hand was on it. There was only one move left to him, which was to put his hand inside Malfoy's trousers. They fit Malfoy pretty exactly, so there wasn’t a lot of range of motion for Harry as he pushed his hand past the band of Malfoy’s underwear and the tips of his fingers made frantic, grazing contact with his dick. Fleeting though the touch was, it wrenched a funny little sound out of Harry, who had never been so astounded to feel something so unsurprising, and caused Malfoy to abandon absolutely everything in favor of unfastening his own trousers to give Harry more working room.

Finally able to seize an advantage, Harry shoved him up against the wall and grabbed a handful of his hair with his other hand. He yanked Malfoy’s head to the side and sucked nice and hard on his pounding pulse point while he jacked his cock.

God. It was hot and hard in his fist — he wanted to look at it properly but that would involve detaching his mouth from Malfoy’s throat, which was not possible—

“You don’t — you have no idea — what you’re doing—” Malfoy stuttered out. He meant to be scornful, but his voice was shaky and excited. He liked it, that was plain, he liked that Harry had never done this and was doing it with him.

“So you’d rather I stop?” Harry asked, as he stilled his hand and loosened his grip. He dragged his lips over Malfoy’s neck and looked down, looked at Malfoy’s cock in his hand. Very fucking nice. Blond hair trailing to it down his flat stomach, he was blond all over, of course. The depth of Harry’s same-sex attraction was significant.

Malfoy pushed himself impatiently into Harry’s fist. “Fucking hate you,” he sighed.

Harry had a wild thought: that if he sucked Malfoy’s cock it would either make him shut up or take the piss out of Harry even more, and either one would get Harry where he was trying to go. But before he could work up the nerve, something slammed against the far window. They both started and Malfoy clutched his arms, which made him feel rather smug.

"Go see what that was," Malfoy said.

"Why don't you go see what it was?" Harry demanded. “It’s your house!”

"Your dick’s not out yet," Malfoy said, and gave him a little shove towards the window. "Go look."

Harry pulled the curtain slightly back. There was an owl hovering outside the window. The letter in its talons was a heart-sinking red.

"Oh you’re fucking joking," Malfoy said, banging his head against the wall.

Harry opened the window and took the red envelope, which was starting to ooze smoke. He closed the window, drew the curtain, screwed his eyes shut, and opened it.

“I’VE NEVER HAD SUCH AN INCOMPETENT TEAM IN TWENTY YEARS! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? DO NOT ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS IN WRITING! WHICH I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TELL YOU BUT I DON’T THINK YOU’VE DONE A SINGLE THING RIGHT IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS! I’VE WRITTEN TO HOGWARTS TO LET THEM KNOW I’M DONE TAKING BOARDING SCHOOL BRATS! IF YOU’RE NOT IN MY OFFICE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES YOU’RE BOTH SUSPENDED! ABSOLUTE CLOWNERY!”

The missive went up in flames.

Harry looked back to Malfoy to find he was perfectly composed and fully dressed, clothing repaired. Meanwhile, between the botched mission, the international travel via homemade potion, the incomplete hookup with his teen nemesis, and the irate screaming from his boss, Harry felt like a stick of dynamite had exploded in his face. And his erection persisted.

“So fucking rude to send a Howler to someone with neighbors in the building,” Malfoy said. “Obviously he’s not a renter. Come on then.”

Harry weighed the time gained from having sidestepped Portkey security. "I bet we could finish first."

Malfoy tutted in disdain. "Speak for yourself."

Thirteen minutes and one oculus reparo later, they were making their reluctant way to the Head Auror's office.

"So what are we going to tell him?" Harry said. "That we went completely braindead from sexual tension and bollixed the assignment?"

Malfoy shrugged. "I'm not worried. He can't suspend you because you're Harry Potter, and he can't suspend me without suspending you because that’s legally actionable and he understands me to be very litigious."

“So you did orchestrate the partnership,” Harry said. “You secured me as your partner so you could never be sacked!”

“I didn’t — orchestrate — the partnership,” Malfoy seethed.

“You’ve always been obsessed with me. My personal bully, all those years. Nursing your little fixation…”

“As if! You’re the one who used to follow me into bathrooms!”

“Oh my God,” Harry said. He stopped Malfoy in his tracks by grabbing his arm, and cupped Malfoy’s jaw with his other hand to get a clear look at his neck.

“Are you fucking mad!” Malfoy said, voice rising in genuine panic as he shook him off. “I won’t flirt with you anymore if you can’t control yourself, pig!”

“No, it’s just.” Harry made a strangled noise as the laugh he was trying to suppress forced its way out. “You have a love bite. I think it’s getting darker, it’s just coming in.”

They were directly outside Robards’ office, where they were expected momentarily.

“I’m going to kill you,” Malfoy said. “Glamour it for me and I’ll make it painless.”

Harry took a step towards Robards’ door, fully intending to let Malfoy suffer.

“No you don’t,” Malfoy growled, and pushed Harry into the wall. He shoved Harry’s face to the side, held his head to the wall, and descended on his neck, sucking as hard as he could, well into painful.

“Now,” he said, letting go of Harry. “You fix mine and then I’ll fix yours.”

“You’re such a psycho,” Harry said, feeling a little dazzled from the onslaught. It was dawning on him that he had invited something very exciting and very disturbing into his life. He concealed the darkening blotch high on Malfoy’s throat with a quick glamour, but instead of returning the favor, Malfoy muttered, “Idiot,” and went into Robards’ office.

The head Auror awaited them behind his desk, looking red, wide, and upset. Harry had the sense, sitting down opposite him, that it was within his capabilities to lunge over the desk and bite either or both of their heads off.

“What the hell happened?” Robards barked.

Malfoy, who was at his coolest when lying, sought no buy-in from Harry before diving into an explanation — in fact, his modifications seemed increasingly to dare Harry to contradict him. Along with cleanly excising the forbidden tryst, Malfoy steered well clear of his father as he emphasized his own knowledge and quick thinking and, depicting Harry generally as a meat-headed adrenaline addict, placed the blame for their discovery squarely on him.

“He bonked his head and fell over,” Malfoy finished with confidence. “And it made a huge fucking noise.” (“Language,” Robards put in pointlessly.) “I’d done a Tread-Lightly Charm on myself, but that’s something you might not bother learning if an Invisibility Cloak falls in your lap as a child.”

“You bonked your head…and fell over,” Robards repeated, scrutinizing Harry as if to decide whether he could really be as inept as Malfoy claimed. He narrowed his eyes, squinting hard.

“Potter…were you…entertaining friends during a sensitive operation?” he finally said, gesturing to his own neck.

“Yes, he fucked off constantly—” Malfoy said.

“Language!”

“—I think he’s addicted to prostitutes. Sir.”

“It’s a hex bruise. I had to draw fire away from Malfoy.” Harry directed his next comment to Malfoy’s stupid face. “He was hopelessly outmanned.”

“About that,” Robards said. “What did you hope to accomplish with no backup?”

“Potter had let himself be seen,” Malfoy cut in again. “He’s so identifiable; I knew he’d be ticking down from then. We had no choice but to close in.”

“And twelve hours didn’t leave enough time for a more coordinated entry,” Robards said dully.

“The Ticking Clock is inoperable,” Malfoy said. “We fulfilled our primary objective. More than. We located something like twenty kilos of smuggled Lethe seeds that no one even knew about.”

“Which are where?” Robards demanded.

“Potter ruined them,” Malfoy said instantly. “He set fire to the lot. We might expect some reports of forgetfulness around Paris. Or not…if no one remembers to make a report…”

He gathered himself up, returning to his point. “But that’s twenty kilos of controlled substance that won’t be entering the UK.”

(Harry was ninety percent sure that Malfoy had a snatched handful’s worth of loose seeds on his person at that moment.)

“Neutralizing the contraband was not your only objective. The gendarmagie’s cooperation was contingent on our bringing down major players for them. You didn’t make a single arrest, you collected no evidence, and you spooked absolutely every fence from Le Havre to Marseille. We could be looking at an international incident.”

“We can give evidence,” Harry offered. “We have confirmed names and faces. We exchanged fire.”

“That I believe,” Robards said.

“That was the secondary objective,” Malfoy insisted. “The primary objective is to defend Britain from the forces of darkness. Which we did.”

“They were both primary objectives!” Robards snarled.

“You can’t have two primary objectives,” said Malfoy, unable to conceal the joy it gave him to act like a little shit. “One of them is more primary.”

Robards glared at him, brow slowly pinching tighter and tighter, annoyed to the point of bafflement. He had been rendered speechless.

“Anyway, they’ll turn up smuggling again,” Malfoy went on. “It’s a matter of patience. They’re smugglers, what else would they do?”

“You never know,” Harry said with a mild shrug. “Sometimes they go straight and get jobs in the government.”

“Blow me,” Malfoy shot back.

“You wish,” said Harry, whose frustration with Malfoy’s self-serving lies was unfortunately able to coexist with a completely inappropriate arousal. This was so untenable.

“Watch it, Potter,” Robards growled. “Malfoy, this is the last time I’ll tell you to mind your language.”

“It’s him! He provokes me!”

“I’ll do more than that,” Harry said. Malfoy took the implication differently than Robards did and swiveled to look at him like he was insane. Harry fake-lunged at him and he flinched.

“All right, enough!” Robards said. “I’ve had enough. Get out.”

“Sir, our things—”

“They’ve been sent for. Go home.” Above all, Robards seemed tired of them. “In the morning we’ll see how it’s shaken out.”

Anticipation coiled in Harry’s stomach. They were being dismissed. So they could…he didn’t know what.

They drifted back to the bullpen. Malfoy went into his cubicle; Harry hovered at the doorway. He had no idea what to do or say next. The manic spontaneity that had characterized the last several paradigm-shifting hours of their relationship had finally worn off. In order to go any further with Malfoy, he’d have to do it on purpose. And Malfoy would have to go along.

“Could’ve been worse,” he said by way of a hesitant opening.

“Uh huh,” Malfoy said, fiddling with a quill on his desk. He flicked it and it clattered onto the floor. “You’re going to bring me to your house now.”

Harry’s insides lurched. “Works for me,” he managed. “D’you need to take care of anything here first, or stop off at home, or…I dunno, should we pick up dinner?”

“I don’t care about anything,” Malfoy said in a calm, quiet voice, not looking up, “except going to your house, with you, right now.”

“Well, all right,” Harry said, fighting through a distinct southward rush of blood. “Let’s just, er. Okay.”

In the lift they were joined by Dot Galdursdottir and Jack Tarasque.

“Look who’s back early from holiday,” Jack said. “Harry, you’re looking a bit…” He grimaced and shook his hands like he was being electrocuted.

Malfoy snorted.

“Frazzled,” Dot agreed. “Mission get a little hairy?”

“A mix, really,” Harry said. “In the main…yeah. Pear-shaped. But we’ve discovered a new angle that I think will be, erm…”

“Fruitful,” Malfoy offered.

“Oh yeah?” Jack said. “What can you tell us?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Harry said. “Very sensitive. We’re diving into the research straight away.”

The lift emptied them out in the lobby, where there was a considerable queue for the Floos. Harry was certain he’d splinch himself trying to Apparate.

“I can’t Apparate,” Malfoy blurted. “I mean, I just can’t exactly remember…what it looks like at your place…”

“Right,” Harry said, relieved that they were both nervous.

They got in the queue for one of the roaring fireplaces and inched along in silence for a few minutes. Harry snuck a look at Malfoy every so often. Malfoy looked dead ahead, but Harry could see he was getting to him. A fetching spot of pink was blooming high on his cheek, and his Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed.

Finally, it was nearly their turn. “So,” Harry said. “Excited?”

“Mm,” Malfoy said, staring forward.

“I am,” Harry said. “I think it’s gonna be really fun.”

“Really…fun,” Malfoy replied.

“Yep,” Harry said, tamping down on what threatened to be a giggle. He scooped up a handful of Floo powder as the goblin in front of him went through.

He turned back to Malfoy. “By the way, I hope you’re prepared to say ‘Harry Potter’s house’ in a clear, declarative voice in front of all these people.”

Harry threw his powder in and stepped through, smiling madly.

His home was in no state for visitors, especially posh, persnickety ones who zeroed in on his every flaw, but there was nothing for it.

Although he did stand there hovering for a rather long time at the fireplace. He could clearly envision Malfoy working up the nerve at the Floo station, everyone in the queue getting annoyed with him.

At last the fire flared high, and Malfoy ducked out.

“Harry Potter’s house, where I’m going to have sex with Harry Potter. Cheers. Goodnight everyone. Where are we anyway? No, let me guess, Godric’s Hollow.” He cast a disturbed look at Harry. “This is fucking depraved.”

“There, there,” Harry said, grabbing his hand. “We’re alone now.”

“I can tell you don’t clean,” Malfoy said, allowing Harry to lead him up the stairs, into the bedroom. “You and I are going to have such problems, Potter.”

Harry thrilled privately. Maybe Malfoy didn’t even realize what he’d just said, that he saw this extending into the future. As for the problems, Harry couldn’t muster much fear — it was nothing but a mountain of problems as it was and they’d got this far.

Malfoy surveyed the room, the bed, Harry. “You’ll top, I think.”

“Oh, what? Going back on your promises already?”

Harry tried to say it lightly, but there was a reckless, nervous undercurrent to the agreed fact they were skipping right to the end. It had only started today. He’d never done anything like this with a guy. Let’s just do it, they seemed to have decided, in case this only happens once.

“Well, it’s just, I’ve never…” Malfoy gestured vaguely at Harry. “Inaugurated a straight guy.”

“I’m touched by your concern,” Harry said, and he actually kind of was. “But whatever you’re dishing out, I’m pretty sure I can take.”

“Look,” Malfoy said. “The fantasy was always — you having your way with me.”

Harry couldn’t stop a giddy laugh. “So there was always a fantasy!”

“Of course there was always a fantasy,” Malfoy snapped. “Gods. Will you just — come here?”

Harry did as he was told; he moved toward Malfoy, into his personal space. His heart was beating madly. It was going to happen now. He was going to kiss Malfoy for as long as he wanted, touch him, watch him unravel. It felt, at last, quite serious.

They stared at each other. There was nothing left to do but start.

“My heart’s beating so fucking fast,” Malfoy blurted out. He pressed the heel of his hand into his chest. “You’ll have to lie about how I died.”

“It’s okay, me too,” Harry said, and put Malfoy’s hand over his own pounding heart.

A breathless laugh was torn out of Malfoy, his shoulders hunching up as the warmth from his hand seeped through Harry’s shirt and touched his chest, and he looked so sweet and funny with his big normal smile that showed too much gum that Harry had no choice but to kiss him.

At first it wasn’t as frantic as before. They had time. Harry swept his tongue across Malfoy’s mouth and it opened for him, Malfoy’s hands slid up his neck and into his hair, cradling his head. It was, momentarily, lovely. But they just couldn’t stay gentle with each other: swiftly the pace climbed into hard, open-mouthed kisses, hands grabbing harshly at everything they touched.

Harry liked it. He liked the sharp nips Malfoy gave his mouth, he liked the rough way Malfoy pushed and tugged at his clothes, he liked the upward strain of kissing someone taller than him.

He was incredibly hard, and when Malfoy pushed a leg between his he felt an answering hardness. That was very exciting, that would take getting used to. Harry didn’t want to get used to it, it was too exciting. Malfoy wanted him — of course he did, they were in the middle of something — but the proof was — he rolled his hips — wonderful — shocking — he had to feel it again —

Malfoy backed up toward the bed, pulling Harry along with him, until he reached it and sat down. He pulled Harry closer by his belt loops and passed his hand over the tented front of Harry’s trousers, then slid his hand up under Harry’s shirt and pressed his mouth to him.

Through the thick fabric of his jeans he couldn’t really feel the details as Malfoy dragged his open mouth over him, breathing harshly, but just looking at it was almost too much. Then Malfoy was undoing his belt, pushing his denims down and his pants, looking down at his cock and then up at his face.

Harry was way too turned on already, he knew if Malfoy blew him they wouldn’t make it to fucking, he wouldn’t even make it to getting Malfoy naked.

“Take your clothes off,” Harry said, stepping out of his own trousers. He pulled his shirt over his head and had nothing left on. Malfoy took off his shirt and then stood back up to undo his trousers. As soon as they were down and off, Harry slid his hands around to Malfoy’s arse and brought their hips together.

“Fuck,” Malfoy said, “fuck,” and thrust against him. His cock pressed into Harry’s body, his cock touched Harry’s cock, they were in total contact. Harry gasped, laughed, kissed his open mouth, lost his mind. Pushed him back down onto the bed and took a good look at him.

“Oh my God,” Harry said, aghast. “Your body’s perfect!”

Malfoy laughed, putting his hands behind his head. The pose showed off his torso, his long neck — and his Dark Mark. Seeing it gave Harry a certain twinge. This, of course, was why Malfoy did not sleep with wizards. Even a man who didn’t know who he was knew what the Mark was.

“Apart from the horrible tattoo,” Harry said, not wanting to say nothing.

“Hey, Muggle guys love it. Ironically.” Malfoy smirked. “They think they picked up a posh little twink and then, ooh, turns out I’m a bit edgy.”

Harry felt a surprising flare of jealousy. Malfoy had never concealed that he was pretty experienced — promiscuous, even — and preferred to keep it casual. Harry didn’t want the reminder of the poor odds on getting something serious out of him.

And he wasn’t in any position to commiserate with him on the quirks and trends of past partners. He’d drop dead before he admitted to Malfoy that he’d had sex with only one other person, his secondary school girlfriend whom he’d attempted to marry.

“I know the truth,” Harry said. “You’re harmless.”

Something flashed then in Malfoy’s eyes, like he didn’t know how he felt about that. Harry, for his part, didn’t know how seriously he meant it. He took off his glasses before Malfoy could be tempted to break them again, and climbed onto the bed.

“Okay,” Malfoy said, turning onto his hands and knees. “So—”

“No, turn over,” Harry said. “Face me.”

“Romantic,” Malfoy said warily, almost like a warning, but he did it. Harry leaned over him and kissed him again, tried to get on with it but found himself instead pressing his whole body down onto Malfoy’s, kissing his neck, pulling one of Malfoy’s legs up around his hip. He couldn’t stop touching him, his arse, his flat chest, his perfect mouth.

“Come on,” Malfoy said eventually, pushing at his shoulder impatiently with one hand even as the other endeavored to distract him, gripping both of their cocks together while his hips ground forward. That was very nearly too much; Harry backed off for fear of losing it.

He took Malfoy in hand, stroked his cock a few times, then slid his hand lower.

“Yeah, here,” Malfoy said. He snatched his wand from beside the bed and muttered an incantation, and a slick substance spread over Harry’s fingers. “So, yeah, just — use your fingers first.”

Harry rubbed his slick fingers together, heart flipflopping. Malfoy knew sex spells; he probably knew a zillion of them because he was some kind of cool sex guy. Harry was two for two punching far above his weight. He lifted one of Malfoy’s legs over his shoulder to get a better angle. Then he pressed a finger to Malfoy’s arsehole and pushed inside.

His cock throbbed. It was tight, hot, it gripped him. He was going to fuck Malfoy. His excitement threatened to edge into panic: it was going too fast but he couldn’t slow it down—

He pressed it all the way in, then out and back in. Keeping an eye on Malfoy’s face to try and gauge his reaction, he slipped in a second finger. “Is that — okay?” he asked.

“Don’t baby me,” Malfoy said. “If I don’t like it I’ll tell you.”

Harry thrust his fingers in a little harder. “Brat.”

“That’s right,” Malfoy said. A tension thrummed in his voice. “I get whatever I want.”

He didn’t, of course. He’d got very little of what he wanted in the last ten years and that was categorically good because he wanted bad things. Harry’s jittery, panicked excitement swelled. Was it bad to think about that now — who this was? Should he act like it was no one?

He couldn’t. It was Malfoy, that was why Harry was doing it. It was mental, but there it was: he wanted him and he would have him.

Malfoy ground down into his hand. “Crook your fingers.” He demonstrated, making a come-here motion. “Like this.”

As he did, Harry felt something inside Malfoy. He rubbed against it more purposefully.

“Unh, yes, that’s — that’s it,” Malfoy said, and reached down to stroke himself. Harry knocked his hand out of the way and took up the job, working his cock with one hand, fucking him with the other.

Malfoy made a wonderful sound. He looked incredible, spread open for Harry, the flush in his face traveling all the way to his chest. Almost beside himself, almost writhing.

“You have to fuck me now,” Malfoy gasped out. He grabbed his wand again and cast a protection spell and then the one from before, slicked up Harry’s cock, urged him with slippery hands pulling at his hips. “Come on.”

“Don’t rush me,” Harry said, playful, but Malfoy was beyond that.

So often between them it came down to who had the upper hand, who got the last word, who won. But Malfoy was on a different plane now, pushing out a frantic little “please.” Malfoy who was never earnest. He was so hot, so natural at it, nothing could happen now that he didn’t love. By abandoning the game, he’d won.

Or, at the very least, Harry had lost.

He put Malfoy’s other leg over his shoulder, lined himself up, and pushed.

It took more force than he was used to but it went in, he watched it, one hand guiding himself, the other clamped on Malfoy’s body, feeling the vibration in his chest as he groaned. If Harry made a sound, he didn’t know about it. He was shaking. He felt perfect. He kept it as slow as he could but he had to get further inside.

Malfoy’s brows pinched together as Harry sank into him fully and came to rest against his body. “All right?” Harry asked. Belatedly he remembered Malfoy had scolded him for asking if everything was okay, but this time Malfoy just nodded, biting at his lip.

“Yeah, keep going,” he said.

Harry dropped down onto his hands on the bed and bent Malfoy almost in half, and began in earnest.

Malfoy was noisy and shameless. Harry knew he wouldn’t last long but what could he do but push himself into Malfoy again and again, the unbelievable heat of him. Harry kissed him as well as he was able to, bringing Malfoy’s legs almost to his own ears, fuck but he was flexible.

“Harder,” Malfoy demanded.

Harry reared back again, bracing himself against the headboard, and watched himself slide in and out, watched Malfoy’s neck arch so far his chin pointed at the ceiling. He took Malfoy’s cock in hand and swiped his thumb over the head, smearing precome while he fucked him.

He canted his hips experimentally a few ways as he pushed in, until he found the angle Malfoy had shown him before and hit it hard.

“Yes,” Malfoy gasped.

Harry grinned savagely and gripped Malfoy’s waist with both hands, began to pull him back forcefully with each thrust. Malfoy made a completely incoherent noise and curled his fists into the sheets.

It was beyond comprehension. Malfoy felt so fucking good, he put on such a show, and Harry was the one driving him to it. The divots of his clavicle gleamed with sweat. Harry was pulling sweat from him, Harry was making his cock hard, Harry was knocking sounds out of his throat. Malfoy’s hands were all over Harry but his eyes were shut. Look at me, Harry wanted to demand, look at me and say my name, think of me, be only with me, be mine, be mine, be mine. He lost control of himself. He fucked Malfoy hard and came hard inside him, hips snapping, hands squeezing him.

When he came back down, Malfoy was watching him, eyes dark, breathing raggedly.

Harry was loath to pull out, but he had big ambitions.

He eased Malfoy’s legs off his shoulders, licked a stripe up his throat in parting and then slid down the bed.

He wrapped his hand around Malfoy’s cock, passed his thumb over the head again. He loved how it felt in his hand, heavy, thick. But it was time to put his money where his mouth was. Or put his mouth where his hand was.

It was something he’d never done, that Malfoy had probably had done well and probably did well himself. But Harry wasn’t nervous. He liked trying new things.

He slid his lips over Malfoy’s cock and swallowed him down.

Malfoy exhaled harshly and pushed a hand into Harry’s hair, not directing him at all, just gently combing through it. Surprisingly tender. Harry pulled off and licked up the underside, let Malfoy aim himself back into his mouth.

Malfoy was quieter than when he was being fucked, just gasping and breathing out long sighs. The noises Harry’s own mouth was making sounded loud and obscene to him, but he couldn’t be bothered. He set a steady pace, just at the edge of uncomfortable, and flattened a hand over Malfoy’s jutting hip, slid it up his flank. He looked up and saw Malfoy was watching him, but Malfoy closed his eyes then, almost tortured, like the eye contact was too much.

It wasn’t long before Malfoy’s legs began to tremble and his hips lifted helplessly. Harry twisted his hand around the base as he bobbed harder, and Malfoy’s heels dug into the bed.

“Finger me,” Malfoy begged, sounding completely desperate now, and Harry pushed two fingers into him — too roughly, he worried, but Malfoy responded so well, arching and grinding and moaning. Inside him Harry felt the wet slick of his own come and made a noise that Malfoy’s cock in his mouth choked off.

“Fuck, I’m coming,” Malfoy breathed, and his cock pulsed in Harry’s mouth and Harry felt him struggling not to thrust hard into his throat.

Swallowing, Harry thought he wouldn’t have minded.

He wiped at his mouth, at his eyes where they’d watered, and again found Malfoy looking at him.

“You’ve never done that before,” Malfoy said, sounding pleased about it.

“Nope,” Harry said. The clogged, rough quality of his voice gave him immense satisfaction. “Pretty good for a rookie, eh?”

Malfoy stretched beneath him, feline, languid. “Yeah, well. It’s rocket science.”

“It’s not rocket science.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I know it’s not, Potter. It’s just an expression.”

Chapter Text

Harry lurched awake from a deep sleep. He was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep before full dark yesterday, but it was morning now. His bed was in total disarray, the bedding mostly on the floor and the frame itself standing at a strange angle to the room. He rubbed his eyes and discovered a strand of blond hair stuck between two fingers.

He was alone.

He got up and peered through the house. “Malfoy?” he called a couple times. But Malfoy wasn’t there.

Fucking coward. Fucking prick.

His fireplace was going already; Malfoy must have lit it and gone through. “Draco Malfoy’s,” Harry said, tossing in a handful of powder.

The small flat was alive with chores attending to themselves. The smell of cooking pulled him into the kitchen, ready to scream at Malfoy, but he found only a pan frying up bangers.

Harry realized he could hear the shower running, and went straight into the bathroom, not bothering to knock. He pulled back the shower curtain before he even thought about it. There was Malfoy. Showering.

“What are you doing?” Harry demanded.

“What are you doing?!” Malfoy said, and wrenched the curtain shut between them.

“Checking up on you,” Harry said. “Running away, huh?”

“I’m getting ready for work, arsehole.”

Trust Malfoy to make him feel like he was being unreasonable. “But why did you leave?”

“Why wouldn’t I? All my things are here. And I was hungry.”

“Well, are you coming back?”

“We are expected at the Ministry today, in case you somehow forgot that we almost got sacked for gross incompetence.”

Harry forced himself not to rip the curtain open again. “Malfoy. You know what I mean.”

Malfoy said nothing.

Fine. Harry would talk.

“Well, listen,” he began, not sure where he was going. “I think…I think it’s not something we got out of our systems and now we can move on. It’s the opposite, Malfoy, it’s getting worse. For me at least. And I don’t even care. I like it. I don’t know what you want, but — I want to keep going. Indefinitely. I think we should, you know. Be together.”

The shower curtain rippled inscrutably.

“So that’s where it stands,” Harry finished. “From my end.”

Malfoy popped his head out. “Sorry, couldn’t hear you over the water. Did you say something?”

“Wanker.”

“Not anymore,” Malfoy said. “I’ve engaged an assistant. Indefinitely.”

Harry exhaled shakily, giddy relief cutting his frustration. “Either you come out of there or I’m coming in.”

The shower shut off. Malfoy drew the curtain aside dramatically and stepped out. He was completely naked, obviously.

And really wet, Harry discovered as, following an absurd little urge, he pulled Malfoy in and hugged him.

“Stop acting like you like me, it’s very manipulative,” Malfoy said.

“I could never hope to manipulate you,” Harry said against his skin.

“That’s just what you would say. To manipulate me.”

“You’re playing wizard chess against yourself,” Harry said. He pulled back and looked Malfoy in the face. “I do like you.”

“Hm,” Malfoy said, as if he were calculating, untrusting. But Harry thought he looked pleased secretly.

“Now,” Harry said, clapping him on a damp shoulder. “I bet you’re feeling disposed to give me some of the food you’re making.”

Malfoy’s face crumpled. “I hate sharing,” he said.

“Yes,” Harry said with a big, manipulative smile. “But you like me.”

There began the most surreal, maddening, glacially slow day of Harry’s working life.

Malfoy insisted they arrive separately, so Harry went in by Floo, allowing himself to be stopped and small-talked in the Atrium and the lift and MLE. When he arrived at his cubicle, slightly late, he expected Malfoy to have beaten him, but he was, of course, even later. When he eventually did Apparate directly into the neighboring cubicle, Harry discovered that the loud crack unfortunately sort of gave him a hard-on.

Word had spread, within the Auror office, about Harry and Malfoy’s cock-up in Paris and the dressing-down they’d had from Robards, and all morning people spoke to Harry with quiet tones and sympathetic grimaces, as if he were ill.

He was ill, he wanted to tell them. Desperately ill. Every hesitant inquiry he fielded about the trip baffled him anew; not only had he basically forgotten about it, but he forgot about it again every time he was left alone. He was so foggy of mind, in such a fugue of arousal and fatigue, that he couldn’t even get all the way through remembering having sex with Malfoy. He’d daydream up to a really good part, stop, decide to invest in really properly thinking about it, and start again. Every so often he’d snap out of it and realize multiple fingers had spidered into his open mouth.

Then there was Malfoy to deal with. Over and over, multiple times per hour, Harry mentally reinforced the cubicle wall between them and tried to focus on his work. But then he’d remember: he was just out of sight, right over there, the same Malfoy he had ever been, the person Harry was incredibly familiar with, only now Harry was invited to touch absolutely any inch of him. He’d peek over his cubicle wall and catch the merest glimpse of Malfoy’s hair — hair he could hold in his fist, which Malfoy had tossed wildly when Harry fucked him just right — then Harry would sit back down, heart racing.

Then they had to sit through the midmorning meeting. Harry had absolutely no idea what was said in it; it was possible he even addressed the group. He couldn’t look at anything but the fan of Malfoy’s eyelashes as he blinked, the elegant cross of his legs — legs which Harry would pull open — the mean little way he started twiddling his quill when he thought someone had gone on too long. The fingers with which he did the twiddling. Jesus Christ. This was a disaster.

When the meeting broke for lunch, some force of evil communicated to him that Malfoy was dawdling leaving the conference room, that Harry would dawdle too, and that they would then be alone together.

“Muffliato,” he said, once it had come to pass. Instantly he regretted it; it was meant as a gesture to safety and discretion, but it made the situation ten times hornier.

“Stop doing that,” Malfoy snapped at him. The first time he’d spoken to him all day. “You can’t do that anymore.”

“Do what?” Harry said.

“That thing you’re doing with your body. You’re doing it right now.”

Harry was literally just standing there.

“Don’t look at me like that with the green — fucking—” Malfoy struggled.

“We’ve gone insane,” Harry realized. “We’re gonna die. We’re gonna be sacked.”

“No, I’m gonna live forever,” said Malfoy, looking quite mad. “Just — let me suck your dick really fast. How long are we on lunch?”

“I have no idea,” Harry said, belatedly adding, “No, you can’t.”

“Don’t say no to me,” Malfoy said. “It’ll help us.”

“No, it’ll make it worse!”

“Potter…” Malfoy pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Don’t you understand that none of this fucking shit—” he waved vaguely at the Auror office, “—matters at all? Our higher calling has revealed itself. We must answer.”

“I think you’ve lost perspective,” Harry said.

“Correct,” Malfoy said. “Go to the loo right now.”

“You’re so spoilt,” Harry sighed.

Harry dutifully went into the men’s room, anticipating that Malfoy would make him wait there for an interminable stretch. That this was now the nature of his sex life was equal parts thrilling and stupid; he allowed himself a silly, proud grin in the mirror. Then he cringed. The love bite on his neck from the day before was still there, faded to a dull purple but still very noticeable. He’d had it all day. Well. Pointless to lose it now.

He surveyed the room, bent down to make sure no one was in the stalls. It wasn’t that the restroom was dirty, but Harry thought it probably wasn’t clean enough for Malfoy to fully and undistractedly devote himself to sucking dick. Which Harry knew was what he wanted. So — as he was having to wait anyway — he started crouching around casting little scourgifies everywhere, making sure the floor wasn’t wet and the tiles weren’t grungy and the air was freshened.

The door opened as he was tidying under a sink. Harry’s heart leapt in arousal and embarrassment, thinking Malfoy had caught him in this weird nesting behavior, but it was Orestes Middleoak, the office manager.

“Are you cleaning in here?” he asked Harry, sounding a little affronted.

“No,” Harry said. “I thought I dropped something. But I actually left it at my desk.”

“Sure,” Orestes said, and went to the line of urinals.

“Tergeo,” Harry whispered at a smear on the mirror.

“Did you like that Howler yesterday?” Orestes asked as he unzipped. “I arranged that. Don’t mind telling you, Robards was livid.”

“If I explained how poor your timing was,” Harry said, “you would beg for my forgiveness.”

The door to the restroom opened again, this time admitting Malfoy. When he saw Harry wasn’t alone, he exclaimed loudly in frustration and left.

“He’s shy,” Harry said to Orestes, who admirably had at no point stopped pissing. “He can’t use the toilet if there’s anyone around.”

“Oh, nothing surprises me anymore,” Orestes said. “Aurors are all total freaks.”

Harry went back to his cubicle, where Malfoy was lying in wait for him.

“Where’s that Invisibility Cloak? We’ll just have to do it here.”

Harry laughed. “Malfoy. No. It’s a very recognizable noise.”

“Fine,” Malfoy said. “Fine! But I’m suffering, I hope you know that. I’m suffering and it’s your fault.”

Malfoy made to go sit in his own cubicle again, but Harry grabbed his hand. “Will you come have lunch with me? Please?”

Malfoy tried to snatch it back, but Harry held fast, grinning.

“I thought we were trying to act normal,” Malfoy said.

“It’s really normal for work friends to have lunch.”

Malfoy stared at him in horror. As if he’d pronounced the final, forbidden word in a ritual that would unleash something ungodly.

“I am your friend,” Harry said, with malevolent confidence, commanding it to be true. “I’m your very special friend.”

It was half twelve, peak lunchtime for those working normal hours, and the Ministry of Magic’s employee lunchroom was packed with robed civil servants. The queue was long and the din was overwhelming. A hail of whizzing memos dived between hats of varying officiousness. Sexually active junior Auror Harry Potter strode buoyantly through it all, bestowing warm hellos on everyone who looked at him.

Behind him trailed Malfoy. His stiff ramrod posture as they inched through the food queue was like a lightning rod conducting giddy energy for Harry: Malfoy was doing something he didn’t like, being somewhere he didn’t like, just because Harry wanted it of him. It was real and it made Harry famished. He got a ploughman’s lunch with a pork pie; Malfoy resentfully took a cheese sandwich. He could scowl and sneer and eye-roll all day, but he was here. He was getting pumpkin juice. He was following Harry to a table so they could sit together.

They sat across from each other at the end of a long bench table. Harry smiled at Malfoy. Malfoy took a bite of a green apple and swatted a paper plane out of the air.

Harry was almost overcome with the need to say something completely sentimental, but he was saved by Zenobia Fishbein spilling the contents of a case file onto the table.

“Sorry, lads, can I join you?” She sat next to Harry, not waiting for an answer. “It’s a zoo in here today.”

“Be our guest,” Harry said. That our sent a marvelous zing through his body; he wanted to say it again. He did say it again: “Be our guest.” He wanted to tell her, he wanted to tell everybody. He wanted to eat ravenously.

Malfoy pushed Zenobia’s papers toward her and away from himself. Harry fantasized that he was keeping silent because he didn’t trust himself to act natural in front of her, but in truth, he just wasn’t that friendly.

“Malfoy, congrats,” Zenobia said as she messily stacked documents.

Malfoy glared at her with suspicion. “On what? What are you talking about?”

Zenobia made a cauldron-stirring motion with her wand, sending a hard roll flying. “Heard you did a clever bit of potioneering yesterday.”

Malfoy continued to squint crabbily at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Merlin. I completely forgot about that.”

“How could you forget?!” Zenobia scoffed, with a touch of genuine worry. She looked to Harry. “Did he take spell damage?”

“Believe it or not, Fishbein, that doesn’t even crack the top five most impressive things I did yesterday,” said Malfoy. His mood was visibly unclouding as he discovered the pleasure of skirting very closely around disclosure of an infernal secret.

He inhaled importantly. “Fishbein, I did things yesterday that people all across this nation toil in futile hope of achieving. But they don’t have what it takes. Only I do.”

Harry busied himself with his tea, feeling a blush coming on. In the course of boasting, Malfoy was coming dangerously close to paying him a compliment.

“And may I know more about these titanic accomplishments?” Zenobia asked.

“No,” Malfoy said, extremely pleased to have been asked, so that he could deny her. “It’s classified.”

She snorted, unsurprised.

Malfoy smiled evilly. “Potioneering, ha.” He examined the back of his hand, then displayed it to Harry. “Looks like you owe me a ring,” he drawled.

“Careful,” Zenobia said as she cracked open a file folder. “Wouldn’t want someone taking that out of context.”

“No,” Malfoy agreed, grinning so enormously now as to look completely deranged. “That would be an absolutely fucking outlandish mistaken impression for someone to get.”

Zenobia indulged him with a bland chuckle, and then tucked into both her food and her reading. Harry had underestimated how strange people at work thought Malfoy was, what wide behavioral leeway he’d ensured for himself by being moody and antisocial.

After lunch, there was an update on Paris. Despite Harry and Malfoy’s less-than-stellar communication, a massive building fire had led first the Muggle pompiers and then the Ministère Français’s toxic potion cleanup squad to the smugglers’ HQ. The building was long empty of criminals by that point, but the gendarmagie, fourth onto the scene after a team of Obliviators who’d found they were actually the exact opposite of what was needed, had been able to seize a good deal of documentation of international relevance.

Not pleased with Britain’s contribution to the collaboration, the gendarmagie had shared its intelligence very reluctantly, and had not bothered to organize or translate it, which meant interpretation fell to Malfoy. Harry accompanied him to the evidence room.

“Muffliato,” Malfoy said. Then he ran a scanning spell on the whole lot. “Bring to front Lucius Malfoy.”

The pile remained motionless. Malfoy hummed happily.

“You can’t keep him out of trouble, you know,” Harry said. “If he’s doing extralegal business in France he’ll be caught eventually.”

“He’s aware he needs to take it easy.”

Harry blinked several times as he understood what Malfoy was admitting to him — that he, an officer of the law, had tipped off his criminal father that his moves weren’t going unnoticed.

“You — so you did speak to him?”

Harry traced over the last twenty-four hours; there was very little time Malfoy hadn’t been with Harry. He could only have made contact when he’d snuck out of Harry’s house this morning. Or…when he’d sent Harry to work first… Or even when he’d made Harry stand around in the loo…?

“That would be entirely inappropriate of me as an Auror, no?” Malfoy said. He smiled, and set himself to sifting through the evidence.

After thirty seconds of sitting in silence watching him, Harry had the horrible realization that the true betrayal was at last here: Malfoy was going to try to work.

Not on.

“Kinda sexy that you speak French,” said Harry, who felt this was at least more dignified than shooting a spitball.

“I’m passable in Italian too,” Malfoy said. “And gobbledegook for business. And I’m an able equestrian.”

“I rode a thestral with no training,” Harry said without thinking. He didn’t know if he was trying to impress him or compete with him; it had all merged into the same disastrous gay impulse. “And did you know I can speak parseltongue?”

Malfoy looked up then — only to pull a face. “Not in front of me, please, it’s disgusting.”

Harry slumped, discouraged. The only reason he’d brought it up was because Ginny had once confessed to him that she thought there was something weirdly hot about it. But Malfoy had probably heard a good deal of parseltongue from its other famous speaker. Probably a lot of hissed kill orders that no one could be sure weren’t for them until Nagini struck.

“Don’t you like snakes anymore?”

A complicated question with an apparently simple answer. “No.”

Harry felt an absurd rush of anger at Voldemort — the strongest he’d felt in a while — for robbing a kid of his House pride. Even a kid and a House Harry had hated.

“Anyway, of course I know you speak parseltongue,” Malfoy snapped. “It was my snake you tried to get to eat Finch-Fletchley. But I guess it’s pointless remembering who happened to be present for any of the momentous events of your monumental life.”

“You tried to get it to—”

Malfoy cut him off. “Don’t assume I need informing of anything about you. You had only one secret from me.” He flicked cold eyes over Harry’s body. “But I found it out.”

Finally, they were heading in a promising direction.

“And? Did it meet your long-held expectations?”

Malfoy saw he had a clean shot and took it. “Average.”

“Uh huh. That’s why you’ve begged for it all day.”

Now Harry had got his attention. But it was possible, Harry thought as evil flashed in Malfoy’s eyes, that he had pushed him too far.

He uncrossed his long legs, slowly, luxuriously, and faced Harry square. Then he raised one leg and put the heel of his nice Chelsea boot on the seat of Harry’s chair between his knees. The toe of his shoe was inches from Harry’s groin.

“Now what do you,” he said, “know about begging?”

“Not much,” Harry said. “I don’t tend to do it.”

“You might surprise yourself,” Malfoy said. He slid the point of his shoe into contact with Harry’s crotch.

Beyond his control, Harry’s lips parted; he felt himself responding. They were in plain view of other people. “Stop,” he said.

“Make me,” Malfoy demanded.

Feeling Malfoy apply more pressure, Harry squeezed his legs shut. Malfoy grinned with teeth as they struggled silently. He caught the lip of Harry’s chair with his foot and tipped him over backwards.

That took care of the boner, at least.

While Harry struggled to right himself, Malfoy collected his papers. “Quit faffing about,” he said, rising. “The rest of us are trying to work.”

At 4:45, with the end of the day becoming a calming and inspirational certainty before him, the work on Harry’s desk resolved into something comprehensible for the first time. He dipped his quill into his inkpot and began to write. He could probably cram an hour’s work into the next fifteen minutes, which would be kind of like having done anything all day…

Malfoy popped his head over the cubicle wall. “Five o’clock. We’re done,” he said.

Harry checked his watch. 4:46. “Yeah, just give me two seconds.”

“No,” Malfoy said, coming round to Harry’s doorway. “You’re done. It’s time to do your real job.” He hauled Harry up from his chair and Side-Along Disapparated him directly out of the office.

He reappeared in Malfoy’s flat with his quill still in his hand, and was for a disoriented instant unable to locate Malfoy. Until he realized Malfoy had already gone to his knees in front of him.

“I won’t wait any longer,” Malfoy said, unbuckling Harry’s belt.

What the hell was happening? Harry had never had a sexual encounter go straight to this without even any kissing. “Has anyone ever told you you’re orally fixated,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. He looked for somewhere to put down the quill he was still holding; finding nowhere, he stuck it behind his ear.

“Yes,” Malfoy said, and caught Harry’s cock in his mouth as it bobbed up.

This was not fair, Harry thought. He had been in a precarious and trying state of arousal all day long, and he could tell immediately that he was once again not going to make a good showing, stamina-wise.

To make things worse, Malfoy was incredibly excellent. Harry had suspected he would be, but he’d been thinking of it as an irritating head start Malfoy would have on him in a newly unveiling realm of petty competition. He hadn’t internalized, necessarily, that someone who was great at sucking dick was going to suck his dick.

Indefinitely.

“Uh,” Harry said pathetically to the ceiling.

Malfoy wasn’t bashful or hesitant at all; he had both hands working in concert with his mouth, one twisting around the base and one squeezing and rolling Harry’s balls. Harry could feel him doing something with his tongue, and he felt foolish staring straight ahead but he certainly couldn’t look down, so he closed his eyes and kept his face pointed upwards, until Malfoy’s hand left his cock, grabbed Harry’s uselessly dangling wrist, and put Harry’s hand on his head.

Harry ran his hand through Malfoy’s soft hair just as he’d wanted to all day, and worked up his nerve and looked down at him.

Whereas he’d eschewed eye contact on the receiving end he seemed to crave it now, and as soon as he’d got Harry locked in he pulled off, dragged the flat of his tongue along him, sucked just the head and watched Harry watching him. He sank down and back up, almost the whole length of Harry disappearing into his mouth, and Harry’s breath snagged when he felt the back of Malfoy’s throat.

Malfoy hummed like everything was just how he wanted it. He pulled back and stuck his tongue out to flick the sensitive spot on the underside, dipped low and sucked on Harry’s balls, Jesus, he was doing it on purpose, he was bragging…

Harry’s fingers curled in Malfoy’s hair, he hoped he wasn’t pulling but he was pretty sure he was, somehow he didn’t think Malfoy would mind—

Malfoy pulled off, licked his lips. “You can come wherever you like, tell me where,” he said in a rough voice.

“Oh my God, in your mouth,” Harry blurted. It was the obvious choice, but Malfoy knew what he was about: both hearing the question and being made to answer were insane-making, he couldn’t believe he was about to come in Malfoy’s mouth, Malfoy who’d have let him come all over his face, in his hair, on his nice clothes, wherever he liked…

Malfoy abandoned the theatrics and went for broke, bobbing and sucking hard, gripping Harry’s side with his off-hand to keep him where he wanted him, making encouraging noises that Harry could feel, and it was the fact he had his eyes closed now in focus that tipped Harry over the edge into thoughtless ecstatic nothing, pumping himself into the wet heat of Malfoy’s mouth until he had nothing left to give.

Malfoy pulled off, licked away a last bead of come. “Uh,” Harry said pointlessly again, feeling quite wobbly.

Malfoy leaned back on his arms and, laughing and groaning, eased his legs out from underneath himself. “Oh, my fucking knees…I could’ve just Apparated to the bed, I wasn’t thinking straight…”

Harry sank to the floor alongside him, pushed him down and got half on top of him, kissed him finally, thoroughly. What he really wanted was for both of them to be completely naked but they couldn’t even take their trousers off because they both still had their shoes on — Harry had come with his shoes still on! — and there was no time.

His glasses pressed against Malfoy’s face and Malfoy grunted in frustration and pushed them up Harry’s forehead. Harry could feel one of the metal arms bending out of shape as it snagged on his ear; he suspected strongly that Malfoy got a sexual thrill from breaking his glasses and would do it every time Harry didn’t stop him.

Harry tried to push Malfoy’s trousers and pants down but it was awkward lying down, Malfoy had to lift his hips and do it himself, and then Harry spat in his hand and was off, jacking his cock, kissing him and kissing him, reaching with his other hand to squeeze Malfoy’s arse and urge him closer.

Malfoy was making little noises directly into Harry’s mouth, which he swallowed greedily. He loved that Malfoy could be counted on to make noise, it made Harry want to drag him out to someplace where they had to be quiet and fuck him hard with a hand over his mouth. That thought made him shiver — what was happening to him?

Before long Malfoy began rocking his hips and his mouth went slack and sloppy against Harry’s. Harry put his spare hand on Malfoy’s balls, felt they were tight to his body, felt Malfoy’s legs start to shake.

“Yeah, come on,” Harry gasped out. He hiked his clothing out of the way and pressed himself closer, he wanted it on his bare skin. “Give it to me, it’s mine.”

Malfoy moaned and turned his face away, pressing it into the crook of Harry’s neck and shoulder, and Harry could feel his mouth working as Harry’s hand flew over his cock, and then Malfoy came, roping out onto Harry’s hip and stomach first and then all down his knuckles.

Little by little he felt Malfoy’s breath against his throat start to even out. He became aware of the tight hug Malfoy had him in as it loosened.

Harry indulged himself and admired his hand for a moment; he’d never seen another man’s come before.

“Eat that quickly, it’s not good cold,” Malfoy muttered into his neck.

Harry snorted and wiped his hand on his shirt. Malfoy squirmed funnily and Harry heard the thump of one shoe and then the other hitting the floor. They were lying in the middle of Malfoy’s living room, surrounded by chairs and a couch, mere steps from his bedroom, which Harry had still never been in. They were both completely dressed, apart from their exposed privates.

Harry looked at his watch. 5:01. Officially they could now leave work.

Malfoy hiked his pants and trousers back up. “Well, what now? Are you gonna buy me dinner?”

Harry still wished they were naked, in the bed, tangled together. He suspected that Malfoy was not a snuggler and that he, Harry, would have to make one out of him.

“You’re very good at that,” Harry said. “As you know.”

Malfoy favored him with an arrogant smile as he sat up. “What can I say, it’s my passion, it’s my life’s work. You think I get spiritual fulfillment from being a government agent?”

“Don’t you get any?” Harry sat up too. “Oculus reparo.”

Malfoy fished in his robes for his cigarettes, took one out, lit it. Harry put that on his to-do list too, getting him to quit.

“I told you I’m only in the job for the prestige,” Malfoy said. “I’ll do three years, finish my probation, get a good letter of recommendation from Robards, and then,” he took a drag off his cigarette, “I’ll study dragons.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

Malfoy looked at him defensively. “What? I love dragons, they’re my favorite animal.” He narrowed his eyes. “You do remember my given name?”

“Twenty-two cards, I guess.” Harry couldn’t suppress a laugh. “I’m realizing there are still things I don’t know about you.”

“Yeah, like how today’s my birthday and you completely missed it.”

“It is?!”

“No,” Malfoy said, and plucked the bent quill out of Harry’s hair. “Stupid.”

“So, anything new with you?” Hermione asked.

“Yes,” Harry said.

It had been four days, and Harry was on his monthly firecall with Ron and Hermione. He’d barely slept, he was so dehydrated he could hear his own blinks, and he was still holding onto his job. For now.

“Something’s happened,” he said. “With Malfoy.”

Hermione gasped. “Did he quit?”

Ron grinned. “Did he get the sack?”

This was going to be rough. Harry was realizing he really hadn’t kept them apprised of the months’ worth of complex, infinitesimal shifts in his relationship with Malfoy that had led him to where he now found himself. Then again, it wasn’t that easy to summarize: It’s sort of the same as always. But we’ve started to like it.

“No, we’re still partners,” he said. “And I think we might also be. Dating.”

Hermione’s head swiveled in the fire to look at Ron. She gave him a look Harry had seen them employ before, which telegraphed: Is it just me or has Harry said something mad? Ron looked back at her and gave a subtle, dismissive shake of the head.

“Harry, sorry,” Hermione said. “We didn’t understand you there. What — what did you mean?”

Harry cleared his throat, and leaned forward. “I think I’m romantically involved. With him.”

There was a long pause in which they both stared at him.

“Harry, you keep saying ‘I think,’” Hermione said, a firmness coming into her voice as she committed to getting to the bottom of this. “Are you saying you have romantic feelings for Malfoy? And he reciprocates them? And you’ve, sort of, mutually — acted on this? Together?”

“Yeah,” Harry said.

Eventually, in a very high pitch, Hermione said: “Oh.” Ron, meanwhile, seemed unresponsive.

“Yeah,” Harry said again. “It’s unexpected but. Going all right so far.”

He had to suppress a violent little giggle; it sounded tame and thoughtfully negotiated, the way they were speaking about it. When in fact it was baffling and impulsive, and orbited tightly around sex.

Hermione floundered a little. "Well, Harry, that's certainly…” She seemed torn between sympathy and suspicion. Like she wasn’t yet discounting that this could be for some reason untrue. “If you like him."

Harry's only consolation was that they probably couldn’t tell through the fire how furiously he was blushing. “Yeah,” he helplessly repeated a third time. “I do.”

Ron finally stirred, opening and closing his mouth a couple times. "Harry…what the fuck?"

"Ron," Hermione admonished, going for scandalized, though she started laughing.

Ron’s brow furrowed. "Sorry, we're talking about Draco Malfoy, right? Blond guy, pointy face?"

"Yes," Harry confirmed.

"The one who went to school with us? He was in Slytherin?"

"Yes, Ron, you're thinking of the right person."

"The one who is an utter bastard?!"

"Er…yeah," Harry said.

“Harry,” Ron said. “You hate each other. You don’t get on at all.”

“Well, yes and no,” Harry attempted.

“Harry, you’ve fought him multiple times. You’ve fist-fought him as adults.”

“We don’t really do that anymore,” Harry said weakly.

Ron gave him a look.

"I mean, we argue,” Harry conceded. “At work. It’s a high-stress job."

"Oh, I get it. Fighting is some kind of preamble for you, huh?" Ron shook his head. "Harry, sometimes you're a real nutter."

"Hello?" Harry motioned between their flame-engulfed heads, feeling defensive. "Pot, kettle."

"It’s not the same,” Ron said bluntly, at the same time as Hermione more delicately said, “I’m not sure that’s an apt comparison…”

“Well, look,” Harry said. “It’s happening, I can’t really control it.”

“If you’re happy, we’re happy,” Hermione said. “I think our concern is only that…oh, Harry, he is a bit horrible. And he’s always been particularly horrible to you! Really, I think on a list of people who’ve treated you most horribly, everyone who ranks above him is dead!”

“Yeah, mate,” Ron said. “Is this a cry for help?”

“I think I’m beyond help,” Harry said.

“And you’ve never told me you were interested in blokes,” Ron said, looking a bit hurt.

“What do you want me to say, I’m coming out to you? I’m bisexual?”

“Yeah, I do. Thank you. That’s really nice. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

“But, as always, I have a sibling for that,” Ron went on. “Happy to feel Charlie out for you. Mum would die of happiness.”

“I’m not available,” Harry said. “As I began by telling you.”

“One more misgiving to air and then we can move on to being supportive,” Hermione said, and then shook her head. “Actually, no, I reserve the right to air more misgivings in future. I’m still processing, Harry, I have very mixed feelings about this.”

“I don’t,” Ron put in. “I have only negative feelings.”

Harry sighed. “Hermione, what were you saying?”

“Well, you’re quite well off,” she said. “People know this about you. And he’s…temporarily embarrassed. Are you sure he’s not, hmm.” She searched for her next words. “Looking to return to a certain standard of living?”

Harry snorted. The idea that Malfoy was after him for his wealth would offend Malfoy so deeply that Harry would definitely have to let him know about the accusation.

“I’m pretty sure the Malfoys concealed, like, tons and tons of money from the government,” Harry confided. “Anyway, he won’t eat or use the toilet at my house because he says it’s shambolic. He literally Floos back to his flat to take a piss.”

Harry laughed at himself. “See, don’t you kind of get it? Like, it’s so annoying but it’s also sort of wonderfully hilarious.”

They both wore expressions of skepticism and distaste.

“You are beyond help,” Ron said.

“Anyway, listen,” Harry said. “Do either of you know when his birthday is?”

“Oh, mate, fuck off,” Ron said.

“I think it’s close to mine,” Harry said, thinking aloud. “There was a day when he and I and Ernie Macmillan were the only people in Potions because we were the only ones too young to miss class for the Apparition exam…”

“I can’t believe you remember this shit,” Ron said, and he put his head in his hands, laughing. “All these years in your mind you’ve secretly been hoarding pointless facts about Draco Malfoy, and now they’ve, like, leaked out of their quarantine and poisoned your entire brain…” He laughed even harder.

“Harry was obsessed with him that year, don’t you remember?” Hermione said, with the energy that came over her when clues began coming together. “It was so irritating and so disturbing, and now…so long after we all thought the danger had passed…” She, too, burst out laughing.

Harry, relieved, started snickering too: he’d made both of them laugh, which meant it was all basically fine.

“Harry, this is so mad…” Ron said weakly from behind his fingers, still shaking with laughter. “I won’t say it’s the most insane thing you’ve ever done. But it’s the most insane thing you’ve done in a while.”

Hermione cleared her throat and collected herself. “But — erm — if your office has personnel files, his birthday will be listed in his. And…” she hesitated slightly, “it would also probably be in his criminal record. Which, as an Auror, you could access.”

“Ooh, have you ever had a look through it?” Ron asked eagerly.

“No,” Harry admitted. “I do know the major plot points.”

“Yes, but what about all the repulsive details?” Ron asked. “This could really help you see reason.”

Hermione sighed. “He doesn’t want to see reason, Ron. Can’t you tell…he’s un-reason-with-able.”

“That’s right,” Harry said. “So maybe when you get back, you can, er, meet him.”

Amusement aside, their distaste returned. Ron grimaced, and Hermione wrinkled her nose.

“We’ve met him,” Ron said. “I’ve hit him in the face before.”

“I have too,” Hermione said with a slight wince. “Oh, this is very awkward, Harry.”

At that point there was a severe crack in the entry hall.

“Potter, how did I know you’d have no security on your house,” Malfoy drawled loudly. “I’m telling Robards. Anyway, your Floo’s jammed.”

“Speak of the actual devil,” Hermione muttered.

“Harry!” Ron whispered in a scandalized tone. “Why’s he coming over so late at night?”

“Why do you think?” Harry whispered back, before calling out to Malfoy: “Maybe I set the wards to recognize you! Git!” Of course Malfoy was right, Harry had no anti-Apparition magic warding his house. But he didn’t need to know that.

Harry gestured at the fire as Malfoy came into view. “And the Floo’s not jammed, I’m using it. Have some manners.”

When he saw who it was, Malfoy stopped dead in his tracks, completely wrong-footed.

“Hullo,” Ron said, clearly relishing in Malfoy’s discomfort. “Been a while. Just heard some exciting news about you.”

“Terrific,” Malfoy said. Harry could see him struggling over whether to be civil because they were important friends of Harry’s or to show no fear and be a bastard.

Evidently, he decided to flee. “Right. I’ll be at mine, Potter.”

With another immense crack, he was gone.

Harry turned back to Ron and Hermione. Both looked like they were trying not to laugh. Ron grinned enormously at him; Hermione pressed her tongue into her cheek.

“Oh, stuff it,” Harry said.

“Does he always do that?” Hermione asked.

“Do what,” Harry said. Barge in and insult him? Yes.

“Potter,” Ron said, spitting it out in a gleeful imitation of the pissy way Malfoy had always said it at school.

Harry’s face began to heat up again. “Er, yeah…I call him by his surname too…”

“Sure,” said Ron. “Wouldn’t want to be overfamiliar.”

“No…I dunno, it’s a habit from work…”

They didn’t buy it.

“Look, it’s just what feels more natural, all right? The other way would be weird.”

Hermione smiled with pity. “Harry, I’m afraid the entire thing is weird.”

One could argue that Harry and Malfoy had resolved, or were diligently and repeatedly resolving, a major tension between them. But work continued to deteriorate under the new conditions.

Harry was attempting to lead them through the evidence they’d collected in a case of Midlands inferi farming, but Malfoy couldn’t be provoked to offer anything. For the last few minutes he’d been staring an unnerving hole in Harry’s head. At first Harry had assumed he was listening, or gathering his thoughts, but he wasn’t nodding or giving any indication of engagement.

“Are you planning to contribute?” Harry asked finally.

Malfoy shook his head. “Sorry. It’s just that now that I know about the option of mercilessly fucking your face, it’s much harder to sit here and listen to your wrong opinions.”

Harry was not uninterested, but he attempted to plough forward. It was still more than an hour from lunchtime; they had almost the entire day to get through. “I welcome your opinions then. We’re supposed to be reviewing evidence.”

“My opinion is that I could stand right up, take it out, and make you choke on it. What a better use of my time and your mouth.”

Harry flipped the case file closed. Course-correcting him was not going to be possible.

“You know, you talk a big game. Considering how you actually behave.” Harry lowered his voice. “Begging me. ‘Please, Harry, I need it, please.’”

Malfoy’s cheeks blotched fetchingly.

“So I’m not repressed, so what? You should be grateful,” he snapped. “And you give yourself away, that’s straight out of your fantasies. Keep dreaming if you think you can fuck it out of me. Never gonna happen.”

Harry thrilled with unexpected nerves. Something tacit had just become spoken, even if Malfoy pretended not to feel the weight of it.

“Why not?” Harry pressed. “I’d do it if you did…” He grinned, to brace himself against how weird it was. “…Draco.”

“Stop,” Malfoy said with open horror. “I can’t cope with that.”

“You don’t think the surnames are a bit…schoolboy…”

“Of course they are, the whole thing’s completely infantile!” Malfoy exclaimed. “This is the most bizarre, unhealthy dynamic I’ve ever had with anyone in my life!”

“Don’t get carried away, you were in a cult,” Harry grumbled. “I think our dynamic is stimulating and deceptively fond.”

Malfoy fake-gagged.

“Gentlemen, two seconds?”

Eoin Shea, senior Auror, was standing over them with the easy assertiveness of someone who knew he wasn’t interrupting anything productive. Guiltily, Harry opened the case file to a random page. Malfoy crossed his legs.

“I’m collecting research on potions trade in the Maghreb. Robards told me to take a look through your Paris report for some recent discoveries, but I couldn’t find it.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Malfoy said.

“We haven’t filed it yet,” Harry cut in. “Sorry. We’ve been really busy.”

Shea was ten years their senior and the father of two young children. If Harry wasn’t mistaken, one of them was in fact named Harry. Harry thought he recognized a parental spackle-job of willful patience over mounting frustration as Shea took in his apologetic grimace.

“MLE’s got a Pensieve you might use if that’s easier,” Shea suggested. “Before you forget the little details. I can just take a peek through your memories, see if there’s anything interesting.”

Harry and Malfoy glanced at each other and then spoke at the same time.

“Maybe,” Harry hedged politely.

“Out of the question,” Malfoy said.

Harry smiled. “We’ll get you the report tomorrow.”

“There’s a lad,” Shea said. “Cheers, Harry.” He left them to it with a wave.

“Cheers, Harry,” Malfoy said in a nasty imitation. “Everybody’s best friend Harry. Harry makes promises, and I have to deliver. Does that make you feel good? Harry?”

Harry really was enjoying his given name out of Malfoy’s mouth, even if Malfoy was making fun of him. “You can’t even work for ten minutes without going into some depraved daydream. I obviously will have to deliver.”

“Do you remember the names of the smugglers we identified? Can you explain what happened with the Mislaying Mist even in broad strokes? No. And you’d probably detail your gay awakening, you’re appallingly stingy about lying. No, like so much else, it falls to me.” Malfoy sighed dramatically, then gave him a tragic look. “I can’t come over tonight if I have to write this thing before tomorrow, Harry.”

This time he said it quite naturally. Harry didn’t even try to deny that it was extremely stirring. He was being nakedly manipulated and he didn’t care.

“Well, you have to come over,” he said reasonably. “That’s priority one. So. It won’t kill Eoin to wait a bit longer.”

Malfoy looked at him with pride and satisfaction. “We make a fine team after all, don’t we.”

The report languished unwritten, and Malfoy did come over that night. But he did so having made a shocking change.

They’d only been apart for a couple of hours, but when Malfoy came through Harry’s fireplace, his striking blond hair — which had been long enough to constantly fall into his eyes and need arranging — was buzzed to a close crop.

“What have you done,” Harry breathed.

Malfoy grinned, passing a hand over it from back to front. “I’m in a confusing new relationship, I acted out.”

“It’s so,” Harry said helplessly. “Short.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. I’m thinking of getting my ear pierced too so I really look gay.”

“You look like a skinhead,” Harry went on, perhaps unwisely. “It won’t go over with Muggleborns.”

“It’s fashion, Potter. Just because you’re content to look like the asylum was overcrowded and they had to release you early.”

“It’s just a big change, is all.”

Malfoy heaved a frustrated sigh, searching around the room for words. “I was disturbed today. When you said it was schoolboy. I’m just…wanting to…” He fixed Harry with a look. “We’re adults. It’s adult. It’s, y’know, a new thing.”

Warmth bloomed in Harry’s chest. Malfoy was, inarticulately, trying to say something quite lovely about moving into a new future together, one informed but not encumbered by their long, checkered history, each meeting with curiosity and an open heart the man the other wanted to become.

Or maybe Harry was reading into it a bit.

“I like it,” he said, smiling. “You look cool.”

“Good, because you’re next. If I’m going to be seen around with Harry Potter, I want the scar clearly visible in the pictures.”

In time Malfoy discovered, as all the rest had before him, that there was no exerting one’s will on Harry’s hair. But as it happened, he wouldn’t have to wait long for a photo.

One slow Friday morning, Harry sensed that the weight of the stares on him as he made his way through the Ministry was a little heavier than usual, and a lot more snickering. Malfoy was waiting for him crankily at his desk, holding a newspaper, and Harry instantly guessed: the Daily Prophet’s gossip column had caught up to them at last.

“What a hatchet job,” Malfoy said. He tossed the Prophet onto Harry’s desk. “I’ll have to sue. At this rate my solicitor’s gonna buy another second home off me.”

Harry looked at the headline.

“Oh dear,” he said.

BOY WHO LIVED UNDER GAY HYPNOSIS?

Potterheads, are you still out there? Are you hibernating through the long winter of Chosen One gossip? Well, Reenervate! Our man is back, and alone no longer.

That’s right: former teen hero and current adult eccentric Harry Potter is flaunting a bizarre new friendship. But is he merely chasing attention, or under a sinister influence?

Enter Draco Malfoy, convicted Death Eater, son of the disgraced Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy of Wiltshire*, and lately Mr. Potter’s colleague in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Long inseparable in the corridors of the Ministry of Magic, where they work together closely, Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy have been stepping out in London and even Paris, recently enjoying an intimate meal at the Starsweeper-starred, ultra-exclusive Récolte.

Though they would have graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the same class, had either of them graduated, sources say there’s no love lost: they were known to despise one another as students and crossed wands more than once. That’s to say nothing of the Death Eaters’ relentless efforts to murder the famously unmurderable B.W.L.

So what’s changed between these longtime foes? Is it a case of keeping your enemies closer? Is Adopt-a-Death-Eater Harry’s latest charitable effort?

Sources hint at wand-crossing of another sort: romantic entanglement.

“Oh my God, they’re obsessed with each other,” said one frustrated coworker, who spoke to The Daily Prophet on condition of anonymity. “They’re impossible to work with.”

“That Malfoy was such a little [redacted],” remembers a former Hogwarts classmate. “And yeah, he was totally fixated on Harry Potter.”

Mr. Potter has not been romantically linked with anyone publicly since his relationship with Quidditch star Ginevra Weasley fizzled almost a year ago. Did the high-scoring Harpy know then what we mere mortals are learning now — that H.P. was trying out for another team? (Ms. Weasley could not be reached for comment.)

Seasoned Pot-watchers always expect the unexpected. And twenty-two isn’t so late for a sexual awakening when you consider how busy Harry was kept in his war-torn adolescence. But in light of this zag from the artful death-dodger, one detail stands out from his new pal’s weepy trial for Death Eater terrorism nearly five years ago: sustained and repeated use of the Imperius Curse. Mr. Malfoy mastered the Unforgivable as a teenager and inflicted it on fellow students and adults alike, forcing more than one to do his nefarious bidding for months.

Although Mr. Malfoy was convicted of this and a confunder’s dozen more crimes (and although Unforgivable Curses are traditionally considered unforgivable), his sentence was commuted after a successful argument for leniency that leaned hard on his minor status to claim, ironically, that he had been coerced.

Despite a record that’s more black mark than not, the first Malfoy in centuries to have to work for a living landed a post in M.L.E.’s elite Auror Office last year. Congrats to persuasive Draco on yet more improbably kind treatment from men in high places, and good on Head Auror Gawain Robards for his openmindedness.

We’d only caution Desirable No. 1 to close his own mind just a bit, lest his new friend harbor dark designs on the man who spoiled his plans for world domination. What’s that old Auror saying? Relentless stamina? Nonstop vigor? Oh yeah — watch your arse!

*Lucius Malfoy sat on the Board of Directors of Prophet Publishing Group from 1990 to 1995, at which time his affiliation with the Death Eaters was discovered and he was removed. Prophet Publishing Group and The Daily Prophet have never since had, nor currently have, any relationship with the Malfoy family or any member thereof. —ed.

The accompanying photo was a candid shot from the Minister’s Christmas party. Harry and Malfoy stood together, holding drinks, and Malfoy leaned in and said something into Harry’s ear. A grin spread over Harry’s face as he listened, then he turned to Malfoy and replied with a laugh.

There had been nothing romantic between them at that point, but Harry had to admit they looked very friendly in the picture. He was standing closer to Malfoy and smiling more openly at him than he ever would have given himself permission to do at the time. It was so much more obvious than he’d realized.

All in all, the story didn’t really bother him. He’d had worse from the Prophet and he’d obtained a nice photo of him and Malfoy without the humiliation of asking him to pose for one.

“Adopt-a-Death-Eater is kind of funny,” he said. “I mean, so is gay hypnosis.”

Malfoy, less accustomed to the public eye, was having a harder time with it. “This is grossly homophobic! I’m gonna get a fucking bomb in my post!” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve desecrated a national treasure…this is such a setback in the hundred-year chess match…”

“Should’ve thought of that before you did gay hypnosis on me,” Harry said. It didn’t escape him that Malfoy himself had been partially responsible for some of Harry’s most embarrassing press. Seeing him suffer at the hands of his own beastly creation didn’t feel altogether bad.

Malfoy trained an agitated, skeptical glare on him. “You don’t care if everyone knows you’re queer?”

Harry sensed he was being tested. But he spoke truthfully. “No, I’m proud of myself. I’m a bisexual role model. It’ll inspire the children.”

“Oh gods.” Malfoy put his head in his hands. “‘Inspire.’ You have celebrity brain, I forgot you’re a fucking celebrity.”

“I don’t think you did,” Harry said, grinning.

“Wand-crossing. How could they print this? My father’s gonna kill himself. Then he’s gonna kill me.”

“You look good in the photo,” Harry said. “Although I guess you’re supposed to be ensorcelling me. Look on the bright side, they could’ve used your mugshot.”

Harry had recently seen it while looking through Malfoy’s record to ascertain his birthday (June fifth); Malfoy looked comically upset in it, near tears.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll just kill you. Oh, who am I kidding. You never get killed.”

“Who do you think the quotes are from?” Harry said.

Malfoy scrutinized the story. “If I knew the expletive…” He rummaged in his desk and brought out a cherry-red rubber, branded Naughty Bits (“See the uncut version!”), and rubbed carefully at the text.

He let out a scandalized cry. “Oh, that closet case Blaise Zabini, I’m sure of it.”

He rubbed again at “a former Hogwarts classmate” but all it revealed was an annoying “Nice try, nosy!”

Malfoy hmphed and pushed the paper away, looking around the bullpen with narrowed eyes. “The disgruntled coworker said ‘oh my God’ so it’s probably someone Muggleborn,” he said. “Not that I’d ever keep track of everyone’s blood purity in the office.”

“Aurors,” came a crisp voice. Robards was standing over them. From the irritated look he gave the newspaper, it was clear he’d already seen it. “In my office.”

As Robards rounded his desk, Harry saw that he had his own copy of the paper open to the same story. Harry considered for the first time that they were, perhaps, in some trouble.

“So,” Robards said as they sat. “Is this true?”

“About the gay hypnosis?” Malfoy said brattily. Harry snorted, then collected himself.

“This is embarrassing for the Department,” Robards said. “This is not the type of coverage MLE looks for.”

“I agree,” Malfoy said. “We should arrest the writer.”

“I don’t think it’s a surprise to MLE that I’m occasionally the subject of media attention,” Harry said fairly. “They ran a story when I joined. I believe you gave a quote, sir.”

Robards ignored both of them. “Now, whatever you two do in your personal time is your own business. But.”

They waited.

“If this partnership is going to attract too much attention for you to be effective in the field — and if it’s going to distract you — then it can’t go on.”

“Who said we’re distracted?” Harry demanded. “Who said we’re not effective in the field?”

“Sir, with all due respect,” Malfoy said. “It sounds like we’re being penalized for our sexual orientation. Which would, of course, be unlawful.”

Robards gave Malfoy a quelling look. “I don’t think I’ve ever had an employee threaten me with legal action so often, so frivolously. You’re being penalized for poor performance.”

“What?” Harry exclaimed, completely offended. “We’re good Aurors!”

“By what metric?” Robards held up his hand and rejected Harry’s dropped jaw. “You’re both talented wizards. You both have skills we need. But you are — by far — the most dysfunctional team in this Department.”

Harry swallowed. Malfoy gave a small hmph.

“None of your assignments go to plan. You never follow protocol and you never turn in reports. And the worst is the banter.”

He looked at them with grave reproach. “All day, every day, incessantly and intolerably loudly, you conduct your little quarrels. It’s as if you think you’re alone. It’s an open office. In a ministry where hundreds of people work.”

Harry was beginning to blush. Malfoy was stony-faced.

“I get complaints, you know,” Robards went on. “Why do you think I sent you out of the country?”

Malfoy cleared his throat. “Sir.”

“You’re on thin ice, Malfoy.”

“With all due respect. Sir.” Malfoy spoke delicately. “We did try to tell you when you assigned us to work together that it wasn’t a good idea.”

Robards looked murderous. Harry sucked his lips into his mouth and bit them to keep the grin off his face.

Robards tossed the Prophet in front of him into the bin. “Effective Monday you’re both reassigned.”

And so Harry and Malfoy got new partners, and harassed each other in the corridors of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement with petty insults and pointless rows, and messed around in the evidence room so often that they were almost sacked anyway.