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Chapter Text

Draco Malfoy.

Harry hasn’t seen the name in years, even in the pages of the Prophet. It’s a shock to see it now. Harry’s spent a happy decade—longer—without thinking about Malfoy. And he could joyfully go the rest of his life without thinking about him, too.

Draco Malfoy. The name on the parchment raises a flurry of unwanted questions. Where has he been these last fifteen years? What has he been up to? Who is he now?

Uncomfortably, Harry realizes he thought Malfoy had…what? Disappeared?

He runs a thumb over the words beneath the name. Conspiracy. Sabotage. Sedition.

“Sir?” he says, looking up at Robards, who watches him dispassionately.

“Clarke and Harris have had fuck-all luck with this case in Surveillance.”

“How long?”

“Seven months.”

So, the case opened back when he was out. That makes sense. Though he’s not sure how it makes him feel. It’s like he’s lost step with the department, like he’s not quite part of the team, and he hasn’t been able to shake the feeling—especially since every time he thinks he’s caught up, that he’s regained his balance, something like this happens.

Robards continues: “Possible counts of conspiracy to incite riots. The trace on his home has given us letters to friends, calls to family, and garden catalogue purchases.”

“That…doesn’t sound like conspiracy and sabotage.”

“Exactly.” Robards’ mouth is set in a hard line.

“Sir.”

“No one is as clean as Malfoy has been. My grandmother isn’t this innocent.”

The head auror regards Harry stonily. Robards has been more short-tempered than usual lately—perhaps frustrated his best auror is incapacitated—and so has Harry, being the incapacitated one. They never got along smoothly at the best of times; put them together in a confined space for fifty hours a week, and they were bound to get under each other’s skin.

Harry is on his best behavior this morning. The last five months on desk duty have been excruciating. This will be his first case since the one that landed him in St. Mungo’s, and he’ll do anything to see the outside of these walls during work hours. Even—he grimaces internally—take on the tepid leftovers of a case on Draco sodding Malfoy.

Robards throws down a pile of records. “That.”

It takes Harry a moment to understand that Robards wants him to go through all of the surveillance information.

“Sir,” he says. This time, his voice holds a note of irritation.

Flinty eyes stare back at him. Harry gets the message loud and clear.

“On it,” he mutters, and scoops up the files.

Surely this is punishment. His first case back in the “field” is sending him straight back to his desk to trawl a small ocean of useless evidence. The situation gets even better when Harry scans the files Robards dumped on him and realizes they are, in fact, the inventory of the evidence. The actual evidence is archived. But he’ll be damned if he’ll complain. He bites his tongue all the way down to Records—he walks there, taking every staircase, because he needs to move and he can’t spend another minute in the cramped DMLE suite—and politely requests the files he needs.

Harry spends the next three days going through it. Every piece of correspondence, every bloody floo call. Robards was right. It’s all disgustingly, suspiciously innocent—almost mockingly so, in fact. Seed catalogues. Receipts for locally-made pottery. Recorded calls with Narcissa Malfoy full of sparkling laughter and airy conversations about the French countryside. Owl post filled with glossy photographs, tins of tea, and evergreen-flavored Bertie Bott’s Beans.

Harry looks at it from every angle. He searches for ciphers. Hunts for patterns. Attempts to suss out disillusionment charms.

All of it is…clean. Frustratingly without fault.

It occurs to him towards the end of the second day that he has no idea what he’s actually looking for, no idea what kinds of riots Malfoy is supposedly conspiring to incite. When the thought does come to him, he straightens up from the descrying bowl to search the scatter of papers on his desk for the case notes.

He finds them near the bottom of the pile, overlooked because most of the text on the page has been blanked out. When Harry touches his wand to the paper, the silvery word Redacted shimmers into view, over and over again, covering the parchment.

“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters. Then he forcibly relaxes as his magic threatens to expand in his chest. Takes a long breath. Walks down to Records to put in a request for the full case file. He even manages a bland smile when the record-keeper informs him that Harry will need to be cleared for access and—if he receives permission—the files will take at least three days to arrive in his office.

“That’s great,” Harry says. “Thank you.”

He’s all the way back to the DMLE before he realizes he’s still holding the smile on his face, now a taut rictus. One of the secretaries glances at him uneasily, and he drops it.

He needs to get out. He’s going mad. Maybe that’s Robards’ plan: to drive Harry from the department now that he’s lost his use. Foist pointless casework on him, fail to give him access to all of the necessary records.

Harry is on his way back to his desk when an idea strikes him.

“Section III,” he says.

His coworker glances up from her desk, looks about to say something, then appears to think better of it and goes back to her own paperwork. Probably surprised to hear those words. It’s a provision they haven’t exercised in years. After the war, the Ministry quietly pushed through a bundle of legislation in all of the chaos of reforms. Coined the Phoenix Act 1999, most of the provisions were aimed at making it easier to identify dark wizards and bring them to justice, like Section IV, which was still used to place covert surveillance on suspected dark wizards. Case in point: Malfoy, whose floo calls and catalogues Harry has been digging through.

“Sir,” Harry says, appearing in Robards’ doorway. “I’d like to question Malfoy under Section III.”

Robards regards him with his stony demeanor. “The bona fides charm.”

“Yes,” Harry says, standing his ground.

“You think you can handle it?”

Harry grits his teeth. “It’s a simple charm, sir.”

“And if Malfoy uses force to resist?”

“It’s a questioning, sir. I’ll hardly be arresting him. If he hexes me for asking voluntary questions, I think we’ll have bigger problems. He will, at least.”

“Do you want Hills to go with you?”

“Sir. It’s a questioning.”

Robards looks at him for another moment. Then he nods. “I trust you to remain discreet.”

And that is how Harry finds himself standing in front of Malfoy’s cottage the next morning.

Inside the brown picket fence, the grounds are well-maintained. No peacocks strut over the lawn, but the grass and bushes are manicured, and the low hedges along the path are cut straight enough to measure by. The flowerbeds are a bit overgrown, but even that’s in an artful, intentional manner. The house itself is a storybook cottage of faded bricks, red and brown roof shingles, diamond-shaped window panes, and frilly embellishments painted pale green. Ivy consumes half the house and creeps up the chimney stack.

He rechecks the address and frowns to see that it matches.

His shoulders itch with the feeling of being watched as he approaches the door. But the lacy curtains on the windows remain still. The bronze door knocker features a cat holding a violin and bow. The words Cat & Fiddle are carved beneath.

He knocks.

He doesn’t know what he expects, but as the minutes pass, he forces himself to step back and relax the tension out of his shoulders. Another knock likewise elicits no response.

Harry casts a nonverbal homenum revelio. The response of the spell tells him that someone is home.

“Malfoy?” he calls, then curses himself. As if hearing Harry’s voice would inspire the arse to answer.

He knocks again, brisker this time. Then he gives the door handle a surreptitious turn. Locked.

He shifts impatiently and taps a foot. He can’t bloody well march back to the Ministry after twenty minutes because no one answered the door.

With another furtive glance over his shoulder—the country lane still appears empty—he flicks his wand in his sleeve and tests the house’s wards.

COO-COO.

COO-COO.

COO-COO.

“What the—” Harry leaps back and glances upwards in time to see the swift form of a mechanical bird shoot back into the gable above.

His heart gallops, and for an instant, he fears his lungs will constrict. But they don’t. He runs a shaky hand through his hair, feeling like an idiot.

“Very funny, Malfoy,” he mutters.

This time, he reaches out for the wards with a less gentle touch. He knows a moment of fierce satisfaction as the threads of magical intent twist and click for him—then explode in his face.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

He spreads his arms. He’s covered in glitter, from his boots to his hair. He knows because it falls from his fringe as he looks down at himself.

“Goddammit, Malfoy.”

It takes four vicious swipes of his wand to vanish all of the glitter. Then he stills, afraid he’s inhaled some of it. Then he becomes angry, frustrated that the worry has become instinctive.

Lip curled in a snarl, Harry raises a fist to resume pounding on the door—and gets a face full of strawberry-scented soap bubbles.

“Malfoy! You dickhead! I know you’re in there!”

Distantly, he’s aware that this is not what Robards meant by discreet. Not to mention remotely professional. Or dignified.

But then, that’s probably the point of the traps.

It’s not like he should be that put-off by them. He’s a veteran of George’s jokes, after all.

Harry rubs a hand over his face. Fuck. It’s been fifteen years, and Malfoy still gets under his skin.

“All right. Fine. You’ve had your fun.”

***

The second time Harry approaches the cottage, he’s holding a piece of parchment.

“See what this is?” he says, holding the parchment up to the door. “It’s a Formal Request Compelling Examination, Malfoy. I’m not here for games. Open up.”

The door swings open and Malfoy stands in the threshold, jaw clenched and grey eyes icy. Harry gapes at the swiftness of the response but recovers quickly and lowers the parchment.

“Malfoy.”

He looks everything and nothing like the boy Harry remembers. His features are stronger, more squared than pointy. His hair remains the same shocking white blond, though he wears it short. Shorter, even, than Harry’s own. He’s still the same slender bastard he’s always been, but to his dismay, Harry finds himself tilting his head back to glare into the flinty eyes.

Malfoy’s mouth tightens. “Potter. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Harry’s done this a dozen times. He’s practiced the speech, knows how to word the order so it sounds like a request. But what springs from his mouth is, “You’re to submit for questioning.”

“Oh, am I?” Malfoy sneers. The arch tone reminds Harry of Snape, and that hits him off-center in his chest.

“Oh, come off it, Malfoy. We can either do this here or we can do it at the Ministry.”

The other man crosses his arms over his chest. “We’ll do it nowhere. Let me see that.”

Harry bristles. His hand tightens on the Section III FORCE form. It’s Malfoy’s right to read it. He knows this. But his instinct is to say “no.” Malfoy meets his gaze and doesn’t blink.

Reluctantly, Harry holds it out. He watches Malfoy’s eyes scan the page, watches the expression harden. Malfoy hands it back to him with a sneer. “Are you arresting me, Potter?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t need to say a thing to you. ‘Voluntary,’ it says, right here. I hardly see the point of calling it voluntary questioning if I’m compelled to be examined. Do you stop to ponder the absurdity of the laws you enforce? Or are you just the dumb muscle they send when they need someone hexed without asking why?”

Harry still feels wrong-footed with the shock of facing a man, not the boy. He nearly takes a step back, but sets his jaw and leans forward.

“I’m not arresting you, Malfoy. But I can if you don’t cooperate.”

The aristocratic nostrils flare. “Not without a solicitor.”

“All right,” he says slowly. “You can do that. But if you do, then we will need to meet at the Ministry, and the interview will be a matter of public record. We’ll need to set a date and time. I’m sure the press will be ecstatic to catch wind of this. Any excuse to put you on the public dissection board again.”

Malfoy’s eyes glint like steel. “You’d love that, Potter.”

“You know it.”

Harry can’t help it. He has never careened from professional behavior before, not like this, but he’s been cooped up in an office for months, and— It’s Malfoy.

“You’re a treat,” Malfoy sneers. Then the door is moving, and it takes Harry a moment to realize it has swung open, not closed. He gapes.

“Well?” says Malfoy.

Warily, Harry steps inside.

“If you touch a thing, Potter, so help me. Your piece of paper is not a search warrant, and you and I both know it.”

Behind Harry, the door slams itself shut. Malfoy crosses his arms, and Harry realizes the interview’s to be here in the entryway.

Harry’s gaze sweeps automatically around the space. He’s not sure what he expected. He vaguely recollects Malfoy Manor, but this is nearly as different from the Manor’s cool marble and white balustrades as Hermione and Ron’s little home. A thick fleece jacket hangs from a hall tree to the side. Shining leather brogues line a shoe rack. There’s a collection of needlepoint still life studies depicting aubergines and cauliflower and carrots, an etching of thestrals, and a little felted wool birdhouse that is a replica of the cottage. Books on a shelf. A broom in the corner.

Malfoy’s voice reins him back. “What exactly am I being accused of this time?”

This time? But Harry manages to check himself before responding. Right. Professional. He takes a steadying breath. “Conspiracy. Sedition.”

“Conspiracy?” Malfoy’s voice cuts upward. “Sedition?”

Harry lets an ugly smile stretch his mouth. “How’s your grasp of the English language doing, Malfoy?”

“Perfect, Potter. Here is some English for your Ministry to consider: take your piece of parchment and fuck off. This is harassment.”

“Harassment! You want harassment! What was up with your booby-trapped door!”

“Liked that, did you? I thought you would, friend to gingers that you are; I took my inspiration from the best. Yes. Harassment. You want to know about the wards on my door? It certainly is a relevant question, considering I only placed them once your Ministry started sending me its little love notes.”

“What are you on about?”

“‘Conspiracy and sedition.’ Is that what they wrote in your official case papers?”

“And sabotage,” Harry puts in.

Malfoy scowls. “Did you even stop to question what that means?”

Harry can only scowl back because yes, actually, he’d had the same question. But he can’t admit that out loud, and he feels the heat of embarrassment.

“No. I didn’t think so. Charge first, ask later. That’s the Gryffindor creed, isn’t it.”

Harry is thrown by the biting reference to his old house. Before he can react, Malfoy turns on his heel and steps into a sitting room off the front hall. Harry hurries after him.

“This,” Malfoy hisses, turning and raising his arm. Harry is chagrined to see he’s holding a packet of letters. His own hand went to his wand. Malfoy’s gaze drops, and he curls his lip. “Haven’t lost your reflexes, I see. They’re letters. You’re meant to read them. Since you brought up the topic of harassment.”

Harry attempts his own sneer. “I don’t want to read your letters.” I’ve already read enough of them, he doesn’t add.

“No? You don’t want to see the kinds of things the Ministry has been sending its citizens? I guess it is rather easier to turn away.”

“Oh, come off it,” Harry says, but he holds his hand out anyway.

Harry half expects another mocking comment from Malfoy. Instead, the other man only places the letters into Harry’s hand, his eyes hard. For a moment, Harry can’t look away. Then he unfolds the first letter and skims it. A frisson of alarm runs up his arms and neck, though he isn’t sure what he’s looking at. Some kind of formal request for documents, which goes on for pages. He flips through the letters, recognizes the Ministry seal on all of them.

“That’s bullshit,” he says, and shoves them back toward Malfoy. “You obviously made those up.”

“I obviously— What? Are you really— That’s the Ministry seal, you blind git!”

“Forgery should be child’s play for you, Malfoy.”

The pale cheeks flush. “Is that an official accusation, Potter? Are you speaking for the Ministry?”

Harry has no idea why he’s winding Malfoy up, because that is exactly what he’s doing, despite the fact that he’s not in school anymore. He’s 32, and he’s here in an official capacity. He checks himself, hard. “No one’s making any accusations. But I can’t believe the Ministry sent those.”

“You wouldn’t,” Malfoy says, and Harry can’t decipher the meaning in his tone. The other man’s face is a strange twisted mask, part sneer, part…anger? Desperation? There’s a ferocious gleam in his eyes, different from the condescending hate Harry remembers from school. Harry has seen that gleam before—in Hermione. In Sirius. In his own reflection. It’s the fierce conviction of a lion. And Harry has the sudden unfamiliar feeling of standing on the wrong side of that look. It’s confusing.

Malfoy’s gaze searches his briefly. His voice lowers to a menacing hiss. “I suggest you ask more questions of the Ministry before you barge in here demanding them of me. But you won’t like the answers. If you still feel like bandying them about, by all means, schedule an interview. I’ll be ready with my solicitor, and I’ll be glad for the whole wizarding world to hear about it. Absolutely delighted.”

***

Harry is still shaking when he returns home. He bangs the kettle onto the cooktop, casts a vicious aguamenti, and turns the hob to high. A jar of tea, the container of milk, and a mug fly onto the counter, cupboards opening and slamming like the wings of agitated snitches. With the tea set up, Harry moves onto the dirty dishes, sweeping them into the sink with a stab of his wand. They clang distressingly, but none break, to Harry’s distant relief and more immediate annoyance.

The chaos of movement is a dim backdrop to Harry’s own whirlwind thoughts of Malfoy dressed in a heather cardigan, grey eyes dark with anger, his voice seething. He had the audacity to put on the airs of a martyr—as if Harry is the one in the wrong. The image tugs at the underside of his skin and gut with sharp hooks.

A screech calls Harry into the present. He pulls the kettle off of the hob and pours the water over the loose leaf tea Luna gave him. Steam billows up suddenly and violently and clears just as quickly. In that moment of clarity, Harry realizes that the twist in his stomach is shame. He had questioned what the Ministry is accusing Malfoy of, but he pushed forward with the investigation anyway.

That’s unlike him. Harry has too much experience being used as a tool; he doesn’t charge into cases without knowing all of the facts. Hermione calls this taking accountability and says she’s proud of him for it. Maybe that’s true, but as far as Harry’s concerned, knowing the facts and understanding what he’s getting into is just the right thing to do.

It’s Malfoy, of course. It’s Malfoy and this fallout from this curse and being cooped up in the DMLE for five months. The perfect ingredients to drive him mad.

Malfoy’s words echo in his mind.

You won’t like the answers.

What did that mean?

The memory of Malfoy’s voice comes with a memory of his expression: the mulish set of his jaw, the clench of his fingers over his crossed arms. The obstinate glint in his eyes gives Harry a flash of half-forgotten memory: being fifteen, fists clenched, glaring defiantly at Umbridge while being told he was a liar.

He leans against the counter and cradles the mug in his hands, not drinking but letting the heat ground him. Abruptly, he sets it down and jogs up the stairs.

He hasn’t had reason to use it in a while, but maybe out of respectful memory of Dumbledore, who he still associates the devices with, he’s stored his small pensieve with more care than he treats most other things in his cheerfully cluttered home. He pulls it from the locked cupboard in the parlor and sets it on the desk. The liquid inside shimmers.

As he points his wand at his temple, Harry experiences a strange double vision. It’s as if he stands outside of himself, watching as he draws the memory out, the way he once watched Dumbledore. The memory tickles from above his ear. With a careful movement, he sends the silvery wisp into the pensieve.

He plunges into the memory headlong.

There is Malfoy, mouth set, eyes flashing in a way that is entirely distracting, especially now without the immediate anger drowning out Harry’s other emotions. But he doesn’t let himself dwell on that. There are the letters—and it is embarrassingly obvious now how twitchy Harry was, how quickly he grabbed his wand when Malfoy whirled, how nonthreatening the packet of letters was, quivering in Malfoy’s hand.

Harry shakes that thought off, too. He focuses on the letters. Standing over the shoulder of his memory self, he pauses the scene to examine the first missive—properly, this time. He is dismayed to note that the letter is in the same ivory parchment the Ministry uses for all of its official documents. The broken seal is in the Ministry’s purple wax. Harry knows he was being a prat. The letter is from the Ministry. It isn’t forged. He hadn’t really believed it at the time, and he can’t deny it now.

The letter is addressed to Malfoy care of Gnosis University’s Alchemy Department. So, Malfoy works for the university. That catches Harry by surprise, but he sets that information aside for later and skims the contents.

The letter is dated for nearly a year ago. He recognizes what it is now. It’s a request for access to records under the Freedom of Information Act. Harry has seen requests like this before. It’s not uncommon for the Ministry to request access to information held by universities and other organizations. But this request includes months’ worth of Malfoy’s correspondences—any that were written using the university letterhead or made via the university office floo—not to mention a staggering list of academic documents regarding potions manufacture.

Harry doesn’t know the law well, but he’s pretty sure personal correspondence doesn’t count as public information, even if written on university parchment. And the request for dozens of academic documents strikes him as extreme—not to mention absurd. The request fills over three pages.

He resumes the memory and lets it run until the next letter is open in his memory-self’s hands, and he reads that as well, and the next. They are written in the same vein, all demanding a number of different documents—one asks for just a single paper; most of the requests appear to be repeated—and all are dated around the same time period. Altogether, he opened five of what was about a dozen letters Malfoy handed him.

Harry looks around Malfoy’s sitting room, and his heart sinks when he spots more envelopes on a desk. Stacks of them, maybe a hundred separate letters.

He pulls out of the pensieve with a sickening feeling and sits down heavily on the padded ottoman behind him.

The clock downstairs chimes the hour. Eleven o’clock. It reminds him obliquely of the cuckoo above Malfoy’s door, an image which clashes with his recollection of the haughty, vicious pureblood boy and adds to the growing puzzle of this adult Malfoy. Technically, Harry is still on the job today, but he can’t abide the thought of returning to the office right now.

He returns the pensieve to its cupboard, leaving the memory inside, and locks it. Then he goes downstairs to drink his cooling tea, eat a sandwich, and look through the case file.

***

When Harry goes into the Ministry the next day, he hopes to slip into his office before Robards notices him.

“Potter! A word.”

Harry suppresses a grimace. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Robards, leaning out of his doorway, retreats into his office, so Harry must follow. He takes the guest seat across the desk from him. They are a study in opposites: Robards sitting back with his fingers steepled, Harry sitting at the edge of his own chair with his hands on his thighs.

“How’d the interview go with Malfoy?”

Harry opens his mouth but doesn’t know what to say. There wasn’t an interview. After the letters and Malfoy’s furious challenge, Harry strode out of the cottage before his magic could rattle the china on the walls. He didn’t even realize he hadn’t followed through with the FORCE until that afternoon when his gaze fell onto the form.

Do you know anything about some letters? he wants to ask Robards. Why did you give me an incomplete case file?

What he says is, “He decided to schedule an interview at the Ministry with his solicitor with him.”

Robards closes his eyes. He appears to be drawing on his strength. Then he leans forward, reaching across his desk for a blank form. He scribbles onto it with loud scratches of his quill. “Next week. Early as we can schedule it.” He leans back, drops the form into his outbox. “I want this case closed. We’ve spent more time on Malfoy than he’s worth.”

By which Harry gathers that Robards has been getting pressure from outside the department on this investigation. It’s in the sour pucker of Robards’ mouth, the weary and irritated glint in his eyes.

Robards is done, Harry realizes. It isn’t just Harry he’s frustrated with. He’s got the energy of a tired, hungry old bear. Someone in the Ministry cares about this investigation, but it isn’t Robards, and Harry’s expected to sweep up the pieces and make something out of them.

The image of Malfoy comes back to him, furious and proud, and he remembers Malfoy’s mocking words.

Are you just the muscle they send to hex people?

It’s easier to turn away.

“Did he have anything else to say?” Robards asks.

“Not much,” Harry says.

***

This time, the door to the cottage opens at Harry’s first official knock, and Draco Malfoy looks out at him mildly.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Harry says, holding himself still with his hands at his sides.

Malfoy inclines his head. “Auror Potter.”

It is markedly different from any interaction they’ve ever had. The closest they’ve come was right after the trials when Harry spoke for Malfoy’s pardon. Malfoy had looked at him similarly then, with a blank mask of politeness, and inclined his head. The only expression had been the wariness in his eyes, just like now.

Harry holds up the folded parchment. “The official Section III summons.”

Malfoy takes it carefully but doesn’t open it. “Thank you.”

“It’s next week, Tuesday,” Harry blurts. True to his word, Robards scheduled it for as early as possible, and suddenly, Harry is struck with the need for Malfoy to know, for Harry to be the one to tell him, perhaps because he’s responsible for the hearing happening in the first place, and he’s not entirely comfortable with that now.

A dark expression flickers over Malfoy’s face, tightening his mouth and eyes, and for a moment Harry has a glimpse of the fury that is still there. Malfoy gives a nod, small and curt.

Harry shoves his hands into the pockets of his robes. “Right then.”

Emotion finally cracks Malfoy’s features, a narrow-eyed look. He inspects the parchment with a frown. “You could have just owled this. Didn’t want to pass up a chance to gloat in person?”

Harry sighs. This is more of what he’d been expecting when he came this afternoon. “Listen, Malfoy…”

Malfoy just watches him, brows slightly raised, eyes still cool.

“May I come in?”

Malfoy blinks. “No, you may not.”

“Not—” Harry’s hand goes to the back of his own neck, and he glances over his shoulder uneasily. “Not in an official capacity. I just— I need to talk to you. The information requests. They came through the Ministry from a private entity, didn’t they?”

Harry’s not sure of the emotion that flickers across Malfoy’s features this time. Suspicion, but—not just. Something closer to startlement. Then he steps back and holds the door open. With one last glance at the country lane, Harry steps inside.

It’s odd to be standing here again. It’s familiar, like he was just here—which, he was—and it’s oddly comforting, but it also hits him how little he noticed of it when he was here yesterday. The air closes around him with a warmth similar to that of the Burrow, though also completely opposite: neat and tidy where the Burrow is chaos, grey and pastel where the Burrow is a jumble of color, quiet where the Burrow is noisy. Yet for all that, Harry immediately feels at home here.

“Yes,” Malfoy says, the sharp voice pulling Harry back to the present, and Harry realizes he was absorbed with taking in the entry room. He turns to see Malfoy regarding him with open wariness now. But his arms are not crossed, they are at his sides, one held slightly out to the small side table that hugs the wall. The posture strikes Harry as vulnerable. “Poesy Potions.”

“Poesy Potions? As in, ‘Poetry. Perfection. Poesy’?”

“Yes. That Poesy. Circe, even their slogan is gauche. Might as well say ‘poetry, perfection, poetry.’”

“Right.”

While Harry absorbs this information, Malfoy’s gaze skates over his front, and Harry realizes he’s still wearing his auror’s robes.

“Here,” he says. He pulls them off, shrinks them, and stashes them in the pocket of his muggle jeans. Malfoy’s eyes widen, and Harry looks down at himself. Black knitted jumper—one of Hermione’s gifts, which are a tad more work-appropriate than the rough, loving Weasley jumpers—the jeans, and comfortable leather loafers.

Before he can think about the words, Harry says, “Usually no one sees what’s underneath.”

Malfoy, not missing a beat, says, “And what inspired you to take them off for me?”

For no discernible reason, Harry blushes furiously. “I just wanted you to see I’m not here as an auror.”

Malfoy looks at the parchment.

“I mean, I was for that. But like you said, I could have owled it. I want to talk to you. Because—” He swallows a lump in his throat. He can’t believe he’s admitting this to Malfoy. “Because something isn’t adding up here. Why did you show me the information requests? What does all of this have to do with Poesy Potions?”

Malfoy crosses his arms. “Are you questioning me, Potter? Directly after handing me that summons to be interviewed at the Ministry under the bona fides charm with my solicitor present?”

“No. Merlin. Dammit.” Harry smothers his face with his hands. “I’m just— I was given an incomplete file on you, Malfoy. And don’t ask me why I’m even telling you this, except that I feel like I got landed in a tank of shit without a wand, and I hate being used, even if it is against you.”

“Refreshingly honest as always, I see.”

“Are you really conspiring?”

Malfoy’s features twist with contempt. “Sure I am.”

Harry wasn’t expecting that response. His mouth goes inexplicably dry. “What are you doing?”

The smile on Malfoy’s face is hard and mocking, but seemingly directed at himself. “Trying to publish my research.”

“You— What?”

Malfoy’s smile sharpens, twists in a way that is clearly mocking Harry now, but Harry finds that in that moment, he doesn’t mind. Finds that it is almost…reassuring.

“It’ll be easier to show you,” Malfoy says, turning, and once again, Harry finds himself following him down the corridor, hesitating a moment before taking the stairs behind him. Malfoy leads him into a study on the second floor. The room has a large desk against the wall at one end and books and papers set everywhere, in piles and spreads.

“Don’t touch anything,” Malfoy says, an echo of his words the day before, but Harry senses there’s a reason behind the warning this time. Harry gazes around, sees all the books open to specific pages, the sheafs of notes set on top. He’s seen something similar to this in Hermione and Ron’s home, Hermione’s books and notes fanned out like an extension of her brain. The first time Harry walked in on the room with its array of books, Ron took his arm and—with a hint of real fear in his voice—said, “Leave it alone, mate. ‘Mione’d kill you, then me, if we touched a thing.”

Harry sits gingerly on the upholstered chair that Malfoy indicates to him, an island in a sea of research. And his bewilderment at the entire situation only increases. Malfoy sits down carefully on the leather upholstered desk chair, folding one elegant leg beneath him, his eyes trained on Harry. It’s really unnerving, though Harry should be used to it from years at Hogwarts. He resists fidgeting.

He is just ready to ask Malfoy what exactly Malfoy means to show him when the man takes something from atop one of the book piles and hands it over to Harry. Harry holds it, not quite sure what to make of the sheaf of papers, taking in the title, the author.

“It’s a manuscript,” Malfoy sneers after a few beats.

“I know what a manuscript is,” Harry snaps, his face heating. “I just…”

Malfoy watches him as if waiting for the rest of the sentence. When Harry doesn’t finish the thought, he says, “What did you think I meant by ‘research,’ Potter?”

“So you really do work for Gnosis University, then. You’re faculty.”

“I was.”

At Harry’s sharp look, Malfoy lifts his chin. Recalling that he is not here officially, Harry decides not to pursue that line of questioning. Instead, he looks at the document in his hands. “What is it you want me to look at?” Then, when Malfoy grimaces, he says, “What?”

“Well, you can read, correct?”

“Fuck off.” Harry flips open the manuscript so he has something else to look at. He opens to the abstract because he can read and he does know what research is, thank you very much. Of course, he only knows what an abstract is thanks to Hermione. He doesn’t mention any of this to Malfoy.

Though, to Harry’s chagrin, he stares at the page for far longer than he should need; it takes him three tries to actually focus on what the words say.

“Do you need me to put it in layman’s terms for you?”

Harry looks up with a scowl, in no little part because Malfoy sounds half sincere with his offer and because yeah, it would help.

Malfoy settles back in his seat. “Some background may help. I’ll give this to you for free because I doubt even you can find any nefarious intentions in my recent employment history. As you surmised, I was faculty at Gnosis University. Research faculty. I was working on a proposal to study the differences in brewing practices between traditional single-cauldron brews and potions made in tanks. Considering Poesy is the first mass manufacturer of potions, I was up to my ears in their manufacturing processes. I became especially interested in how they disposed of their waste materials and byproducts.”

“They dump them into the water supply,” Harry says, recalling something he saw in the abstract.

Malfoy arches an eyebrow as if to say, You can read. Well done.

Harry rolls his eyes.

“Yes, they ‘dump’ them into the water supply. Which I thought was very interesting, so much so that I paused my initial line of investigation to look into that further. All of that byproduct must have an effect on the water life, if nothing else. How intriguing to stumble upon some statistics indicating a significant decrease in the number of Hogwarts letters sent to wizarding families in the vicinity of Poesy’s brewing facility, a number which rose again after the facility was relocated to a muggle-dominated area eighty miles away.”

Harry stares at Malfoy, wondering what potions byproducts have to do with Hogwarts letters. He knows he’s missing something obvious. Then: “The waste makes squibs.” Cold washes through him. “Right? Is that what you’re saying? But I don’t get it. They knew about this and so they moved their operations to a muggle community. Wizards don’t use the muggle water supply.”

Malfoy meets his questioning gaze levelly. He arches an eyebrow. “Really, Potter?”

Harry bristles, then his mouth forms an O. “Muggleborns.”

“Ten points to Gryffindor.” Malfoy twirls a finger.

“Merlin.” He stares at the parchment. “But how come no one knows about this?”

“Really, Potter?”

“Yes, really! Is that the only response you have? And what do you care, anyway? Why would you give a flying gnome’s arse about a bunch of squib muggleborns who will never know what they could have had?”

Malfoy looks like he’s bitten into a lemon. “Besides the fact that the wizarding race would interbreed itself into oblivion and die out without the fresh blood? Oh, I don’t know, Potter. Maybe because they’re human beings and it’s the right thing to do. I thought you knew something about that.”

“I know something about that! I didn’t think you did!”

Harry’s gone hot around the neck and he knows he’s coloring. His magic has gathered under his skin like lightning ready to crack.

What is he doing fighting Malfoy, anyway?

Malfoy’s lips press into a white, thin line. Grey eyes meet green, unblinking. Abruptly, he looks away. “To answer your question, that’s what I’m trying to do. Tell people about this.”

Harry looks at the parchment again. He’s aware of the paper’s texture between his fingers.

“I’ve got to go,” he says abruptly, and stands.

***

Hermione and Ron have him over for dinner that night.

“Is everything all right, Harry? You’re awfully quiet.”

There’s a hesitation in Hermione’s voice, almost a sadness, which wasn’t there before the accident. Harry doesn’t know how he feels about that. He hates the attention. Any kind of attention—but this kind in particular. The pity makes his teeth hurt, like biting on foil. But also—he’s grateful for his friends’ concern. He wouldn’t have made it through the past year without them.

Hermione hasn’t said the words out loud, but Harry knows she thinks he should find a different career, that staying with the aurors is not practical, is in fact probably making him miserable. They are on their second bottle of wine tonight, and Harry still hasn’t told them about the field assignment he was placed on, nor that his subject is Draco Malfoy.

“Yeah. Fine,” Harry says, pouring himself another glass. He catches Hermione eyeing the glass, so he only fills it a third of the way before setting the bottle back down. Alcohol doesn’t set the thing off, he’s told her. But Hermione…is Hermione, and it’s easier to limit his alcohol consumption than wage silent war with her all night. Anyway, he really shouldn’t drink that much. Because drinking brings maudlin thoughts, and those lead nowhere good.

Hermione doesn’t look convinced by Harry’s reply, but Ron comes to his rescue by bringing up muggle football, his newest fascination. Arthur got him into watching it over Christmas on Ron and Hermione’s old muggle TV, and now Ron goes off on indecipherable tangents that Harry can’t follow, filled with teams and players and rules he doesn’t recognize. He feels about as baffled as Hermione looks when he and Ron go off about Quidditch, and she sends him a wry grin. Ron doesn’t notice. He returns Hermione’s small smile but doesn’t try to derail Ron. Truthfully, he’s glad for the reprieve.

Muzzy with wine and a full stomach, Harry lets his thoughts drift to Malfoy. No matter how he looks at it, it has to be a trick. It’s the right thing to do. That is exactly the sort of perfectly calculated thing for a Slytherin to say to a Gryffindor to throw said Gryffindor off of his trail. The whole situation is too perfect to be anything but an act. The ferocious, dignified martyr. The manuscript, which—who would understand any of it, anyway? It’s all a trick, of course. So what is Malfoy really up to?

“Harry?”

“Hm?”

“Do you want a chocolate biscuit?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

He has the biscuit with the rest of his wine. Then he helps Ron levitate all of the dishes into the sink and set the cleaning charms. It’s just a small bit of magic, though it makes Ron furrow his brow. Ron, however, doesn’t say a thing, and Harry pretends he didn’t see the disapproving expression. It’s just another thing he’s got used to over the last year. His friends care for him, that’s all.

Brushing his teeth that night before bed, Harry is still thinking about Malfoy. Malfoy and Robards and the Ministry’s letters and the blank spaces on the case file.

Redacted. Redacted. Redacted.

Harry spits into the sink.

What is Malfoy up to?

***

The next morning, Harry succeeds in his attempt to sneak into his office unseen.

Once inside with the door closed, he stands in the darkness and scans the little room blindly. He considers—and rejects—the idea of turning on the light, which his colleagues and Robards will be able to see through the window above the door. Instead, he casts a low lumos and sits on his chair to search through his files in the gloom.

The uncensored case file still hasn’t come up from Records yet, he sees. He suppresses his annoyance and collects all of the files he does have, then begins to skim through them over again.

He doesn’t know quite what he’s looking for. Pieces to the puzzle, perhaps—one that is rapidly growing and filling with more holes.

Last night, after leaving Ron and Hermione’s, a restless need to find something spurred him out into muggle London, where he rented a computer at an Internet cafe. There, over an ill-advised cup of coffee, he searched for news of the town where Poesy Potions bases its operations. He found nothing on Poesy by name, of course, but a search yielded results about its muggle alter ego. To his surprise, Perfect Products—as it calls itself—manufactures muggle goods, as well. Largely ointments for livestock.

There was a smattering of news about Perfect Products, mostly positive or at least neutral. Company profiles, press releases, reviews of the products. There was a news piece about the company’s charity in the community. The Perfect Products website itself was sparse but sparkled with photographs of smiling people and declarations of the company’s commitment to bettering the lives of its customers.

The whole thing smacked of propaganda. Which, of course it would, because Perfect Products doesn’t actually exist.

Frustrated, feeling uneasy and jittery from the caffeine he shouldn’t have been drinking after 10 at night, Harry headed home. Thinking: for all the conveniences of spellcasting, magical folk still haven’t devised a twenty-four-hour instant information network to mimic the Internet. Cursing the fact that the library and Ministry archives were closed for the night.

Aware that he should proceed carefully—if for some reason someone is attempting to keep Harry in the dark about the true nature of the case, he doesn’t want to let on he knows about Poesy—he instead scratches Draco Malfoy’s name onto a request slip and places it into his office desk’s outbox. Malfoy’s file is one he’d reasonably be seeking from Records.

It appears in his inbox a few minutes later, and he sourly notes that they had no trouble getting this file to him quickly.

Harry stares at the file for several minutes before opening it, feeling like he is accessing something he shouldn’t, like he is in the Restricted Section again. He’s restrained himself from accessing the file several times over the years. Every time he itched to see what Malfoy was up to, he heard Hermione’s voice in his mind, chastising him for stalking Malfoy.

Now his eyes skate over a face sheet of biographical information to a thin packet of photographs held to the inside of the file with a sticking charm. Malfoy frowns back at him and fidgets from several glossy prints, at various ages, at various social events. Harry tarries over several of them, telling himself he’s trying to make out the people in the background and suss out where, exactly, Malfoy was—and not running his gaze over Malfoy himself, perfectly coiffed and done up in smart dress robes (never the same set). To Harry’s confused approval, Malfoy seems to have left the slicked-back look at Hogwarts and has since worn his hair in a short tail or artfully ruffled locks. His present short style must be relatively new, and Harry shouldn’t think it looks good on him, but it does. It all looks good on him.

Malfoy scowls when Harry stares at a particular photograph for several minutes, and he hastily turns the page.

The file stretches back to Malfoy’s school days and includes his alleged and confirmed activities related to Voldemort. Harry skims the list with a morbid fascination, his skin tightening.

…Vanishing Cabinet…

…Narcissa Malfoy…

…Battle of Hogwarts…

There is the outcome of Malfoy’s post-war trial, which has Harry holding his breath. Then a less familiar history unfurls for Harry, the chronicles of the man he willfully lost track of after the war, the blank history filling itself in: Malfoy’s completion of school at Beauxbatons. His years of university in America studying potions engineering. His quiet return to England. The death of his father in Azkaban.

Harry has the sensation of rifling through Malfoy’s cupboards and has the urge to close the file.

He turns the page.

The recent years become more detailed, possibly because Malfoy returned to England and thus has been easier to keep track of. Weirdly—apart from the smattering of newspaper clippings—it almost begins to look like a CV. Along with post-graduate education and his appointment at Gnosis University, it’s mostly a list of published articles, research presentations, charities, and social justice campaigns. It takes Harry a minute to realize these are charities and campaigns that Malfoy has contributed to—and another minute to realize that he contributed to them anonymously.

Harry runs over the last several years of Malfoy’s history again. And then again. Processing.

He scratches another request and drops it into his inbox, and a few minutes later, several old editions of the Daily Prophet and a few other publications appear on his desk. Another half-hour search yields several articles about Malfoy, but not one mentions his justice work.

Draco Malfoy is a philanthropist, and he seems to have kept it a secret. But that makes no sense. What kind of benefit would Malfoy get from engaging in charity work without telling anyone?

Because it’s the right thing to do, Potter.

Suddenly, Harry is standing in the little cottage again, in the comforting neatness that probably few others see. Malfoy’s haven for himself, the homey comforts meant for no one else but Malfoy, which Harry barged into.

Malfoy has done…all of this. All of this, without taking credit for it. The public doesn’t know about it—but the Ministry knows, and they treat him like a criminal. It’s like the Ministry has stolen something precious and personal from Malfoy without Malfoy knowing.

Harry feels dirty. A little sick, even. He closes the file and replaces it in the outbox. Pauses. Opens it again. Takes out the scowling photo of Malfoy. Sends the file and the newspapers back to the archives.

The photo of Malfoy continues to frown at him, the steel grey eyes unblinking. Harry’s own eyes begin to water from staring so long, until he gives in and blinks, himself, and slips the photo into the inside pocket of his robes.

With the help of a mild disillusionment, Harry slips back out of the DMLE unseen. Needing to think, he lets his feet carry him to the stairs. A month ago, even, he wouldn’t have been able to make the trip of several flights without losing his breath. Now he’s only mildly winded when he arrives in the atrium, which is probably due to the lack of exercise as much as anything.

He pauses at the landing to let his pulse slow, and that’s when he catches sight of a man striding towards the floo.

Harry is trying to place why he seems familiar when the man turns just enough to recognize his features from last night’s Internet search.

It’s the CEO of Poesy Potions.

***

“Harry?”

Hermione’s voice through the floo sounds surprised, a tad concerned.

“Hey, Hermione. Can I come through?”

She glances over her shoulder, as if confirming the room is presentable. It’s an action Harry’s got used to since Rose began to crawl. And later, walk. And ride a toy broomstick.

“Yes. Come on.”

As Harry straightens on the other side, brushing soot from his robes, Hermione watches him.

“Ron’s still at work,” she says. “Is everything all right?”

She’s always had that sixth sense. She’s always been able to see right through him.

“I don’t know,” he says, but the tone of his voice says, No.

“I’ll put on a pot of tea?”

“Yes. Please.”

Harry sits at the kitchen table while the kettle heats and the tea leaves levitate into the pot. Ginger biscuits plate themselves on the table in front of him. Harry lets the familiarity and comfort sink in. He has another flashback to Malfoy’s home, and he shakes his head.

Hermione turns and catches sight of the movement. She sets the teapot on a wool trivet between them. Folds herself onto the opposite chair. “What’s going on?”

Harry’s lips thin. He doesn’t know what to say. The questions and puzzle pieces have been whizzing about his brain in a storm all morning, like a thousand golden snitches, like a roomful of flying keys.

Hermione furrows her brow and pours them tea, adding milk to both—and sugar to his. Harry cradles his hands around his cup and looks back at her through the rising steam.

“Something is going on with my latest case,” he says slowly, “and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Okay,” she says, drawing out the word.

Harry takes a sip of the tea. “It’s about Malfoy.”

“Okay…”

Harry sets down his cup. He tells Hermione everything from the beginning, starting with Robards calling him into the office and Harry’s excitement at getting the case, which was quickly banked when he saw Malfoy’s name. The nature of the case—Malfoy involved in conspiracy, sabotage, sedition. The redacted information. Harry’s request to enforce Section III. Malfoy’s insane house wards. (Harry swears Hermione smiles into her teacup at this part of the story.) He tells her about Malfoy’s defensiveness at receiving the FORCE form and the scores of document requests from the Ministry. The following uncomfortable conversation with Robards and the way Robards rushed a hearing with Malfoy, trying to close this case quickly. Malfoy’s piles of books. His manuscript. The byproducts that—supposedly—produce squibs. Malfoy’s squeaky clean record. Seeing the CEO of Poesy Potions in the Ministry atrium.

The only thing he doesn’t tell her about is Malfoy’s involvement in charities. It feels like that is not his information to share.

“The thing is,” Harry says, leaning forward, “Malfoy is right. I looked through the newspaper archives this morning. Poesy did move their factory early on, from a magical community to a muggle one. Because wizards don’t use—”

“The muggle water supply,” Hermione finishes. She is sitting forward in rapt attention by now, her eyes glassy in that far-away look she gets when thinking.

“Right,” Harry says. He finally falls silent, hands still clutched around the teacup, though it’s gone cold.

Hermione continues to gaze across the kitchen. Harry wishes he could see her thoughts.

“So I don’t know what to do,” he ventures.

“Are you sure that was the CEO you saw?”

“Well, it could always be someone who was glamoured. Or polyjuiced.”

Hermione frowns. Glances at the clock—both the real one and the one next to it with her, Ron, and Harry’s names. Ron’s hand is still pointed at “Work.”

“Do you mind if I look at your memory of the letters?”

Harry is actually relieved at this. “No. It’s still in the pensieve.”

They floo to Grimmauld Place and walk up to the parlor. Harry pulls out the pensieve and then paces the room while Hermione bends over it.

At last, Hermione straightens and pushes back wayward strands of hair.

“Well?” Harry says.

Hermione looks at him, eyes dark and still focused inward. The frown hasn’t left her face.

“Hermione?”

“Do you think Malfoy would let me look at his manuscript?”

“What? I don’t know. Maybe. What are you thinking?”

Hermione’s eyes refocus on Harry. She chews her lip. Seems to decide something. “I hate to say it, Harry, but I don’t like this.”

Harry goes a little boneless. He leans against the table, letting it take his weight.

“I’m sure it’s not what you wanted to hear,” Hermione says.

“Sure,” Harry says, tired beyond belief and filled with a deep, slow anger, like a dragon rising slowly beneath the cold surface of a lake. “No one wants to hear their ministry is involved in a plot to prevent muggleborns and throw innocent researchers into Azkaban for trying to tell people about it.”

Hermione looks in danger of biting through her lip. He knows she’s probably having the same flashback he is to their later years in Hogwarts—the lies, the propaganda, the eagerness to throw Harry under the Knight Bus. No, this situation wouldn’t be a precedent. But it is happening under his watch.

“What are you planning to do?” Hermione asks.

Harry runs a hand over the smooth, cool surface of the desk. The liquid in the pensieve moves slowly, gleaming mother-of-pearl.

“I don’t know.”

***

Harry doesn’t like St. Mungo’s. The bare tiled floors, the hum of the healers’ chatter broken by the occasional moan or shout, the smell of lemongrass and something sour, something sharp. But at least when he visits these days, he knows he’ll be returning home again in an hour, and he likes his healer, a witch in her early fifties who treats him kindly, exactly as he suspects she treats her other patients—like they are all as important as the Savior of the Wizarding World, and like they are all human.

“Deep breath in—hold it—good…and: cast!”

Harry does as she says. The spell is a simple lumos. He can feel the magic move through him, can feel that faint sensation of sucking or constricting on his lungs, though barely perceptible.

Healer Catherine grunts and lowers her own wand. Harry watches her expectantly. His last healer would bow over his chart and scribble results without saying anything to Harry, before prescribing Harry exercises and potions and telling him to return in two weeks. Healer Catherine says, “Very nice. I’m heartened by your improvement, Harry. I can see by your smile that you are, too. How does it feel?”

“Like my lungs aren’t collapsing every time I cast.”

“Good. I can tell you that from my end, it looks like your magical core has mostly disentangled itself from your lungs. Your spells are channeling more naturally than they did even a month ago.”

There is a tension in the air. Harry takes a deep breath and asks the question, “Will I be good to return to active duty?”

She maintains a calm expression, but her eyes soften. He might have called it pity if it were someone else. From her, it is compassion and a deep understanding.

“Harry, two months ago I would have told you it’s impossible. But clearly I haven’t been practicing long enough and still have more to learn. So: I don’t know. It’s not something I’m supposed to admit, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I told you not to try. Your recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. But please understand that you must take care. More powerful spells, more complicated magic, anything that pulls deeply on your core, may trigger your symptoms. Most of your magic has been redirected from your lungs through practice and—I dare say—pure strength of will, but the new channels are fragile. Your core still wants to move through your airways. In an emergency situation, in the field if you must cast quickly…”

Harry braces himself against the weight of disappointment, and gives her a smile, though he knows it falls flat. “I understand. Thank you, Healer.”

Her face softens a fraction more. “Truly, Harry. You should be proud of yourself. You are a remarkable young man. Tell me. How are you, besides?”

“Besides breathing?” Harry jokes, weakly. Healer Catherine cracks a smile with him. “I’m—well.”

She is putting things away. In the act of dropping something into a drawer and closing it, she glances at him questioningly.

“I’m back in the field,” he admits, and at her shift in expression, hastily adds, “For a case that shouldn’t involve any heavy casting.”

He has her full attention once more. He’s hot under the collar and doubting he should have said anything at all. Quickly, he says, “But I was wondering. Have you ever found yourself on the wrong side, when you thought you were on the right side?”

She holds his gaze with blue-grey eyes. It reminds him of Malfoy. “Haven’t we all?”

Not me, Harry thinks. Then he thinks about blood on a bathroom floor. He thinks—

He slumps and nods.

The healer says, “We’re human. We all find ourselves on the wrong side at some point. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s how you respond. That’s the part that matters.”

Harry nods. It makes sense, but doesn’t assuage the discomfort lodged in his chest.

She must notice because she says, “I’m sure whatever it is, you’ll find the right thing to do.” Her lips quirk in a rare cheeky grin. “You’re Harry Potter.”

Later, replaying her words, Harry thinks about Malfoy, about how Malfoy had found himself on the wrong side of the war, about how he responded by becoming this advocate for muggles and muggleborns, this man who donates silently to charities and fights furiously for the rights of muggleborns—about how that is what matters, ultimately.

And thinking about it makes Harry’s chest constrict a little, almost like it does when his magical core pulls on his lungs, and he’s worried for a moment that it’s an attack. But it’s not. It’s just an emotion he can’t name, coming from a source within him he’d forgotten existed.

***

Malfoy’s eyebrows rise when he opens the door to find Harry on his doorstep. Harry stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets and resists scuffing the toe of his trainer against the front step.

“Here to serve another bogus notice?” Malfoy says, though his expression says he’s noticed that Harry is in casual clothes.

“No, I—” Harry musters a scowl. “I’m here on my own account.”

“Ah,” Malfoy says, his eyebrows rising even higher in an expression that sparks Harry’s anger. He’s already nervous about being here and feels like he’s hanging out on a line.

“Can you let me in?”

“I can, indeed. But will I?” His gaze follows Harry’s as Harry throws a look over his shoulder. “What is it that has you so twitchy on my doorstep? Are you afraid of being followed? Or is it that your conscience is catching up to you? Will it round the corner in a moment?”

“Merlin, you’re an insufferable arse.”

Grey eyes gleam, and Harry realizes Malfoy is enjoying this.

Of course he is.

With a frustrated huff, Harry shoulders his way past the prat and into the entryway. Malfoy turns to him with arms folded, but not before closing the door.

“I can make a complaint to the Ministry about excessive use of auror force.”

Harry rakes a hand through his hair. “Look. Can we just. Talk?”

“I was under the impression that’s what we were doing. What, pray tell, were you under the impression this interaction entailed?”

Harry waves a hand toward the sitting room, too fed up for words.

Malfoy sighs. “Why don’t you join me in the parlor, Potter? How nice of you to drop by. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were coming. I would have had tea set for us.” But he’s walking while he talks, and Harry rolls his eyes at his back.

In fact, there is tea set up on the low table near the hearth, along with a bowl of cream, another of strawberries, and a round of shortcake crusted with crushed almonds.

“Yes, in fact,” Malfoy says, taking in the way Harry notices the setup. “I was just sitting down for breakfast.” And then, with another long-suffering sigh, adds, “Would you care to join me?”

“No, that’s—”

But Malfoy is already waving his wand, and a teacup sails from a china cabinet to land on the table near the second chair. Steam rises as the tea pours itself, and the sugar comes to hover next to the pot.

“One lump or two?”

“Er—three.”

Malfoy blinks once, slowly. The sugar plop, plop, plops into the teacup.

“Well? Feel free to stir it.”

“Er—” Harry sits and dutifully stirs the tea. The smell of bergamot rises with the steam.

Malfoy serves the shortcake, strawberries, and cream by hand. When he produces a second plate, Harry wants to tell him not to bother, that it’s all right, he doesn’t mean to intrude on his breakfast, but he can’t get the words out, not with Malfoy arranging the food with efficient movements, eyes trained on the food, the line of his shoulders stiff.

“Er, thanks,” Harry says as he takes the proffered plate. There is not enough room for it on the table with the platter of food and Malfoy’s own plate, so he has to place down the tea in order to balance it on his knees. The strawberries shine ruby red and smell of sugar and sunshine. The shortcake is crumbly, and its scent rounds off the fragrance of the ripe berries with a sweet nuttiness. The fresh cream gleams white in its saucer. Harry doesn’t know how to tell Malfoy that he can’t eat. His stomach is twisted into a knot.

Malfoy sits up once more, his back straight. He lifts teacup and saucer to his mouth. Takes a long sip of tea while staring at Harry.

Harry stares back, clutching the plate on his lap.

Malfoy clicks his cup back into its saucer. “Scintillating,” he says, at length.

“Excuse me?”

“This conversation you came to engage me in. It’s scintillating. Utterly engaging. I can’t believe I’ve been missing out in such intellectual dialogue. We should do this more often, you and I.”

“Malfoy,” Harry says in a warning tone that has an edge of a plea in it. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, Malfoy is watching him. Well, in for a knut. He takes a deep breath. “I was wrong. You were right. The Ministry— What it’s doing is wrong. I talked with Hermione—”

“Ah,” Malfoy says. His expression, which flickered to surprise, turns coolly contemptuous at this. “I should have known Granger was behind this.”

Harry welcomes the spark of anger. “Behind what?”

Malfoy waves a hand at Harry in a dismissive all-of-this gesture. “This. You. When it comes to thinking rather than doing, you’ve always depended on someone else.”

“Circe’s tits, Malfoy. You’re a—”

Malfoy’s eyes light up madly, like he’s waiting for something. Like he’s waiting for Harry to take a shot at him.

Harry’s fingers turn white on the porcelain plate. He has to remember why he came here. He has to remember— There’s something beneath Malfoy’s bluster. Harry can’t quite place it, but he can see the shadow of it lurking beneath the narrowed eyes and razor mouth.

“I knew it the moment you showed me those letters. I just— It was easier to think you hadn’t changed. But you have, haven’t you? The research and the charities—”

“What do you mean, the charities?” Malfoy asks sharply. The challenging edge is gone, replaced by true anger.

Harry lets go of the plate to run both hands through his hair. He doesn’t miss the flicker of Malfoy’s eyes to it and the subtle flick of the hawthorn wand as the plate wobbles on his knees. It stabilizes. The hard grey eyes turn back to Harry.

“I’m sorry. Malfoy. You have to know the Ministry keeps a file on you. You have to know they keep tabs on everything you do, even anonymously.”

“And you just happened to access that file.”

“I’m engaged in an investigation on you!”

“And yet here you are, drinking my tea.”

“You poured it for me!”

“Maybe I want to poison you.”

“Maybe you— Merlin, you’re impossible. I don’t know what I was even thinking, coming here.”

“Clearly, you weren’t,” Malfoy drawls.

Harry stares at him. Then he stands, bending swiftly to place the plate on the chair.

“Harry—wait!”

He pauses halfway to the sitting room door, his muscles vibrating. He turns his head not quite far enough to look over his shoulder.

“Salazar, you’re touchy,” Malfoy hisses, half under his breath.

“I’m touchy?” Harry deadpans.

A sigh from behind him. “Fine. Touché. You’re right. Come sit down. I didn’t poison the tea. (If anything you did, with all that sugar.) I just—find it hard to process the words ‘I’m wrong, you’re right,’ coming from the mouth of Our Savior, Harry Potter. And—I admit I’m more than a little incensed to learn about those records. Those donations were anonymous.”

Harry sits cautiously. This time, Malfoy scoots his own plate toward himself on the table and sets the platter to hovering, making room for Harry to put his plate down.

“You were just going to drop it in another fit of pique,” Malfoy snaps, when Harry’s gaze follows his movements.

Harry holds his breath, lets it go. He says, “You have to know the Ministry would find a way to keep tabs on what you do.”

“Yes. Of course. My entire incriminating history.”

“Not so incriminating anymore,” Harry says, voice softer than he intended. “Right? There’s nothing there. You’ve spent the last ten years donating to charities, backing social causes, and researching.”

“Yes? And what of it?” But Malfoy’s sneer is not convincing. He looks…on the edge of being exposed. Harry’s heart gives a pang.

“Nothing. Nothing should come of it.” At Malfoy’s flat stare, he stumbles. “No. That’s not— This shouldn’t come of it. This investigation. It’s obviously not right. Merlin knows I know what it’s like to be painted Public Enemy Number One by the Ministry.”

Harry’s tone heats with the last words, and at this, Malfoy’s expression finally softens, turns searching.

“Yes…” he says slowly. “You would, wouldn’t you? I enjoyed myself, reading those articles about you in the paper.”

“Of course you did.”

Malfoy’s gaze drops to his plate. He picks up a piece of shortcake. “I liked seeing you knocked down a peg for once.” The grey eyes flick back to him, and he mutters, “Not so much anymore.”

Harry isn’t sure what to do with that. So he just gathers himself for the last fall from pride. “Malfoy. You’re doing incredibly important work. More—more than I’ve ever done, myself.”

Malfoy’s hand jerks, and the bit of shortcake splashes into the cream.

Harry’s mouth twitches into a smile. “So tell me. What should we do?”

Chapter Text

Harry returns to Malfoy’s cottage that afternoon with Hermione. The scene is dizzily familiar. There is tea, this time set on a larger table with enough room for all of them and a tray of little sandwiches, a tureen of mushroom bisque, a bowl of salad. Malfoy is stiffly formal, Hermione’s eyes guarded. But they shake hands politely enough, and Hermione accepts Malfoy’s invitation to sit.

“Your home is beautiful,” Hermione says in a cool tone, hands folded on her lap. Only Harry can see that her fingers are clutched tight.

Malfoy nods his head. “Thank you. Tea?”

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

A bubble of incredulous laughter threatens to well out of Harry. He struggles to hold it in and thinks he does a good job of it, except that Hermione casts him a disapproving glance. He wrestles his mouth into a frown and looks straight ahead at Malfoy as the man pours three cups of tea. Harry doesn’t know what’s wrong with himself, why he suddenly feels hysterical while sitting here with his previous nemesis and his longtime best friend. Probably it’s the civility of the entire affair. The would-you-like-cucumber-or-tuna, the any-salad-for-you?, the but-you-must-try-the-soup. It’s a farce. Hermione continues to shoot him needle-like looks, and Harry ignores her, and Malfoy ignores him.

When they are all served and sipping their tea like good posh fops, Malfoy straightens and says, “So. Granger. What has Potter told you?”

Hermione’s eyelid gives a twitch, perhaps at his supercilious tone, and Harry feels a pang of fear—for Malfoy. The man holds himself very still and there is a look in Hermione’s eyes.

Hermione tells him what Harry said, the whole story as she understands it from Harry, minus the way Harry had sat in her kitchen, at a loss for what to do. Somewhere about halfway through the telling, her mouth loses its determined stiffness and her shoulders relax and Malfoy leans forward in his own seat as he asks questions, his elegant voice going a little breathless. Harry watches the transformation but is still hard-pressed to say what caused it, what the turning point was. All he knows is that suddenly, Malfoy is agreeing to show Hermione his study, and the two of them are putting down their tea and dishes. The sandwiches have barely been touched. The soup congeals in its little bowls. Harry is the only one to have eaten his food, his appetite having returned around the time they started using words like ontology and phenomenological. He watches them, spoon in one hand and sandwich in the other, as they rise and head up the stairs with hardly a backward glance.

He looks at the bowl on his lap, at the remaining soup. Then he shrugs and scrapes it up with his sandwich since no one is here to take him to task. He pours another cup of tea with extra sugar and drinks it with his elbows propped on his knees, bemusedly listening to the creaking floor and muffled voices above and wondering how he’d come to be at this place in his life.

“Harry!” Hermione says when he checks in on them. They were silent for a good few minutes, leading Harry to worry, but with relief he sees they haven’t killed each other, despite the room looking like a storm of magic hit it. Books teeter in even more piles than the last time Harry was here, with notes scattered over and between them.

“Did you know the Ministry has been aware of the magic-repressing effects of this byproduct? They’ve known for years! It’s all here—in public records, no less!”

Malfoy is sitting so far on the edge of his desk chair that he’s in danger of toppling out. He leans forward with a feverish gleam in his eyes.

“Yes! Yes!” he hisses. “You see?”

Harry backs quietly out of the room and eases the door shut.

He wanders around Malfoy’s sitting room for a while, picking up little curios and putting them down again, chatting with the milkmaid in the portrait above the hearth, and eating another sandwich along with Hermione’s cold soup. He drinks another cup of tea. Flips through an antique book of wizarding nursery rhymes, grimaces, and replaces it on the shelf.

At last, he wanders back upstairs. The piles of books and papers have been rearranged. Hermione is on the carpet. Malfoy is wedged on the windowsill. Both are bent over books, and neither seems to notice Harry enter, even when he clears his throat. Harry has the odd sensation that he is under disillusionment. He shakes it off and lowers himself onto a bare patch of floor, his back against a cabinet.

Hermione closes one book and reaches for another. Harry marvels at how completely absorbed she is despite Malfoy being in the same room. It gives him an odd feeling he can’t categorize. Something like wonder, maybe, and a bit like amusement, though the feeling comes with a hard edge that lodges inside his chest.

Evening sunlight bathes Malfoy through the window where he perches on the sill. He’s directly in Harry’s line of sight, and Harry’s gaze falls on him. This is a pose Harry hasn’t seen him in before: back propped against one side of the sill and feet propped against the other, a book open on his knees, absorbed and serious, his sarcastic mouth set in a thoughtful frown. Occasionally, he lifts a long-fingered hand to turn the page. Licks the pad of his index finger. Pulls on his lip and tilts his head so that his white blond hair shines with the luster of fine metal.

The piece de resistance is when he tucks a long, fancy quill behind his ear. That is the moment before Malfoy glances up and Harry realizes he’s been staring and his face goes up in inexplicable flames.

He looks aside, throws a hand out, grabs the first book he touches. Opens it on his lap and pretends to have been perusing the literature the entire time. Malfoy doesn’t say anything, and Harry doesn’t look up again.

A while later, Harry blinks open his sticky eyes with an ache in his neck and a bit of drool at the corner of his mouth.

“That must have been exciting reading,” Malfoy drawls in a voice dry enough to crunch underfoot.

Harry’s eyes focus. He realizes the book on his lap is upside down and has been the entire time. He clears his throat and lifts his gaze. Malfoy stands a few feet away, arms crossed, raising an eyebrow.

“Where’s Hermione?” he asks in a rough voice.

“Oh. You know. So distracted with an armful of books that she left without you.”

“Oh,” Harry says.

Malfoy smiles a crooked smile, and sitting here on the man’s study room floor with an upside-down book and sleep-fuzzed brain, Harry feels his stomach flip over. The sensation catches him by surprise, and it unseats the dull disappointment of Hermione forgetting him. For a moment, he can’t breathe.

“Sorry I fell asleep,” he says at last.

Malfoy snorts. “No bother. You’ve been a very busy man, Auror Potter. Colliding with one’s conscience takes it out of a person.” But the snort, and the words, are without their usual edge. In the shifting shadows of the room, Malfoy’s face is softer.

Harry clears his throat for a second time and pushes himself upright. Closes the book on his lap. Sets it aside. To his surprise, Malfoy offers him a hand. And after a moment—even more to his surprise—Harry takes it.

Malfoy’s hand is warm and dry, the skin smooth, the grip strong. He pulls Harry to his feet in one long movement. Harry can’t remember the last time someone lifted him, that someone has been so able and inclined. There is something in the moment that echoes a memory: one grip in another, pulling, the gleam of frightened eyes in firelight.

Harry holds onto Malfoy’s hand after he is on his feet, regaining his balance.

Malfoy is the one who opens his grip, letting Harry go. Harry brushes his palm against his trouser leg. His face flames. It has to be the blood catching up to his head.

“Well,” he says after an awkward beat. “I guess I should go.”

Malfoy, who’s been standing perfectly still, relaxes with a small huff. “Unless you plan on inviting yourself to breakfast again.”

Basic etiquette, and his total vocabulary, have vacated him. He’s not sure what to say next, though turning and walking through the door without another word would be rude, wouldn’t it?

“Take this with you,” Malfoy says, holding an object up by its strap.

“What is that?”

“Granger’s bag. She left it in her excitement.”

“Oh. Right.” Harry takes the bag. He has the image of Hermione scuttling from the room, weighted down with an armful of books, eyes glazed and unfocused. Inexplicably, that makes him feel a little better about being left. “I’ll just. Leave by floo. If you don’t mind.”

Malfoy holds out an arm as if to say lead the way. They go down the stairs in silence, the hairs on Harry's neck prickling with the weight of Malfoy’s presence behind him.

“So did you get good research done? Will Hermione be able to help you?” Harry asks as he steps from the last stair to the ground floor.

“Yes. She’ll make a good ally.”

“Good.”

The remaining food still sits on the table. The milkmaid in the painting above the hearth watches him with benevolent disinterest as he takes a pinch of floo powder from the urn.

Harry remembers his manners. He says, “Thanks for tea. And supper. And breakfast this morning. And, er—” Not stepping on me while I slept?

“Of course,” Malfoy says.

Harry looks into the eyes of his former enemy, and there’s a strange moment in which he sways forward, just a bit, and Malfoy is leaning forward to meet him. As if they are going to kiss cheeks in parting. And then Harry remembers himself and straightens. So does Malfoy, with an expression like he touched a hot pan.

“G’night,” Harry says quickly. He dashes the powder into the fire, says, “Twelve Grimmauld Place,” and drops into green flames.

***

Friday morning finds Harry in his office going through a stack of records he called up from the archive for Malfoy and Hermione, who sent him in with a list. Most of it baffles him—pages and pages of public documents in technical jargon—but along with the list, Hermione provided him with a facsimile spell. He didn’t quite catch her hurried explanation early that morning as the sun was rising, but it sounded as if she’d be able to examine the copied files using a device somewhat like a pensieve. Harry reckoned it wasn’t precisely legal, but he hadn’t wanted to ask. Besides, these are public records. Harry is simply…expediting the process of retrieving them. By about three weeks.

There is no reason for Harry to start guiltily when someone raps lightly at his door, but he does, slamming closed the book in his hands.

Alex stands in the door, looking vaguely chagrined like he has since their last assignment together—Harry’s last assignment in the field. It wearies Harry, but it’s better than the wary and pitying looks he gets from the others—though the pity has mostly faded into a vague contempt.

“I hear you got put on the Malfoy case,” Alex says.

Harry runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah.” He looks at the files spread over his desk.

Alex follows his gaze and huffs. “Shit. Sorry.”

Harry shrugs. He could say “it’s not your fault,” but he doesn’t. It wouldn’t be a lie, but it wouldn’t be the truth.

Hand gripping the door frame, Alex makes a face. He doesn’t say sorry, at least. He’s done that enough. Sorry. Thank you. How can I repay you.

Just be a good auror. Take care of your family, Harry said last time they had the conversation. Really. Don’t mention it.

So Alex hasn’t mentioned it again, but he still stops by the office when he’s in from the field, and Harry doesn’t mind, strangely enough. He likes Alex. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have jumped in front of a curse for him.

“How’s it going?” Alex asks.

“Nowhere good, real fast.” Harry drops the book he was looking through onto the table with a thump.

“Oh yeah?”

The interest isn’t quite genuine; it’s polite, a little remote. Alex has got something else on his mind, but he’s trying. Harry shrugs again. “Looks like Malfoy’s only crime is forgetting to cite his sources.” At Alex’s puzzled look, he adds, “He’s been doing research—” Something makes Harry censor himself. He ends with, “Hard to get him just on research.”

Alex’s mouth twists into a thoughtful frown. “The wizards who invented avada kedavra were just doing research.”

Harry doesn’t even know where to start with that. But avada kedavra wasn’t designed to save countless people. Avada kedavra was made to kill people; Malfoy’s research is to help people.

But Alex is already pushing away from the door frame, and Harry doesn’t say any of that. “Good luck with that.”

He leaves Harry’s door open. Harry stares through it at the bulletin board with its waving, winking photographs, animated notes, and the little doodle of the panda eating the words from office memos and shitting a line of broken poetry. With a sigh, Harry stands and closes it.

***

Hermione and Malfoy are bent over the coffee table when Harry arrives. This time, books cover the table, not food. Neither Hermione nor Malfoy seems to notice that Harry’s come by floo. In fact, he flooed twice to get there—from the Ministry to his house, then to Malfoy’s—and he’s queasy from the extra jump. He can’t say why he made it, except that he had an itching suspicion between his shoulder blades and didn’t want anyone to overhear his destination.

The war never left him. Not entirely.

Harry takes an empty chair near the table. Malfoy glances at him. Hermione says, “Oh, hi Harry,” in a distant tone. The two of them return to their discourse. Harry, tired and hungry, wonders if he should have bothered coming right over. He has sandwich ingredients at home, and a comfortable sofa.

Just as Harry is wondering if one more floo jump would kill his appetite, Malfoy sits up and says, “I think that’s it for now. Granger, thank you for your help.”

Hermione looks surprised. “Oh. You’re welcome.”

Malfoy clears books and papers from the table. His long fingers are ink-stained.

“What were you talking about?” Harry says.

“Granger here is a political mastermind. Who knew she was so devious?”

To Harry’s fascination, Hermione ducks her head and blushes. She swipes a lock of hair behind her ear and clears her throat. “I was just thinking, this is the sort of issue that’s hurt by publicity. We need this to be as visible as possible, while the Ministry needs this to stay as hidden as possible. That’s the reason they pushed the hearing so soon. Because the longer they take, the more time Draco has to gather his resources.”

“I think Robards is just done with this case,” Harry says. They both look at him, and he adds, “It’s been going on for months. I think someone else in the Ministry is pressuring him.”

Malfoy and Hermione exchange a look that Harry can’t read. Before he can ask what it means, Hermione says, “And actually, the expedited hearing is technically against the law, although you have to know something about the law in the first place to know that, and the entire reason for rushing it is so that Malfoy doesn’t— Well, whether or not it’s intentional, this kind of time frame doesn’t give him much time to prepare legal counsel.”

“My legal counsel is prepared,” Malfoy puts in dryly.

“Right. Well. Not everyone has a personal solicitor. The point is, you should be given time to seek appropriate representation.”

“Are you saying you can postpone the hearing?” Harry asks, feeling like he’s underwater, surrounded by grindylows and trying to see through a storm of bubbles.

Hermione visibly hesitates. She looks at Malfoy.

“Well, that’s not the point here, Harry,” she says. “The point is, if we want a chance at winning this, we have to take it out of the shadows. And here’s where we’re going to start.”

She thrusts a piece of parchment at him. Harry, possibly a little more confused than before, takes it. He’s not sure what he’s looking at, so he stares at it till Malfoy leans over and reaches out a hand. Harry tenses, his breath stills. With one finger, Malfoy curls back a corner of the page.

“What?” Harry says, mouth inexplicably dry.

“Oh, just checking. Wanted to make sure it was right-side up.”

Harry jerks the page away. “Oh fuck off, Malfoy,” he says, half laughing despite himself. He straightens the paper out, dismayed to discover his hands are suddenly moist. Ignores Malfoy’s lazy smirk as the man sits back in his chair and drapes an elbow over the top of it.

“This is an editorial…for the Prophet?” he asks, glancing at Hermione.

“The Quibbler, for now. I’ve already spoken to Luna, and she can get this into tomorrow’s paper. She’s set up for an interview with Draco after that. I’ve contacted the Prophet as well. We’re waiting to hear back from them.”

This is exactly what Robards is trying to avoid: publicity, and for this case to blow up into something bigger. This is the opposite of Harry sweeping the debris under a rug.

He isn’t sure how that makes him feel. Not guilty—not quite. Maybe a twist of tension, but part of that might be excitement. Which is just mad.

He feels the weight of a gaze and looks up to find Malfoy regarding him with half-hooded eyes. Something simmers beneath his relaxed pose.

“This looks good,” Harry says, voice rougher than intended.

Hermione accepts the parchment from him and gives it a critical eye. She marks a change on it with a quill. Then Harry finds himself the recipient of her full intense focus. “Have you got the files I asked for?”

“Er—yes.” His gaze flicks to Malfoy, who is watching with bored half-interest. He doesn’t know why he feels self-conscious to do this in front of him, but he fears Hermione’s basilisk stare more than…well, whatever he fears from Malfoy. So he lifts his wand and spells a thin golden wisp of light from his temple, not unlike a memory. Except he doesn’t direct this one into a pensieve; instead, he points it into the rectangular mirror in Hermione’s hands. Golden light shivers over the surface, and when it’s cleared, words appear.

Hermione flicks a finger over the surface as if she is flipping pages of a real book. Words scroll by. At length, Hermione nods. “Good. This is what we needed. Thanks, Harry.”

“Sure,” he says, trying to ignore the way the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up as Malfoy leans forward again to look at the mirror, an elegant slender form in the corner of his vision. He shakes with a sudden shiver, and grey eyes break from the surface of the mirror to appraise Harry.

Harry makes a show of rubbing his arms. “Cold just sitting here. Shall I make some tea?”

Malfoy’s eyebrows furrow, and he looks at the fire in the fireplace, obviously about ready to comment on the warmth in the room. Then a thought appears to strike him, and he says, “Did you come by floo?”

“Er—yeah.” He pauses and then continues to rub his arms.

Malfoy cants his head and narrows his eyes.

Hermione squeaks. “Oh, goodness me! Ron’s going to kill me. Harry, thanks again for these files. I know I could have got them myself, but this saves me so much time. Draco—” She stops abruptly, as if catching herself, or as if she found herself without a thought of what to say to him.

“Hermione,” Malfoy says in return, inclining his head.

She looks at Harry. “No one saw you access these files, did they?”

“I mean, the archive department knows. Alex was in my office, but he didn’t seem to notice the files on my desk, and it’s not like he’d know what they are, anyway.”

“All right. That’s good. Okay. Well—we shouldn’t have to impose on you like that again.”

“It’s not an imposition.”

Hermione bites her lip.

“What?”

“Well, it’s just— You’re the investigator on this case.”

“So?”

A gentle sound of chimes sparkles in the air. Her alarm. “Oooo!” Hermione groans, eyebrows crinkling in consternation. “Harry, you don’t want to lose your job. Damn! I’ve really got to go.” She darts forward and pecks a kiss on Harry’s cheek. Then she’s scurrying to the floo.

Touching a hand to his cheek where she kissed him, he shouts, “I’m staying involved!”

A flash of green flames. Hand still on his cheek, he looks at Malfoy. “I’m not backing out of this.”

Malfoy is looking at him with an odd expression. His eyes drop briefly to Harry’s hand on his cheek, so fast that maybe Harry imagined it. Then Malfoy’s face folds into the familiar mask of contempt. “You’re as stubborn as you are impulsive, aren’t you?”

“And you’re as unpleasant as you are posh.”

While Malfoy blinks, apparently processing the insult, Harry stands. “I’ll get that tea.”

***

The next day, Harry is rattling around Grimmauld Place, restless and at a loose end. He tries to think of what he usually does on a Saturday. Typically, he’d do dinner at Ron and Hermione’s, though Hermione begged off, and Harry can guess why. He tries not to feel a sting at that. After all, he’s the one who got her involved in Malfoy’s case. He’s glad to have got her involved. It’s the least he can do after opening the whole can of flobberworms with Section III. The fact that he was the one to initiate the FORCE protocol (something he hasn’t told Malfoy or Hermione) continues to prick at him. So it serves him right that his best friend is too busy to spend time with him.

He asked Ron if Ron wanted to go to the pub, but Ron—who had a tiring week—is staying home to collapse on the sofa, and Harry doesn’t blame him.

Harry spends time cleaning his kitchen. Pulls up weeds in his garden. But his thoughts keep straying to Malfoy. He wonders what Malfoy does on a Saturday. He probably does something worthwhile, like reading through stacks of books and government documents and serving himself shortcake and strawberries with tea while he puts it all together. Unlike Harry, who’s done nothing with his life since defeating Voldemort, and even that was kind of by accident.

He thinks about that, sometimes. People who know the truth about what happened in the Forbidden Forest—like Hermione and Ron and Ginny—insist that he was brave for facing his death. He knows the truth. He was simply resigned. There was no other way. He had no choice. Not like Malfoy. Malfoy could turn away from all of this at any time, could live a quiet, pleasant life in his cottage, donating anonymously to charities and allowing the polluted water to be someone else’s problem. But he isn’t. He’s determined and passionate and doggedly stubborn.

Harry dumps his handfuls of weeds into a pile and brushes dirt from his palms. He doesn’t really allow himself to think about what he’s doing, only goes to the kitchen sink to wash the remaining dirt away, wanders into the drawing room, and throws floo powder into the flame, calling out Malfoy’s address.

Harry doesn’t really think Malfoy will be there. If he did, he wouldn’t have called. But Malfoy is sitting in a chair, dressed casually and holding a drink, with a book propped on his knee.

“Potter?”

“Oh. Hey, Malfoy.”

Malfoy sits up gracefully, unfolding himself and putting his feet to the floor. “Is everything all right?”

Harry instantly feels like an idiot, disturbing Malfoy. “No. Everything’s fine. I’m.” Now that he’s here, staring up at Malfoy’s concerned face, he has no idea what to say, no idea why he actually called. But he feels like even more of an idiot because of it, and can hardly tell Malfoy that. He rubs his damp palms against his thighs. “Just a bit quiet around the house, and I thought— But you’re probably busy getting ready for your hearing.”

“Spit it out, Potter. What is it?”

Nothing, he almost says, but now Malfoy is looking at him like he’s an idiot, and so he says, “Mind if I come over? Not—as an auror, or even to talk about the case, unless you want to. Not that I don’t care about it. I just.”

Malfoy’s expression grows more irritable with each word. Harry finds that strangely reassuring. Now Malfoy will tell him to piss off, and Harry can shove his face into a sink-full of cold water.

“Sure, yes, come on then,” Malfoy says, instead, and moments later, Harry stands up in front of the opposite hearth.

Malfoy gives him a once-over and wrinkles his nose. “You’re filthy.”

“Well, I just came through the floo.”

“No, I mean…” And he waves his hands at Harry.

Harry looks down at his soiled shirt and the damp patches on the knees of his jeans. “I was out in the garden.”

“That’s rather domestic of you.”

Harry scowls. It feels good to scowl. “What? And you’re not? I suppose you have a house-elf keep up your home?”

Malfoy blinks owlishly and relaxes back in his chair. “Touchy, Potter. I didn’t say there was anything bad about being domestic. I’m simply…surprised to see it on you. It’s not a bad look for you, really. And have you seen a house-elf here?”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Harry mutters, face warming. “Didn’t know the ones at Hogwarts existed for years.”

“Well, that’s because you grew up in a Muggle household. That’s not meant as an insult, either. I’m simply stating fact.”

Harry wonders, briefly, if that’s why he came over: to start something—an argument, a debate—with Malfoy. He decides he didn’t, shakes the tension out of his shoulders, and says, “Are you going to offer me a drink?”

Malfoy looks at the drink in his own hand and then back at Harry. “Of course. Fancy seeing you, Mr. Potter. Have a seat, Mr. Potter. I’ll just pour you a drink. Brandy to your liking, I hope? With ice, or without?”

Harry grins. “Git. And I’ll take mine neat, thanks ever so.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes and twirls his wand. A snifter of brandy sails to Harry. Harry sits in the chair opposite Malfoy and takes a drink. He tries not to make a face—hard liquor’s never really been his thing, he’s more of a cider man—but must not entirely succeed, because Malfoy smirks over the rim of his glass.

“So why did you come over? Surely not to soil my upholstery.”

“Who would want to soil your upholstery?” Harry mutters, face heating again, though this time it must be the brandy. It’s spreading right over him, from gut to scalp and toes.

“I don’t know,” Malfoy drawls. “Some uncouth oaf in dirty jeans.”

“I’m not uncouth.”

“Who said you were uncouth? I said the oaf is.”

Harry restrains himself from asking, Who’s the oaf?

Malfoy smirks again. It occurs to Harry that Malfoy’s glass is nearly empty.

“The hearing’s on Tuesday,” Harry says.

“Yes…” Malfoy draws out the word.

“And I was just wondering if you’d talked to Hermione today. To plan.”

“Not in person, no. But we’ve been corresponding by owl. I thought you didn’t want to talk about the case?”

“I guess I didn’t.” He shrugs. Something occurs to him, and he frowns. “Why aren’t you with Gnosis University anymore?”

Malfoy stares. “What, Potter? Do you think there’s some nefarious reason behind it? Do you think they sacked me for bad practices?”

“What? No— That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh? You must have a hypothesis. You can’t walk into a clothing shop without profiling the tailor. I’d attribute it to your auror training, but you’ve always been that way, haven’t you? Judging.”

Harry can’t understand why he’s so flushed and flustered, his heart beating too fast. He forces calm into his voice, speaks with deliberation: “I have no idea why you’d no longer be with GU, Malfoy. That’s what I’m asking you. It’s called conversation. I’m not—judging.”

“Hmph,” Malfoy grunts, but relaxes a fraction into his seat.

Harry glares at his brandy glass and reflects that coming here really was an awful idea.

Malfoy breaks the silence. “What are you doing with the aurors still? Since we’re on the topic of jobs. I distinctly recall reading something about your…mysterious retreat from the DMLE. Yet here you are.”

“I didn’t ‘retreat’ from the aurors,” Harry says, scowling. “You’re right. Here I am. Fully present.”

“Hmm. Far too present. You’re like a thorn. Well, I must have read that in the Prophet. We all know they take certain liberties.”

Harry sets his jaw. He’s not sure how to interpret Malfoy’s expression. The corner of his mouth is turned up in a smirk, but his eyes are unreadable.

Then Malfoy says, “I left because of the FOIA requests. The letters kept coming from the Ministry. And it was obvious—” He pauses minutely, his calm wavering for an instant. “—that the university was reluctant to back me up with its legal team.”

By which Harry takes it the university was disinclined to throw its support behind an ex-Death Eater, when it came down to it.

“So I left. My records were only public domain so long as they were produced while I was employed at the university. I don’t need the faculty appointment in order to conduct research, and as a private citizen, I am no longer compelled to share what’s mine with the Ministry and the public at large.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, so he gives the brandy a little shake and takes a drink.

I’m sorry, he almost says. The words are on his tongue. I shouldn’t have delivered that notice.

“Even with your solicitor there, I have a bad feeling about Tuesday.”

“How nice of you to care.”

“Of course I care,” Harry says, voice hotter than he intended. “This whole thing is wrong. The Ministry has been covering this up for months—years, probably.”

“They have,” Malfoy acknowledges.

Harry looks at Malfoy. Really looks at him. He’s lounging in his chair, one leg cocked up, an arm draped over the arm of the chair, nearly-empty glass dangling from his fingers. The firelight catches in the last of the golden liquid and glows. Malfoy’s white-blond hair is a bit mussed, fringe falling over one eyebrow. His heather knit vest darkens his eyes. Above the V-neck collar, the top buttons of his dress shirt are undone. The cuffs are rolled up to his wrist. In their charcoal socks, his toes flex.

One of Malfoy’s eyebrows—the one under the white fringe of hair—rises. Harry swallows dryly, then takes another drink of brandy to wet his mouth.

“You know,” Malfoy says at length. “I almost liked you better when you were screaming ‘dickhead’ at my door.”

Harry grimaces. “I didn’t know you heard that.”

“Mm,” hums Malfoy.

“Sorry,” Harry adds. “It was the glitter.”

“You did look awful funny covered in it.”

“I guess I must have,” Harry concedes, with a small smile despite himself. “But I didn’t think so at the time. Prat.”

Malfoy grins a lazy, vaguely predatory grin and finishes his brandy. Harry, figuring what the hell, tosses back the rest of his.

“Another drink?” Malfoy asks.

Harry shrugs. “Sure. Why not?”

***

The Quibbler article appears in Monday’s edition.

“What is this?” Robards snarls, throwing down the paper.

Harry regards the folded pages on the head auror’s desk. “It looks like a newspaper, sir.”

Robards shoots him a dangerous look and jabs a finger at the middle of the page. “What is this?” His face is a terrible puce color. The tip of his finger is white.

“Pollution in the Ministry” reads the headline. He knew to expect it, but that doesn’t stop a cold sweat from prickling his neck.

In the same calm, dubious tone, Harry says, “It looks like Malfoy’s gone to the press.”

He watches as Robards spins in place, running a hand over his close-cropped head. He feels a little sorry for Robards. A little.

“Tomorrow,” Robards says. “This will be over tomorrow.”

He says it as if he’s talking about a bad dream.

Harry doesn’t say a thing. He waits out Robards’ display of anger, hoping Robards won’t direct any questions to him because he’s not sure what will come out of his mouth. He’s tired and buzzing.

After his impulsive and awkward visit to Malfoy’s on Saturday, Harry fretted the rest of the weekend. First, because Hermione hadn’t met with Malfoy on Saturday, and then because the Quibbler didn’t release the article in its Sunday edition as expected.

Harry visited Malfoy again Sunday evening after learning Hermione still hadn’t visited Malfoy to plan for the hearing. He was incensed, though he shouldn’t have been. He knows it isn’t Hermione’s responsibility to help Malfoy, but Tuesday is fast approaching and there is nothing he can do to help Malfoy himself.

“It’s all right, Potter. Really. There’s nothing more— What is that?”

“Chicken casserole,” Harry said, not looking at Malfoy, marching to the kitchen counter to deposit the dish in its stasis charm. “I forget to eat when I’m under stress, so I thought—” He shrugged. He didn’t add that he tended to cook when he was stressed about other people. Malfoy was probably worried enough on his own without Harry’s helping on top of it.

Feeling a bit the fool, Harry said, “Have you had dinner yet?”

“Uh, no.”

“Here.” And Harry served a large helping of the casserole onto a dish and shoved it toward Malfoy, who took it with both hands and stared down at it helplessly.

“It’s cooked through,” Harry said gruffly, as if this were the source of Malfoy’s hesitation.

“I’m sure it is.” Malfoy’s voice sounded small, as if coming from a distance.

They ate mostly in silence—Harry tense and confused and a little embarrassed at his worry for Malfoy and his impulsive need to provide him food, Malfoy thoughtful and remote, eating his serving in small, measured bites.

“It’s good,” he said a while later, although he hadn’t seemed to enjoy it so much as eat it mechanically for Harry’s sake, which was all right by Harry, really, as long as Malfoy ate it.

Harry stayed for another hour after, drinking more of the paint-thinner Malfoy called brandy, just enough that he got a bit insistent in his worry about the hearing, the lack of a newspaper article, the lack of Hermione.

“Owl correspondence! What is this? Bloody Hogwarts, bloody writing letters to your mother?”

“It’s fine, Potter. Really. We’ve said everything we need to each other through letters. Merlin’s saggy balls. Is this what your friends have had to put up with? I swear you’re a more dangerous friend than enemy.”

It was more or less on this note that Harry left Sunday night, Malfoy nearly frantic as he pushed Harry into the floo. Harry managed only a few hours of restless sleep that night; he was sure he was more worried than Malfoy. But then, his worry was bound up with his guilt and the distressing knowledge that the Ministry—the Ministry he’s worked so hard for, the Ministry that had publicly eviscerated him while he was in school and yet he still stubbornly trusted to do the right thing—is covering up a scandal that put people at risk, that stole their magic, their heritage, their future from them. Malfoy had the moral high ground here, and he was walking to the slaughter with his usual pureblood comportment, head held high and proud, while Harry could only watch.

With a last muttered expletive at his desk, Robards scoops up the newspaper and waves Harry out of his office with it.

Harry only caught a quick glance of the article, but from what he saw, it looks like at least one of the letters the Ministry sent Malfoy was published alongside the article. On his lunch break, he’ll have to surreptitiously pick a copy up from the newsstand outside the Ministry canteen.

As he’s readying to head down to lunch later, though, there’s a commotion in the hallway. Voices raise; someone jogs down the hall. Harry sticks his head out. “Oi! What’s going on?”

Sarah, one of his office mates, says, “Some kind of protest outside.”

“Protest!”

Before Harry can ask for details, Robards storms out. “Arrest them all for breaking the Statute!”

Except they aren’t, really. No one is firing off spells, the protesters all appear in acceptably muggle clothes, and there is nothing inherently Statute-breaking about standing around in a group holding paper signs. So the aurors mill around on the street above the Ministry in their glamoured uniforms alongside the muggle police, including Harry, who stands not far from the red phone booth, meeting the determined stare of witches and wizards and a surprising number of muggles—and trying not to grin.

This couldn’t have gone better if planned. Catching wind of the Ministry’s corruption, dozens of magical folk appeared above the Ministry with perfectly muggle-looking protest signs. By the time Harry arrived with the other aurors, only one sign bore an animated doodle, which someone quickly spelled into stillness before any muggles noticed.

At first, the muggles look vaguely confused at the protest down a seemingly random street. Then—surprisingly and miraculously—they begin to join in as they catch whispers of what is going on, some with hastily-scrawled protest signs.

Stop pharmaceutical pollution, reads one of the signs, and Harry almost smirks.

Keep our waterways clean, says another, and the corner of Harry’s mouth twitches.

Two hours later, most of the muggle police disperse, and so do many of the aurors. Only a handful remain, mostly to ensure the safety of the protesters, magical and muggle alike.

The best part of the hubbub is that it keeps Robards distracted for the rest of the day, so Harry escapes the office without being pulled aside.

Harry floos home and immediately to Malfoy’s. He’s surprised to see Hermione there after her absence over the weekend. She grins fiercely when she sees Harry and throws her arms around him, clutching a copy of the Quibbler in one hand. It slaps him in the face, but Hermione doesn’t seem to notice. She’s too busy saying, “Did you see it? Harry, it was brilliant!”

“The protest?” he laughs, putting his glasses to rights. “I was there, ’Mione.”

“Scowling like the other Ministry gargoyles, no doubt,” Malfoy drawls.

“Sure I was,” Harry says, running a hand through his hair. “Hi there, Malfoy.”

“Potter.”

Malfoy’s eyes on him are warm with a restrained amusement, almost a fondness, and Harry has to swallow and look away.

“Have you read it?” Hermione says, opening the newspaper. “Poesy Potions and the Ministry both declined to comment. The trolls!”

Over Hermione’s head, Harry and Malfoy exchange an amused glance.

In the high energy in Malfoy’s little kitchen, it’s easy to believe that the next day’s hearing is a world away. Malfoy serves drinks—port, this time, which Harry finds much easier to toss back than the brandy—and chocolate bundt cake, which Harry eats despite having not had dinner yet. Soon he is buzzing on alcohol and sugar.

“To cleaning up the polluted Ministry!” Hermione toasts.

“To cleaning up the polluted Ministry!” Harry and Malfoy cry in response, clinking their glasses, and they laugh. Harry’s heart squeezes at the gleam in Malfoy’s eye and also with the little band of guilt and worry still bound around his chest.

“All right, Harry?” Hermione asks him later, shortly before she returns home to Ron, and he to a silent Grimmauld Place.

“Yeah. Just, the hearing tomorrow. This was brilliant, Hermione, it was. But I’m worried it’s too late, and not enough.”

She smiles at him, a little sadly and a little bracingly, and squeezes his forearm. “It’ll be fine. Truly.”

Looking into her earnest brown eyes, Harry can only hope she’s right.

“Potter,” Malfoy says, after Hermione’s gone through the floo and Harry is shrugging on his robes. He holds out the cleaned casserole dish.

“Oh. Thanks.”

Malfoy smiles. It’s a different sort of smile than Harry has seen on his face before. Just for a moment. Then it twists into its more usual smirk, and Malfoy says, “Remember to eat tonight.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Harry takes the dish from him. He goes through the floo, and Malfoy’s words only register as he decides to go down to the kitchen to put it away properly like an adult instead of leave it on top of the fireplace mantel.

Remember to eat, Malfoy said.

I forget to eat when I’m stressed, he’d told Malfoy the night before.

Harry’s face warms and he rubs his jaw, half smothering a smile, and he can’t even say why.

***

All good feelings are gone when Harry wakes the next morning. He rolls out of bed well before his alarm and appears at the Ministry before even the coffee stand has opened for the morning. It’s the only way he can prevent himself from calling on Malfoy’s floo at the crack of dawn. As it is, he barely abstains from sending a note by owl. Just an encouraging little message. You can do this, he wants to write. Harry shakes his head. What is he thinking?

He putters in his office with the door closed, rearranging files until the canteen has opened for breakfast. A depressing amount of paperwork clutters his desk and shelves. Notes from cases closed years ago, old scraps of parchment with shopping lists and to-do items, inter-office memos he never tossed. He sweeps half of it into the bin. The rest he shuffles into file folders, into the tray to go to Records, and into neat piles at the side of his desk.

When he is sure that Robards has gone into his own office for the morning, he slips down the hall and into the lift to the canteen with the help of a notice-me-not charm. He’s getting quite good at skulking around the office, he muses. Of course, when he gets to the canteen (and when he remembers to lift the notice-me-not after failing to capture the attention of the severe-looking attendant), Harry finds that he has no appetite, so he orders the least offensive thing on the menu—a cheese toastie—and takes it back to his office with a cup of strong tea.

The folly of arriving so early is apparent then: the hearing isn’t scheduled till one in the afternoon, so he has the entire morning stretching before him with nothing to do.

What did he do before Malfoy’s case? A lot of paper-pushing, but Robards took him off all of that so he could focus on the investigation. He sits down with the original case file and flips through it again, this time more slowly, with an eye to the missing information. The complete file still hasn’t come up from Records, he notes sourly. But knowing the full story now—or more of the full story, in any case—Harry can begin to fill in the details himself.

It doesn’t take a course in an Advanced Runes to figure out. Poesy Potions is in the pockets of someone at the Ministry. That would explain the CEO’s appearance at the Ministry, the pressure Robards is getting from above, and the intentional withholding of information. Someone thinks that if enough Peruvian instant darkness powder and red tape is thrown over the investigation, no one would care enough to question the affair—not when the suspect is Draco Malfoy. Malfoy’s own university hadn’t wanted to back him up in a legal battle. The DMLE would be expected to flatten him out and flip him over without a second thought.

That really only leaves the question: what do they expect the DMLE to do, exactly? They had to know the surveillance would find nothing on Malfoy. Or maybe they hoped that the tracing charms would turn something up on Malfoy—anything. After all, who expects a former Death Eater to lead a completely innocent life. But even if the charms didn’t unearth something for law enforcement to pin on Malfoy, they had to be angling to give him trouble. Disrupt his life with information requests and auror visits and hearings—all the while heaping his character with suspicion (as if Malfoy doesn’t already struggle with that) to decrease the trustworthiness the public would put in his research.

Harassment, plain and simple, just like Malfoy said on day one.

This is the same state Harry is in several hours later when the inter-office memo slips through the crack in his door and unfolds in the air in front of him with a crackle. “Potter. My office now.”

When Harry arrives, Robards is behind his desk with a newspaper open in his hands. He slaps it down on. “The hearing’s been canceled.”

“What?” Harry squawks.

Robards gives him a piercing look.

“What do you mean, the hearing’s been canceled?” Harry says.

Robards’ mouth presses into an even smaller flat line. His dark eyes continue to scan in little movements over Harry’s face. After an uncomfortable moment, he says, “It means the hearing’s been postponed. Pushed back for two weeks.”

Harry’s head spins. “What? How can they—?”

But Robards is already looking away, searching for something on his desk. “I’ll need a complete report of your interaction with Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry gapes.

“We need everything we can for our legal team to look through. Or shall I have them look at your pensieve memories?”

“What? No,” Harry says, probably a beat too fast.

Again, that piercing look from Robards, and Harry warms under his collar. Robards pushes a file towards Harry. “Your report. On my desk. By the end of the day.”

***

It is half past four when Harry steps through Malfoy’s floo. He’s come straight over as quickly as he could without drawing attention. He had the report done by noon and spent the rest of the day going through more files on Poesy Potions to fill in the time before delivering the report to Robards at half past three, partly to keep himself out of Robards’ sight until shortly before leaving, and partly to keep himself from contacting Malfoy or Hermione in the middle of his work day at the Ministry. He had not, however, been able to abstain from running some reconnaissance and learning that it was Malfoy’s solicitor who had managed to postpone the hearing. Harry hid in his office for the rest of the day mostly so no one would be able to read the relief on his face.

Postponed. Postponed.

“Postponed?” he says, half breathless, coming into the kitchen.

Malfoy and Hermione both sit at the little kitchen table, cups of steaming coffee in front of them among a spread of papers.

“Harry!” Hermione cries, and flies out of her seat to hang from his neck in a hug. “Yes! Postponed.”

She lets go, and he clasps her elbows. “That’s brilliant!” He glances at Malfoy, who watches them with restrained amusement. “Malfoy.”

“Potter.” Malfoy’s tone is slightly mocking, but in a good-natured way.

“But how did you manage it?” he asks.

Hermione grins, her cheeks flushed. “Well, it was actually illegal what they were trying to do to Draco, you know. I knew right away something was wrong. There’s no such thing as an expedited hearing, not in a case with no arrest on record, he hasn’t even got a warrant out on him, just the FORCE form. I should know because I spent a lot of time going through law books after the Ministry’s witch hunt against you.”

Harry’s heart pounds. He is still clasping her arms. The smile on his face slips. “So you’re saying— So you’re saying you knew. That the hearing would be postponed because it’s illegal.”

Hermione’s own grin falls. Something flickers in her eyes.

“You knew,” he says, looking at Malfoy, who regards him coolly. He releases Hermione and runs a hand through his hair. He looks between them. “All weekend. Before that, even. While I—” Worried, he stops himself from saying. Made a fool of myself. “That’s why Hermione didn’t come back to make plans with you. She didn’t have to. You already had this all planned out. And you didn’t say anything.” While I brought food and then stayed up most of the night with guilt.

He’s relieved that the hearing wasn’t held, of course. Relieved that Hermione could help, after all. Of course he’s relieved.

“Harry,” Hermione says, biting her bottom lip. He can’t meet her beseeching gaze. “Harry. We couldn’t tell you now, could we? You’re on an official investigation into Draco!”

And when did you start calling him Draco? he wants to ask.

“So?” he says. “That hasn’t kept me from asking you to help, or sneaking files for you, or spending half my bloody time over here, trying to make things right.”

“I know. I know. But, Harry, please take a moment to think about it. What was Robards’ reaction to the canceled hearing today? You’re not— Well, you’re not very good at pretending to feel something you aren’t.”

“Oh, is that right?” Harry cuts in, and heat spreads over his face. He feels the angry sparking of his magic, and it wraps a tendril around his lungs and gives a squeeze. He can’t speak with the alarm of it, and his teeth grit.

Hermione’s expression firms. “You’re not, Harry James Potter, and we needed you to retain a modicum of plausible deniability. For Draco’s sake, if not yours. The hearing would have been canceled today, and it would have been obvious to anyone looking at you that it wasn’t a surprise.”

Harry forces himself to breathe steadily, firmly. He can’t deny it.

His voice is rough. “So what you’re saying is that I shouldn’t even be here now. Are you going to obliviate me, too? Robards already suggested I submit my pensieve memories of the investigation.” He meets Hermione’s gaze head-on and knows he’s being unfair. Knows from the pained look in Hermione’s eyes that he’s struck a chord by calling up the guilty memory of her parents; they are back to themselves after years of rehabilitation, though they still have memory issues.

“You know I wouldn’t do that,” Hermione says in a tortured whisper.

Harry turns cold eyes to Malfoy. “You, then? I bet you’re dying to have a go at me.”

Malfoy folds his hands on his lap and raises one supercilious eyebrow. “I think you overestimate your importance, Potter.”

The combination of cool expression and calm, lightly contemptuous tone is enough to recall Harry to himself.

“Fine,” he says, turning blindly to the kitchen door, hoping he doesn’t sound as breathless as he feels. “I suppose you both have it handled, then.”

And he strides to the floo with Hermione’s small, “Harry,” at his back.

The truth is, he’s ashamed of his anger and what he said to Hermione. That was a rotten thing to bring up, even upset. Something he’d have expected from himself at age 14, not 32. Underneath it is a seething feeling he recognizes as jealousy, and he’s ashamed of that, too. He doesn’t even know why he feels that way, only that he’s felt more than a bit left out since Malfoy and Hermione hit it off last week. Which doesn’t even make sense; them getting along should be a good thing.

He sweeps out of the floo in his kitchen. As he shakes his robes, his gaze falls upon the casserole dish, which he still hasn’t put away. Really, he’s mortified. Mortified that he showed up at Malfoy’s house uninvited, thrusting food and company at him in some misguided attempt to comfort the git the way he would have wanted to be comforted, the way he had been comforted by his own friends and adopted family. All the while, Malfoy was probably laughing at him.

He sits in a chair and puts his head in his hands. It’s such a stupid thing to worry about, really. A spot of embarrassment, nothing earth-shattering. And really, the most embarrassing thing of all was the scene he made in Malfoy’s kitchen, the way he treated them both, especially Hermione.

Hermione was right, after all. Hermione is always right. Harry wears his heart right there on his sleeve for everyone to see. Robards would have recognized in a moment that Harry wasn’t surprised by the news about the hearing.

Harry feels like a real prick, but he can’t go back right now. Maybe if it were just Hermione, but he can’t apologize in front of Malfoy. Maybe it’s childish of him, but he can’t. He’ll wait till later, when Hermione is sure to be home, and he’ll visit her there when they’ve both had time to calm down. It’s been a while since he’s seen Ron, anyway. Harry isn’t even sure how much Hermione has told Ron about this case or her involvement. She must have told him something; she’s been spending so much time at Malfoy’s recently, she has to have. With a pang, he realizes where Hermione must have been over the weekend: with her family. Of course.

Harry puts the casserole dish away. Then he makes a pot of tea to have something to do with his hands and takes it into the drawing room to curl up on the sofa.

***

“It’s fine, Harry.”

Hermione looks harried and distracted through the green flames.

“But it’s not really,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that about obliviation. That was really shitty of me.”

She lets out a little laugh. It isn’t an amused sound. “No. You shouldn’t have. But you were upset, and I know you didn’t mean it like that.”

“I didn’t.”

She allows a small smile. A loud sound suspiciously like a crash comes from somewhere in the background. She tosses a look in the direction of it. “ROSE,” she bellows. To Harry: “I have to go. You’re fine. I’m fine. We’re fine. If you’re going to apologize to anyone, apologize to Draco Malfoy. You said some not very nice things to him, as well, you know.”

“I know. Hermione—”

“I’ve got to go, Harry. ROSE.”

And with that, the flames flash back to orange. Harry leans his shoulder against the fireplace wall, probably too close to the fire, but he can’t bring himself to move away.

After a time, he throws a pinch of powder into the floo and calls out another address.

The sitting room is empty, and Harry feels like he’s spying as he peers around for signs of life. The lamps are off. The fire casts green light over the empty chairs and table—cleared of all books and food, as if they weren’t all just sitting around it that afternoon.

Harry’s stomach sinks, and he is just retreating from the floo when a blond head appears over the top of the sofa. Malfoy cranes his neck. “Potter?”

There’s no way to gracefully retreat now. Harry settles back fully in the fireplace. “Hey, Malfoy.”

“No need to sound like your kneazle died.”

“I haven’t got a kneazle.”

“I think my point is made, then. Have you another reason for skulking in my fire?”

Malfoy looks unfairly good as he kneels in front of the hearth and rests his long-fingered hands, with their bony knuckles and manicured nails, on his thighs. He is still fully dressed, as if it isn’t evening and he isn’t home. He’s in dress robes, pressed and neat and buttoned up to the collar, and he has been since early that evening, as if he’d got dressed for the hearing-that-wasn’t. Despite the mocking tone of his voice, the set of his mouth is grim. The green glow of the floo brings out planes in his face Harry didn’t notice before, paints them in shadow and then smooths them out again with flickering light.

“Hermione told me I ought to apologize. So I called to apologize.” He says the bit about Hermione on purpose, because it’s easier if he blames it on her. And also, he’d rather be mocked for taking directions from Hermione again than for admitting he simply wanted to see Malfoy.

The haughty chin lifts. Shadows shift over his face. Grey eyes darken with cool contempt. “Of course she did. Well, no apology necessary, I assure you, Potter. If that’s all, then.” He stands in a slow, graceful sweep, and Harry stares up at him even more helplessly than before.

“Malfoy—” He twists to follow Malfoy’s movement and smacks his head against the fireplace. “Shit.” A chunk of rock bounces off his shoulder. “Wait. That’s not. That’s not what I meant.”

Somehow the eyebrow raising is even more condescending when presented from six feet above.

“I shouldn’t have stormed off like that earlier. Can I come through?”

Malfoy lets out a breath and flaps his hand in a gesture that could mean, Fine, whatever, come through or Forget it, you useless prick. Harry decides to climb through in either case.

Hands on hips, Malfoy says, “Don’t expect tea.”

“I won’t.” Harry glances up from knocking soot from his shoulder.

“Or brandy. Or port.”

“All right.”

Without another word, Malfoy turns on his heel and marches from the room. Bemused, Harry trails after him and into the kitchen which, unlike the sitting room, is well-lit and in use. Trays of baking line the counters. There must be a charm in place to keep the smells from permeating the rest of the cottage because Harry is hit full force with them as soon as he walks through the threshold. Pastry dough and sugar and savory meats and the tang of cherries.

“Merlin. Malfoy.”

Malfoy stops in the middle of the kitchen. With his back to Harry, he says, “And apparently I bake when I’m stressed. I blame it on you.”

Harry raises a knuckle to his mouth only to keep himself from laughing. When he’s confident he can talk without snickering, he says, “This is… All right, I’m not going to lie. This is completely mad.” The laugh bubbles out of Harry now, and he’s helpless to stop it. He quiets at the tensing of Malfoy’s already-rigid shoulders.

“Did you really bake all of this on your own?” He steps beside Malfoy and quiets his voice. Malfoy meets his gaze with guarded eyes. He gives a short nod.

“Well, it smells bloody divine. And it looks— Well, it looks good enough to eat.” He rubs a hand over the back of his head.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “As always, so poetic and succinct.”

“So… No tea and no brandy. But…pastries? Or do these not exist for twats who throw around insults and stomp off through the floo?”

Another eye roll, but Malfoy is already moving toward the far counter. “What are you talking about, Potter? That vivid imagination must be running off with you again. Pastries. As if I’d keep something so—so—plebeian in my kitchen.”

He turns with a plate arranged with a meat turnover, a cherry tartlet, and an almond horn.

Harry snorts and accepts the plate. “Plebeian? So the French are plebeian now?”

A small twist at the corner of Malfoy’s sardonic mouth. He murmurs, “Anything that isn’t foie gras and truffles is plebeian, Potter.”

Harry wrinkles his nose. “Here’s to simple tastes.”

“To simple tastes,” Malfoy says, with a nod of his head and a lift of his eyebrow.

Harry looks around. “Are you sure it’s all right that I’m here? I didn’t mean…”

“…To interrupt this dinner party I was having with myself?” Malfoy spreads his arms.

“Er. Something like that.”

“Sit down. I might actually have some tea. I must have forgotten where I put it in all this mess.” He goes straight to the side cabinet, where the tea is always kept, and measures some out, and heats water in the teapot. He brings it and his own plate to the kitchen table, and Harry doesn’t say anything as Malfoy pours two cups of steaming Earl Grey—the fragrant one with the little blue and yellow flowers in it—and adds milk and sweetener to Harry’s, even as he wrinkles his nose delicately at the atrocity while he’s engaged in the act.

Looking into the rising steam from his own cup, Malfoy says, “It’s fortuitous you called. I was considering having you over but didn’t know how you’d receive an invitation.”

Malfoy speaks in a haughty tone, but his voice is little more than a murmur, and his hands cradle his cup of tea as if he can contain all the warmth there.

“And pass up free food?” Harry teases, his voice shockingly quiet, shockingly fond. He injects more good-natured scorn into it. “You’ve lost the plot, Malfoy.”

Casting a wry eye over the mess of trays crowding the counters, Malfoy says, “Clearly.”

Something comes back to Harry, a small detail he overlooked at the time. “You were stressed?”

Malfoy’s lips purse. “Stressed? Who said anything about stressed?”

“You said—”

“Yes, yes. I said. No need to relive the moment. And I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. I wasn’t stressed. Slightly concerned, if anything.”

“Slightly concerned…so you baked enough pastry to feed a small army. This is really good, by the way. So what were you…slightly concerned about?”

Malfoy snorts and looks aside, giving Harry a perfect view of high cheekbone, narrow chin, and straight nose in profile. “Well, I had Hermione’s assurance the hearing would be canceled, didn’t I? But I couldn’t be sure until the official news of it. Which happened this morning, as it was.”

“Oh.”

“She’s brilliant, your Hermione. Like a bull dog. Much better to have at my back than laying me flat on it.” He rubs a hand over his jaw, lightly, where once upon a time, Hermione exercised her knuckles against his face.

Harry snorts into his food. “That she is.”

Malfoy’s gaze drops. “She really has been very kind to me. More than I deserve for…for everything I did. I realize it’s for the cause and not necessarily for me, but I still admire her ability to put our past behind her.”

Harry’s lungs squeeze a little at Malfoy’s sincerity, and this time, it has nothing to do with a surge of wild magic. He clears his throat. “Yeah, she’s something special, Hermione.”

Malfoy gives a smile part wan, part self-deprecating. “That she is.” He clears his own throat and raises his voice. “To Hermione Granger.”

“To Hermione,” Harry echoes, with a laugh. They clink their teacups.

They take a plate of shortbread biscuits to the sitting room. Malfoy stokes the fire and serves the biscuits with little cups of coffee. When that’s done, he produces a small tray of cheese and apricots and serves that with the port-which-ostensibly-would-not-be-offered.

Harry wonders if this is what Malfoy felt like when Harry brought over the casserole, because he can’t turn down any of the food even though his stomach is twisting with nerves and he’s almost up to his eyeballs in coffee and liquor. And Malfoy prattles on the entire time about the particular bakery in Paris his mother took him to as a child, and the provenance of the port, and how to pair it with foods.

Harry listens and nods, bemused, and Malfoy occasionally throws him a wry look, like he knows Harry is only humoring him, but he keeps up the stream of conversation anyway. The truth is, Harry likes the sound of him talking. When he isn’t sharpening his voice to cut glass, or twisting it to throw petty insults, it’s quite pleasant. Deep with maturity and almost lyrical.

His words, however, pull Harry out of his reverie. “Whatever happened with you and the girl Weasley?”

“What?”

“Ginevra was her name? You two were an item for a while. I kept thinking I’d hear about little Potterlings—or Potter-Weaselettes—in the paper. (I never did think Ginevra would go for one to forego her surname completely.) So what happened? Because there’s been a dearth of messy auburn hair in the papers.”

Harry was wrong. That voice isn’t pleasant. It’s honeyed poison, and he’s just noticed the warning bitter bite of it. He wishes he had a better response for the question, but he’s bad at lying in a good moment, and in this one, he’s full of caffeine and alcohol. “Things didn’t work out, and I never met anyone else I’m interested in.” Then, swinging his gaze back to Malfoy’s, he says, “And what about you? No white-haired Malfoy snakelings slithering about, I notice.”

The corners of Malfoy’s mouth turn down. In his dangling fingers, the port glass—which he’d been idly swirling—goes still. Harry knows half a minute of confused feelings—his instant anger mixed with a just-as-sudden influx of regret and a heart-pounding emotion akin to fear. Then Malfoy says, “I was courting Astoria Greengrass. She was in the year below ours in school. Daphne’s younger sister. But I stopped when I realized it wouldn’t do for me—that no witch would.”

Malfoy speaks carefully but evenly and with calm eye contact. Flat and unblinking, almost serene.

“Oh,” Harry says, feeling as if someone cast simultaneous chilling and warming charms on him. Then, as if an imperius had been thrown in for good measure, his mouth opens and he says, “Haven’t met the right wizard, then?”

He freezes, hearing the echo of his words with horror. He’s instantly aware of where his wand is located—wedged in the seat, under his thigh—and the tensing of his muscles as they ready to dodge. Because his hazed and spinning mind expects Malfoy to explode in anger.

Instead, those unwavering eyes blink, and then one shoulder lifts in a shrug. “I don’t know. Volunteering for the job, Potter?”

Harry knows he should have some other reaction—anger or even embarrassment—but instead he snorts. “You wish.”

The words—pulled out of a deep, electric memory—shiver through his system.

Malfoy lifts his glass in a dangling grip to his mouth. He smirks over the rim. “I’ll take that as a maybe.”

Harry laughs helplessly even as a flock of doxies takes wild flight in his gut, and—shockingly—arousal warms his groin.

“Find that funny, do you,” Malfoy murmurs.

“Not really, no,” Harry says, even as he wipes tears from his eyes, because actually he’s terrified and alarmed and turned on. Through blurred vision, he can see that Malfoy watches him with a small smile. Harry half wishes Malfoy reacted in anger. He’d have known what to do with that. As it is, he takes extra time to clear the tears from his face, removing his glasses and making a show of it.

“Want to play exploding snap?”

“What?” Harry places the glasses back on his face to find that Malfoy’s expression is serious—or at least, the challenging gleam in his eye is.

“Exploding snap, Potter. Surely you haven’t forgotten how to play?”

“No. Of course not,” Harry says, gaping as Malfoy stands.

“Come on, then. I hardly want to play on the table.” Malfoy settles on the rug next to the hearth, looks up with a smirk and murmurs, “Or are you scared?”

Harry grins. This time he doesn’t say the words out loud. You wish. But he doesn’t have to. The echo of them is there between them, and this time, Harry knows that Malfoy hears it, too.

Wary, cautious, Harry settles cross-legged on the rug. The fire is warm against Harry’s side, the air near the hearth tangy with smoke. Malfoy calls a deck to his hand. To Harry’s slight surprise, the cards are bent, well-worn, and a bit singed.

“Classical rules,” Malfoy says, tapping his wand to the deck. The cards shuffle themselves with a buzz.

“All right.”

“Stakes?”

“What?”

“Stakes, Potter. What did you Gryffindors play for?”

“Fun?”

Malfoy stares. Here on the floor, leaning forward, a chunk of his fringe has fallen over an eye. “You just shattered about five of my childhood fantasies.”

Harry laughs. “What, Malfoy, were you imagining games of…of strip snap in the Gryffindor common room? Frequent fantasy of yours, was it?”

Malfoy pushes the fringe from his eye with a slender hand. His cheeks are pink. Harry can’t tell if it’s the light of the fire or tipsiness or perhaps that Malfoy is blushing. “More like I expected…more rowdiness from your lot. All right. Truth, then.”

“Truth.” Harry says it flatly.

“Look alive. Loser spills his guts. Thank Salazar you’re not in the Slytherin common room. Loser took a dose.” Malfoy mimes tipping back a vial.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Where did you get your hands on veritaserum?”

“Win and maybe I’ll tell you.” He flashes a toothy grin.

“Oh, you’re on.”

Harry fumbles his first few rounds. It’s been a long time since he’s played, and he’s loose-limbed from the port. He’s never been good at holding down his drink. They play wandlessly, using their hands to tap the cards, and more than once, their hands brush, or Harry’s comes down on top of Malfoy’s. Unlike him, Malfoy moves fast, hand darting like the head of a snake. Harry is half-mesmerized by the speed and grace of him. Five quick rounds in and his heart is speeding up, his muscles tightening. Malfoy’s fringe has fallen in front of his eyes again, but it doesn’t seem to distract him. It does distract Harry, though. It catches the firelight and shines metallically. The combined effect is that Malfoy’s points rack up and Harry has nearly nothing.

The fourth time their hands tangle on the cards, Harry suspects it isn’t an accident at all. Malfoy has a little smirk at the corner of his mouth. His fingers are too sure in their movement. Soft fingertips drag over the back of Harry’s hand. It’s a ploy to break his attention, and it works.

In the end, Malfoy wins by a landslide. He twirls his hand, and the burnt remains of the cards gather and reassemble into a whole deck.

Harry’s heart pounds. It’s the combination of port and adrenaline. Malfoy regards him with the look of a cat that’s got the mouse by the tail.

“Well, then?” Harry says, brazening it out. “What’s your question?”

“Hmmmm.” Malfoy makes a big show of thinking about it, and Harry feels faint and but also thrilled because he knows, he knows what Malfoy is going to ask, or at least he thinks he does, and the idea of answering truthfully makes him want to puke; the idea of answering untruthfully makes him want to puke. “So, so many things to know. So many questions I had in school. Like just how exactly you always seemed to know where to find me, and how you got around the castle the way you did. But that’s really old news now. There’s all that juicy speculation in the Prophet. A new theory every week. Think of what I could do with the real scoop? Not that I would sell it. No. That would just cheapen it, wouldn’t it? A secret that everyone knows isn’t a secret anymore. It’s worth nothing.”

Harry’s fingers grip the soft carpet.

“Do your worst,” he murmurs.

A lazy smile spreads on Malfoy’s face. “Oh, tempting.” But then the smile subsides, and he says, “But what I really want to know is, why did you come back that second day? To deliver the summons, I know. But why did you really come?”

“That’s it? That’s what you want to know?”

“I can come up with several alternatives.”

“I feel like you must be up to something, Malfoy.”

“Potter. You always think I’m up to something.”

Well. True enough.

Harry considers and immediately dismisses lying, a bit like the time he went fishing with Arthur and he finally caught a fish, just a little one, and he reeled it in and regarded it flopping in his hand for a moment—only briefly, remotely considering the possibility of keeping it before he tossed it back. Because really, there was never the chance that he would have kept the small fish; he only entertained the idea as a thought experiment, and only for a moment.

He does something similar with the idea of lying: he looks at it and lets it go.

He searches in himself for the truth to give to Malfoy. Malfoy looking so fierce. His house feeling like home. And when he realizes it, it hits him with the force of a bludger.

His courage dries up, and he stares, frozen, at Malfoy. He can barely breathe. Malfoy stares back, and Harry realizes how close they are. He can just hear Malfoy’s quiet breathing over the crackle of the fire.

He opens his mouth, but he can’t say the words. He knows his face is turning terribly red, and even in the flickering light of the fire, it must be obvious.

He has the overwhelming impulse to bridge the gap between them and…Merlin. Kiss Malfoy? Touch his face? Push him backward onto the rug? And he’s terrified again.

Malfoy must sense something of what Harry feels, which would be why he asked in the first place. He watches Harry with anticipation like hunger, and Harry is afraid Malfoy will press him for the answer. Afraid of what will come out of his mouth and what it might mean to this fragile…whatever-it-is springing up between them. The thing like friendship. And, alarmingly, this frightens Harry more than the thought of Malfoy mocking him: the thought of doing something to squash their tender new truce.

For a moment, Harry thinks Malfoy will demand a response. Then something in the other man flickers, and his gaze veers to the side. “Two in the morning! Well, that’s it.” And like that, he scoops up the cards and returns them to their box, then he’s standing. He holds a hand out to Harry. “Come on, then.”

Harry grasps Malfoy’s hand, which is smooth and warm and just a little damp. With Malfoy pulling, Harry stands too fast, and his head spins.

“I’ll be fine,” Harry gasps, while Malfoy tsks and steadies him.

To Harry’s embarrassment, Malfoy continues to hold him, strong fingers gripping his shoulders. He’s giving Harry a long, piercing look. Harry flushes hard. The alcohol. It’s the alcohol.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice rough.

“Right. So if I just do this…” Malfoy slowly lifts his hands from Harry’s shoulders.

Harry immediately begins to list.

“That’s it. I’m not sending you through the floo like this. You’d just pitch onto your head on the other side. You’d fall down your own stairs. For Merlin’s sake, you’d go into your kitchen for a cup of tea and set the whole place on fire. Who knows.”

While Malfoy talks, he’s pulling Harry along with him. I wasn’t going to fall over, he wants to correct Malfoy, but that would require explaining that he’d been listing toward Malfoy’s touch as Malfoy moved his hands away. Even well-marinated, he knows saying that would be a bad idea.

You could take me through the floo and tuck me into my bed, he could have also said, but his speech centers shut down at the thought. Instead, he lets Malfoy direct him up his stairs and into a neat room furnished in beechwood and white linens. A guest room, he supposes.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tarnish your sparkling image of Gryffindor morality,” Malfoy says, and Harry can’t tell if he’s being serious or sarcastic. “Bathroom is this door.” He jabs a finger at a closed door a few feet away. “That’s the only other door you are allowed through. And I mean that literally. There’s a locking charm on your own, if you can think to activate it. It’s your own problem if you can’t manage it. If you need anything else, shout.” Malfoy gives an owlish blink. “It’ll be in vain, but I’d be entertained.”

Then he gives Harry a little push into the room, and then he must follow it with a lightening charm, because Harry half drifts toward the bed and tumbles into it gently.

The door, he notices distantly, clicks shuts.

Still spinning, and warm and comfortable and more than a little confused, Harry rolls over and drifts off.

Chapter Text

The wards tremble.

Harry is on his feet before the first shockwave has passed, wand in hand. But he is not in his own room. Not, in fact, in his own house.

Malfoy.

Harry pelts out of the room. Malfoy exits the neighboring room at the same moment, wild-eyed and sleep-tousled in a dressing gown he hasn’t yet tied. Harry catches a glimpse of pale chest and black pants beneath.

“What?” Harry says, eloquently.

“Aurors,” Malfoy says and pounds down the stairs.

Harry flies after him. Reaching the landing, he swears he hears Malfoy mutter something about “indecent hour” and “tea” and almost laughs, once, hysterically.

It’s not funny. Someone is attacking the wards with blasts of magic and absolutely no finesse—not unlike what Harry would do himself, in fact. In the past, he’s been accused of having “a lot of power and no control.” For the first time, he can appreciate what they mean.

There’s an answering call of magic in Harry. It recognizes threat and wards, and Harry doesn’t pause to consider what threat and to whose wards. His magic gathers in his core, and he grabs it and throws it outward with a wordless thrust of his wand.

Reinforced, the wards immediately go still, which doesn’t explain why Harry’s world is shaking and he is on his knees.

“Potter? Potter!”

Malfoy crouches next to him, and Harry meets his eyes. He wants to ask—something. But his mouth falls open and nothing comes out.

Nothing. He can’t breathe.

“Circe’s tits! Potter!” Malfoy shakes his shoulder. His eyes are wide with a panic Harry hasn’t seen since sixth year, the moment sectumsempra struck.

Of course he’s panicked, a calm, distant part of Harry thinks. The aurors are at his door and Harry Potter is asphyxiating on the floor of his entrance hall.

Harry blinks at him. He places both hands on the floor and hangs his head.

The tight thread of magic is there, inside of him. It’s bound around his lungs, drawn taut by its connection with Malfoy’s wards. If he had time, Harry would separate the magic carefully from himself so that it continued to support the wards. As it is, he snaps the connection like a string, and the wards go slack.

The floorboards tremble.

“I’m fine,” Harry gasps.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m fine. Malfoy. I’m fine.” Harry grips Malfoy’s arm, the one still clutched to Harry’s own shoulder. “Merlin. Fuck.”

“Potter. What was that?”

But Harry shakes his head. “Later.”

Malfoy narrows his eyes, but Harry ignores him and pushes to his feet.

Next to him, Malfoy scrambles to his own feet and puts both arms out to steady Harry. “You stubborn—”

“What?” Harry grins at Malfoy, panting. “Stubborn what?”

“Salazar, you’re a twat!” Malfoy rolls his eyes so hard his entire head joins the movement, and he steps back. Harry stands on his own, though he notices Malfoy hovering as if ready to step close with a supportive arm.

“I’m fine. Really.”

“I’m sure you are,” Malfoy says sourly.

Despite his racing heart and lingering panic, Harry smiles. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Malfoy cared or something.

“You’re impossible,” Malfoy says. Then, muttering at the door: “All right. Merlin. Stop shaking the bloody foundations.”

Harry hangs back while Malfoy goes to the door, leaning on the stair banister.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Malfoy says.

Harry can’t quite see the aurors from where he’s standing, but he can hear them just fine. “What’s the meaning of this?” says a gruff voice. Hills, then. That meant—

“Bloody fuck, what the fuck?” His partner, Bate.

Malfoy sounds lazily unconcerned. “I’m sorry. My wards must have gone off. Let me just clean that off for you.”

“Don’t!”

Malfoy lowers his wand arm. “Sorry, gentlemen. What can I do for you, then?”

Where he’s standing, Harry has raised a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh. Apparently Hills and Bate expected to show up early in the morning and catch Malfoy off guard. They hadn’t anticipated Malfoy’s joke wards. Harry feels slight sympathy for them. After all, he’d been in their place not long ago.

The sympathy and amusement quickly dry up, however.

“We’ve a search warrant.”

“I see,” Malfoy says, tone perfectly polite. “For what, pray tell? If you’re looking for etiquette, you’ll find plenty of that here.”

Hills mutters something. It sounds as if he recognizes the insult but can’t quite identify it.

“Dark artifacts,” Bate says, and though Harry can’t see the man’s face, the sneer is there in his voice.

“Dark artifacts! Oh my. Do you think someone’s planted them in my cottage? Please, come in. Thank you for getting here as soon as you could to respond to the incident.”

Harry is mesmerized by Malfoy’s perfectly polite tone. Malfoy is mocking the aurors, of course, but there is nothing but sincerity in his voice. He presents a completely different picture from the angry, mulish man Harry met at the door several days ago, and Harry is caught between bemusement at that and rage at his colleagues.

Too late, he realizes his prominent position in the entry hall. The door swings open and the two familiar faces appear over Malfoy’s shoulder.

Hills sees him first and stops dead in the threshold. The grizzled old auror goes still, not a flicker of expression on his face.

Bate comes to an abrupt, scowling stop behind him and follows Hills’ gaze. “Potter!”

If the situation weren’t so serious, the fact that they are covered in glitter would be comical.

“Ah, yes,” Malfoy says. “I believe you must already be acquaintances. Auror Potter, this is…”

“Hills. Bate,” Harry says evenly in greeting.

Hills steps inside. “Auror Potter. I see you beat us here.” His voice is even, but he’s never called Harry Auror Potter before, always Potter, and his words are loaded.

Bate is staring at Harry with wide, enraged eyes and flared nostrils. Harry never liked the man to begin with. He has a feeling the sentiment is mutual. The dark eyes flick over Harry, quickly categorizing the soft trackies and worn t-shirt, the bare feet.

Malfoy stands there calmly with the door open, regarding their tableau. “Is this what you were searching for?” he asks, raising a negligent hand. “I say, it’s a bit gauche to be calling Auror Potter a dark artifact.”

“Shut up, Mr. Malfoy,” Harry says in a low voice.

Malfoy’s face turns to Harry. He blinks once, slowly.

Hills, the canny old man, gives Harry an assessing look from under hooded lids. Bate looks like he’s brewing up an explosion. Just when it seems like he’s about to go off, Hills says, “Putting in overtime. None of my business,” and glances at Malfoy. “We’ll start our search in the pantry, if you have one?”

“Smart thinking,” Malfoy murmurs. “That’s just where I would put them.” He’s stepping forward and motioning with his hands as he speaks. Hills nods his thanks and begins to walk in the direction indicated.

Bate looks around incredulously, as if he can’t believe his partner is just going to ignore the fact that Harry is standing against the banister in his bare feet. Then, realizing his partner is already disappearing down the hall with Malfoy, he follows after them with one last glare at Harry.

When they’re out of sight, Harry sags against the railing. His mind veers off on two parallel tracks: one, that someone must have called in a report on Malfoy. And the other, that he is completely screwed.

He is still standing there when the three of them return a quarter of an hour later. By then, he’s had time to process his own shock at the situation, so he’s aware enough that he can recognize the pinch of anxiety around Malfoy’s mouth when Hills announces his intention to search the rest of the ground floor.

“I’ll escort you,” Harry says.

Hills gives him a sharp look. Bate glares. And Harry can’t read Malfoy’s expression, but when Hills turns his gaze to Malfoy and says, “Do you authorize Auror Potter to supervise this search in your stead?” he nods.

Harry stands by with his arms crossed at his chest as the two aurors thoroughly sweep the entrance hall, kitchen, and sitting room: casting detection charms, levitating little ceramics into the air, shifting every cross-stitched still life to look behind them, directing a see-through-me charm at the gramaphone, pausing to sift through the stacks of letters from the Ministry, searching through jars of sugar and flour and tea. Systematically dismantling every corner of Malfoy’s quiet cottage.

Of course, they find no dark artifacts.

Malfoy himself sits on the little wooden bench in the entrance hall, back straight and pale hands on his knees. By the time Hills and Bate emerge from the kitchen, he’s transfigured his dressing gown into slate-grey robes and combed his hair into a semblance of neatness. His feet are still in their charcoal socks.

Hills glances at him. “We have your permission to search upstairs?”

Malfoy waves his hand in a gesture that says, Be my guest. And then, because Hills continues to look at him, he says, “Yes.”

Hills gives a smart nod, and Harry follows him up the stairs. Bate trails behind, still scowling. With no one to see him, Harry rolls his eyes.

They search Malfoy’s bedroom and then the guest room whose white sheets are still rumpled from Harry leaping out of them. It may be his imagination, but he thinks Hills pauses for a moment at the sight. But it could be that Harry is just worried and oversensitive.

“What’s all this?” Bate asks of the piles of books and papers in the study.

“Mr. Malfoy’s research into Poesy Potions.”

Hills turns his full attention to Harry.

Harry says, “He’s a researcher. He’s been looking into the effects of the byproducts they dump into the water supply. Seems they might turn magical babies into squibs.”

“You don’t say,” Hills mutters.

Bate, leaning against the door jamb behind Harry, says, “And what exactly is your relationship with Mr. Malfoy, Auror Potter? I was briefed that you were the primary investigator in his case.”

“I am,” Harry says. I was, his brain supplies.

Hills wanders to Malfoy’s desk and scans over the documents. Bate, realizing he won’t get a rise out of Harry and is expected to be engaged in his own investigation, pushes off from the doorway and throws brusque charms around the study, rattling books and sending parchments spinning about in a flurry. Malfoy won’t be pleased with that. But Harry isn’t watching Bate. He’s watching Hills go through Malfoy’s manuscript, taking in the grim press of the older man’s lips and the quick sweep of his gaze over each page.

Eventually, Hills places the manuscript down. He stomps around the floor for a few more minutes—checking the bathroom and the linen closet—then returns downstairs with a mutinous Bate in tow.

“Nothing here,” he mutters. “Mr. Malfoy, thank you for your time.”

Malfoy inclines his head. “Aurors.”

“What? We’re leaving? We didn’t find anything!”

Hills turns steady eyes onto Bate. “Would seem so. Potter.” He gives Harry a slow nod. Harry can’t be sure, but he reads a somber respect in the gaze, and maybe something else. An acknowledgment, an unspoken “be careful.”

The front door snicks shut behind them.

Harry turns to Malfoy. “You might want to re-erect your wards.”

With a calm nod, Malfoy stands and raises his wand. The magic of the wards lifts around them. But Harry doesn’t miss the way Malfoy’s hand shakes.

“I’m going to make tea,” Harry says.

***

By the time the water is hot and the tea is brewing, Malfoy’s regained his composure and his prickles.

“What happened back there, Potter?”

“I’d say you’re being harassed by the Ministry.”

“Not that. That was self evident. No. Your stunt in the hall before. If your intent was giving me a cardiac arrest, job well done.”

“Malfoy. I didn’t know you cared.” Harry pours two cups. Then, at Malfoy’s glare, he sighs and lowers the teapot. He hands one of the cups to Malfoy. “I felt your wards under attack. I responded instinctively to reinforce them.”

Malfoy accepts the cup. “That doesn’t explain why you collapsed on my floor. You couldn’t breathe, could you?”

Harry sighs again. “You got me, Malfoy. I can’t sneak anything past you.”

Malfoy gives him a long, keen look. In slow tones, he says, “Why the fuck couldn’t you breathe?”

Harry tries to resist squirming, but he can’t help but shift his weight against the counter where he’s leaned. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I mean, it’s nothing for you to worry about. It wasn’t a curse. Not because of the aurors.”

Another one of those long, slow blinks. “But it was a curse...on you.”

“Not...quite.”

Malfoy gathers himself up to regard Harry from his superior height (by a few centimeters). Harry tries not to cringe. He takes a sip to wet his dry mouth. When Malfoy doesn’t say anything else, Harry realizes he’s probably waiting for more. “Look. Malfoy. I don’t like talking about it.”

“About what?”

Harry gives him a grumpy look. “Drop it.”

Malfoy takes a drawn out sip of tea, maintaining eye contact over the rim. Arsehole.

“Well, that’s it,” Harry says. “I need to get home. Thanks for putting me up.”

Harry feels his face heat at that statement, as if it meant, or should mean, something else. As if there were some…other reason for Malfoy having him over for the night. He was in the guest bedroom for Merlin’s sake.

And he really doesn’t want to look at what that feeling might mean. Especially when placing it next to the evening they had, the intimate fireside chat, the hands touching over snap cards.

He sets down the cup and pushes away from the counter. When he gets to the door of the kitchen, Malfoy says, “Harry? I appreciate you being here this morning.” He clears his throat. “With the aurors.”

Harry hangs in the doorway. He swallows. Gives a curt nod. “Me too.”

He’s halfway down the front path before he realizes he left via the front door rather than the floo. He would feel like an idiot if he turned back now, so he continues to a little copse of trees down the road from the cottage. From there, he apparates home.

Harry. Malfoy called him Harry.

***

He lands with a jolt. In hindsight, apparating probably wasn’t the smart thing to do. It’s a miracle he makes it to his own front step without splinching himself. It’s a miracle he makes it home.

His mind roils. He can’t think straight.

There’s Malfoy: Malfoy standing down Hills and Bate with cool aplomb, as if he hadn’t been rattled out of bed before he’d had his morning tea. Malfoy allowing Harry to act as his proxy in the search so he wouldn’t have to watch the aurors pry apart his life. Malfoy trying to pry Harry’s life apart a few minutes later, like his hands hadn’t just been trembling. Like he’s allowed. Like he’s entitled to it.

There’s Hills and Bate and their unannounced search: they hadn’t listed any specific item in their warrant, only the vague “dark artifacts.” Which means someone sent an anonymous tip that Malfoy was hiding something, and under the Phoenix Act, the Auror Department would be compelled to perform a search.

Since he can’t think about Malfoy and the twist of emotions there, he plunges into his outrage at the visit from Hills and Bate.

This early in the morning, it would have been possible, though not easy, to obtain an expedited search warrant. It’s more likely that the warrant was obtained the evening before. In either case, Robards would have known yesterday about the impending search on Malfoy’s house and either didn’t tell Harry or sent a message which Harry didn’t receive.

A quick search around the kitchen and drawing room show no missives sent by owl.

Harry leans over the kitchen table, squeezing his chin. No word from Robards. That means he specifically did not inform Harry about the tip on Malfoy or the planned search.

So, Robards suspects something. Or he doesn’t trust Harry, either because he thinks Harry is up to something with the Malfoy case or because he doesn’t have faith in Harry’s faculties. Whatever the reason, there’s nothing for it now: Hills and Bate will be reporting back on Harry’s presence at Malfoy’s. It didn’t escape Harry’s notice how Hills shortened the search and muzzled Bate. He’s sure he saw sympathy in the older man’s expression, and Harry dares to think he might find an unexpected ally in him. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s bound to include Harry in the write-up.

And then there’s Bate, who Harry never liked or trusted; the sentiment is mutual.

And even if Harry weren’t screwed because of his involvement with Malfoy, there’s the corruption of the Ministry surrounding this case. The unfounded harassment of Malfoy. The ploys to bury a public health danger, and the way the auror department is being jerked around like a box full of puppets in aid of the effort. It makes Harry sick to his stomach.

In the end, the decision is easy to make. Because it isn’t a decision at all. There’s only one course of action, and Harry faces it the only way he ever faces these things: full-on, without looking back.

First, he takes a shower. There’s no reason, and little chance, for him to make it to the department before Hills and Bate. And even if Hills waits to report on Harry in his full write-up, there’s no chance Bate would pass up announcing it straight to Robards. So he takes his time. Not too long, but long enough to wash away the unclean feeling of having been a part of the engine that is steamrolling Malfoy and his research.

The hot water helps somewhat, but does nothing for the images of Malfoy that haunt his thoughts.

He dresses in khaki trousers and a burgundy jumper. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he pulls on his auror robes.

There aren’t many people in the office when he arrives—many of them will be out in the field at this time—but he feels the weight of several gazes on him. He ignores them as he strides towards the head auror office.

Harry knocks but doesn’t wait before opening the door. Robards looks up. His eyes widen a fraction before his expression darkens. His mouth opens, but Harry heads him off.

“I quit.”

Robards’ face registers surprise, and Harry feels a moment of sympathy and remorse. Then he turns.

“Potter.”

Harry pauses.

Robards stands behind his desk, both hands planted on its surface, looming like a bear. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t get out of explaining why you were at Draco Malfoy’s residence this morning.”

“What’s there to explain, sir?” Harry says calmly.

Robards’ face turns puce. “Do you realize how much trouble you’re about to be in?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

The mouth opens and closes again, but no sound comes out, as if Robards was hit by a silencing charm.

Harry continues to his own office.

It opens to admit him, which is a relief. He didn’t realize how apprehensive he was that Robards had already removed his clearance until the knob turned in his grip. He closes the door behind him. Locks it, not that it will matter much. He won’t need it for long.

A file sits in his inbox. Harry stares at it a moment and then lets out a soft laugh, rubs a hand over his mouth.

Malfoy’s case file. The one he requested access on days ago.

He scoffs as he opens it, shaking his head, flipping through pages and pages of complete text. He bites the inside of his lip. He can’t take this with him. Records will show that it was sent to him. It won’t be long till it’s missed.

“Of course,” he says, and snaps his fingers.

With a smirk, he casts Hermione’s facsimile charm as he flips through each page. Thank Merlin he doesn’t haven’t to look at each page long for the charm to work. It’s not a small file, and Harry guesses he has about three minutes more before Robards attempts to override his locking charm on the door.

Done, he tosses the file into the outbox. That leaves the other files scattered around his desk. Most of them are useless. They show nothing on Malfoy because there is nothing to show, though Harry still suspects that Malfoy may have somehow altered the trace on his house to protect his privacy. In any case, there’s no reason to copy them, too.

He gathers them all and tamps them into one pile and drops them in the outbox. If there’s one thing he’s learned in adulthood, it’s that it is often more effective to leave with a softly closed door rather than a slammed one. No use leaving a mess of an office and giving Robards more to be angry about. Especially if he’s just earned himself a place in Malfoy’s investigation as another suspect.

He reaches for his wand again, and in so doing, touches the sleeve of his auror robes, which reminds him. With another huffed laugh, he throws the robes off. The act feels good.

He waves his wand around the office. Items fly off of the shelves, out of drawers—not so many of them, considering the number of years he’s been here. Shrunk down, they all fit into a box. A crumpled, worn-out cardboard box.

He tucks the box under his arm and leaves, giving a wave to everyone whose desk he passes on the way out, aggressively polite. People don’t meet his eye, though they glance at him surreptitiously, and there is fear in their faces as well as curiosity. That’s when he realizes he hasn’t been a part of this team for a while. There’s no one that he wants to stop and say goodbye to. No one has been friendly with him for months, and he knows it’s his fault. He’s pushed everyone away. He’s glad that Alex isn’t here today. Alex is the only person who would talk with him, who would pull him aside and ask what had happened, where he was going, and was he sure he wanted to take this course of action?

Yes, he’s sure.

He’s alone on the lift. He’s giddy, blood and magic thrumming. Robards’ outraged face stays in his mind, but he can’t stop smiling. He’s got the file.

There’s got to be something else. There’s got to be something else he can do to fight back against the Ministry.

Publicity, Harry, Hermione’s voice says in his mind. They thrive when the public doesn’t know what they’re doing.

The lift doors open. He doesn’t head toward the floos.

On impulse, he takes the guest entrance up to street level. He exits into the protest, which is still going on. It’s continued on in shifts since the day it started. The misty rain has not deterred the demonstrators. Neither has it deterred the press. Harry recognizes several of the faces there from the Prophet and the Quibbler as well as some of the more obscure periodicals. For once, Harry is glad to see them—in a grim way—even when they catch sight of him and give a collective start. He braces himself, tightens his hold on the box, and approaches them. They’ve already begun to fling questions in his direction before he’s within a few meters.

Was there indeed a raid on Draco Malfoy’s residence this morning?

Are you in fact the lead auror for the investigation into Draco Malfoy recently?

Harry says, “There was no raid. There was harassment by the Ministry. I was the lead investigator. I quit.”

The press jumps at that, asking so many questions it’s hard to distinguish their voices. Harry raises an impatient hand.

“I won’t answer any more questions. But I will give a statement.”

And so they don’t ask any more, and Harry does.

***

“I came over as soon as I could,” Hermione says, entering the kitchen.

It’s evening by now. Harry called her late in the morning, soon after returning from the Ministry with his box of things and the case file which Harry couldn’t look at without Hermione’s little mirror.

Harry keeps chopping. The carrot snaps under each stroke of the knife, releasing its sweet smell. He sweeps it into the waiting bowl. Reaches for the next.

Chop chop chop chop chop chop

Hermione falls silent. He can feel her gaze on him. The energy in the room shifts, and he can tell it’s hit her that he’s cooking and what that must mean for his mood. He goes on to the next carrot.

“What’s going on?”

When she steps up next to him and leans against the counter, she comes quietly. She doesn’t say anything else, just watches him chop.

His nails are crusted with soil, and long scratches mark his arms. When Hermione didn’t come over that morning, he went into the garden and pulled down drapes of creeping ivy from over the old shed before they consumed it entirely. He dug up half-buried paving stones. Cut back the tangle of blackberries. He did it all by hand. Then he went inside and paced the house till he came into the kitchen and engaged himself with cooking.

“Draco hasn’t returned my owls today,” she says, voice low. It’s not quite a question.

“Hand me the potatoes.”

She bites her lip, hesitates. Sighs and goes to get them.

“Thanks,” he says, when she returns with the little bucket. He slices one down the middle and lays the flat side against the cutting board. “The aurors visited this morning.”

Hermione sucks in a breath. The reaction shouldn’t be so satisfying to him, Harry notes. But it is.

“It was Hills and Bate. They were looking for dark artifacts.”

“That’s bollocks.”

For the first time, he looks at her. His mouth stretches into a grim smile. “Complete.”

“But how is Draco? Of course they didn’t find anything—right?”

“There was nothing to find except kitchen knives and the record player. Plus, I was there. I don’t think they knew what to make of that.”

“Oh.” Her gaze sharpens.

Harry ignores that and sweeps the potatoes into the bowl with the carrots. “Bate was an arse, but Hills kept it brief.”

“Okay,” Hermione says slowly. “So someone sent a tip. Is that what happened? And the department had to follow through?”

“Would seem like.”

“You said you were there with Draco. I don’t suppose you knew about the search?”

“Nope. Just as much of a surprise for me.”

“Have you talked to R—”

“I quit.”

In the silence that follows, the knife clicks loudly against the cutting board, and Hermione winces.

“Harry,” she says.

“I don’t want to get into it right now, Hermione.” He pauses with the knife over a parsnip. Adds, “I couldn’t be a part of—that—any longer.”

Her expression shutters. He can feel the way she looks at him, eyes dark and wary. “All right.”

He sets down the knife. “I need your help with something. Did you bring the mirror?”

She blinks up at him, gives herself a little shake. “Yes. Right here.” She rummages through a bag she left on the kitchen table. “Did you get something before you left?”

“Thanks.” He accepts the mirror from her. “Remember the case file on Malfoy I was waiting for clearance on? Yeah. That. It finally arrived in my inbox.”

“Oh!” Her hand goes to her mouth. “You’re shitting me.”

He shakes his head. He can’t help a tight smile. It takes him a minute to find his wand on a shelf of cans. He pulls the golden tendrils from his temple and directs them into the square mirror. The words form.

“There it is.”

“Oh, Harry,” she says, leaning over the kitchen table to look down at it. She flashes him a smirk. “No one can accuse you of having bad timing.”

He laughs. “Thanks?”

She sits and scrolls through the pages. He goes back to his chopping, more relaxed now that Hermione is absorbed in scanning the case file.

He feels a flash of guilt. “How’s Ron?”

“Hm? Oh, he’s fine. He and Rose are watching the television. Arthur was over earlier fiddling with it. Now they get some of the Latin American channels. Ron’s discovered telenovelas.” The little smirk is back on her face. “So he’ll be all right for a while.”

“Brilliant,” he says, though he has no idea what she’s talking about.

A few minutes later, he’s got the vegetables in the simmering pot of broth and meat browning in a pan, and Hermione is making curious and incredulous grunts over the case file. While the stew cooks, he sits down to lean over the mirror and glance over her growing page of notes.

She tsks, and writes, and flips through pages. “Even with the information intact, this file is practically useless. I’d hate to see the version you got.” With a heavy sigh, she straightens her back and stretches her shoulders. “I guess it’s good that it’s useless. We can use it as evidence to the Wizengamot that there is no foundation for investigation in the first place.”

“Hm,” Harry says. He serves them both stew. Hermione says “thanks” and mostly ignores hers while she finishes reading the file. Harry spoons up chunks of meat and soft parsnip. He wonders what Malfoy is up to. Probably he should call him to come look at the file. But he doesn’t want to yet. A big part of him enjoys having Hermione’s company and attention to himself for the first time in a while. Also, he’s still got a weird feeling in his gut from their interaction that morning and last night.

Finished with the file, Hermione lets out a “hmph” and pushes it away. She reaches for the bowl of stew. As she does, she notices the letter open at the corner of the table, on top of some other papers. Before he can say anything, she pulls it closer. It’s a message sent by Robards. He wants Harry to come in for an exit interview. Harry hasn’t responded.

“What’s this about?”

“Er. Well.” He tells her about the manner in which he left.

Her eyes first grow large, then narrow.

“Tsk! Harry! And you were at Malfoy’s this morning. You’re lucky they haven’t called you in for questioning. I’m surprised they didn’t detain you.”

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

She makes an unflattering noise. Looks at the letter again. Exhales noisily. Slides the bowl of stew in front of her and begins to eat with ferocious intent.

Eventually she calms, and they go over her notes together. The case file is surprisingly true to the real story. It states that Malfoy was accusing Poesy Potions of releasing toxins into the water supply and was attempting to rally public outrage and panic. The problem is that the authors of the file accuse Malfoy of making up false information against Poesy, or at least vastly exaggerating it for the purpose of creating dissent.

At nine, Hermione’s wand vibrates. “Oh! I’m sorry, Harry. I have to get home. Floo me tomorrow. Will you be contacting Draco?”

“Sure,” he says.

Her eyes narrow. “Are you going to see Robards tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

“Be careful, Harry.” She bites her lip. Then she adds in a softer tone, “I think it’s good that you quit.”

Harry’s tension blooms into anger. “What do you mean by that?”

Her eyes are sad, her mouth tight. “I mean you haven’t been happy working in the office, and field work is too dangerous for you.”

In the past, Hermione might have wavered, might have trailed off before adding and field work is too dangerous for you or hesitated. But she’s had months to adjust to Harry’s situation and lose the soft pity and the fragile worry, months also spent as the mum to a little hellion. She doesn’t hesitate anymore. And deep down, Harry is grateful for that. He’s angry at her words, but only because they’re the truth.

“Yeah. I know,” he says.

After she’s gone, he hovers at the floo. The tension drains from him, leaving an unsettling emptiness. He glances at the clock on the mantel. Quarter past nine. He doesn’t think Malfoy would be asleep yet. But he remembers the night before and flushes. He can’t make a habit of appearing in Malfoy’s floo late at night—even if he really should check in on him. Circe. With Robards in a snit and someone out to get Malfoy, anything else could have happened today, and Harry would have no idea. And Hermione said Malfoy hasn’t replied to any of her owls today.

He catches himself reaching for the floo powder and stops short of dipping his hand in the jar.

“No,” he tells himself.

Leaves the drawing room. Closes the doors for good measure.

***

Harry takes himself to bed, but he can’t sleep. He lies on one side and then the other, the pillow too flat, the covers too itchy.

In the dark of the night, the events of the day replay themselves. Hills and Bate, Malfoy’s anxious expression, Robards’ outrage, I quit, Hermione’s words, the case file. Emotions roll through him like currents, dragging him in one direction and then the other: relief that he left the DMLE, incredulity that he let the Ministry go on being corrupted all around him, fierce annoyance at himself for leaving, because now he no longer has access to Ministry resources.

Why didn’t he check the guest registry at the security desk before he left the Ministry? He would have evidence that the CEO of Poesy had actually been there. (Though when he told Hermione, she pointed out that the man had as much right as anyone else to visit the Ministry and could have been there on any kind of business. And even if he had been there for the wrong sort of business, he could have put anything down in the registry, and his contact person in the Ministry would vouch for him.) Harry could have tracked down who in the Ministry is involved. He could have maintained access to Ministry records. Could have pulled Hills aside and learned more about the search, maybe talked him into keeping Harry abreast of other angles of investigation on Malfoy. Harry could have talked with Robards himself about his own suspicions about the activity against Malfoy.

Could have. Could have. Could have.

After an indeterminable amount of time, he throws back the covers and sits at the side of the bed.

His dark thoughts follow him into the bathroom and then down the stairs into the kitchen. He paces, bare feet on chill wooden floor. The space looks unexpectedly normal with the lights on, not like it is the middle of the night. Smells of rosemary and meat still hang in the air.

He heats water in the kettle and puts on a pot of chamomile tea. Sits with it in his pyjama bottoms. He stares at the mirror on the table, the scatter of notes left by Hermione, the Ministry letter at its corner. He doesn’t go through any of it. Just stares.

He can’t stop thinking about Malfoy. Nothing in particular about him. Just…him. His prim manners and acid wit and neatly pressed clothes. His long ink-stained fingers, the lines at the corners of his eyes. When they were in school, Harry never thought of Malfoy as smooth, but faced with the adult Malfoy, Harry can see he’s lost the smoothness of youth, and he feels an odd pang for the scowling, sneering, pale-faced boy. He’d been so young. Malfoy’s lost some of his pointiness, too, and Harry feels a different kind of pang at that.

Malfoy is a completely different person; completely the same person. He’s a puzzle Harry can’t stop worrying at, the way Harry used to worry at his cases—turning them over and over in his mind, working through the details, except there’s no solution to this one. There’s no solution to this problem, because there is no problem. There’s only Malfoy, and there’s no reason he should confuse Harry so completely.

Harry pads over to the little junk drawer near the sink. There are all sorts of things in there. Snapped quills and Muggle rubber bands and chocolate frog cards and owl treats and knuts and a lizard skull and a bag of dried mugwort and little potion bottles that roll with the movement of the drawer opening. Harry sifts through it all and pulls out the picture of Malfoy. Malfoy glares at him. A little smile tugs at Harry’s lips, which causes Malfoy in the picture to look briefly confused and then scowl all the harder.

He’s got the memory in the pensieve, he realizes. He could watch it. Not to read the letters this time, but to study the expression on Malfoy’s face, like maybe he can parse it out.

But he shakes his head. That’s madness. He’ll stop by Malfoy’s tomorrow, show him the case file. Malfoy can tell him if there’s anything more Harry can do. And if not—then, well, that’s it.

Malfoy in the photo narrows his eyes at Harry. Harry indulges himself, sticks his tongue out. Then he lowers the scandalized photo—hesitates a moment as if he might change his mind and take it with him—drops it on top of a delivery menu, closes the drawer.

***

The next morning finds Harry in his pyjamas in the kitchen, drinking tea and ignoring the Prophet. It lies folded on the center of the table where the delivery owl dropped it. A portion of the headline can be seen, and that and the part of his face visible in the photo are enough to alert him that he is not interested in reading more. Not right now. Not before his second cup of tea. Not before his third.

He keeps glancing at the clock and reminding himself that he doesn’t have anywhere to be. He’s quit. And he refuses to floo Malfoy. Not this early.

He did finally fall asleep the night before. It was some time before dawn, the window still dark. In the light of the morning, last night seems removed from reality. The only evidence that it happened is Harry’s own exhaustion, the soggy chamomile flowers he dumped from the teapot, the chair pulled away from the kitchen table. Now, sunlight streams across the floor, first lighting the corner of the table and then the patch of floor next to it.

By daylight, a little of Harry’s certainty has returned to him. It is good that he quit the aurors. True, he shouldn’t have left quite in that fashion, but he’s too tangled with Malfoy now to stay involved with his case; and really, no matter how he left, whether it was with a fuck you or with sweet parting words, it wouldn’t change the fact that he is in troubled waters. And Hermione is right, he hasn’t been happy working in the office. He hasn’t been happy for a long time. Even the threat of disciplinary action hanging over him, the uncertainty of Malfoy’s situation, and the corruption in the Ministry can’t dislodge the lightness in him. Despite his worry and doubt, he feels free. Untethered.

He rests his mouth against the rim of the cup, breathing steam into his face and fogging up his glasses. A tiny smile tugs at his mouth as he remembers the canceled hearing and Robards’ surprise. Malfoy—with the help of Hermione—can hold his own. He thinks of the reports he won’t have to write up on Malfoy, and the words he won’t have to censor when Robards blows into his office to interrogate him on the investigation. He thinks of the protesters outside the Ministry—he no longer needs to pretend they’re his problem—and the story in the Prophet which he still hasn’t looked at yet. Wonders how many witches and wizards have read it by now, along with the article in the Quibbler, and how Poesy Potions and the Ministry could ever hope to keep their pollution a secret anymore.

He pulls more weeds in the garden. He casts cleaning charms around the house.

By mid morning, it’s been more than twenty-four hours since he’s seen or heard from Malfoy. He continues to push aside the dull worry in his gut. The hearing has passed for now. The aurors have nothing on Malfoy. There’s no reason for Harry to reach out, and anyway, it won’t be long before Hermione calls a war council or Malfoy bursts through the floo, brandishing the morning paper and demanding answers in his sharp, posh way.

The flames in the hearth remain small and orange. The morning slides by.

A little before lunch, Harry scrubs the dirt from his nails and pulls on a checked shirt and a pair of jeans, then floos Malfoy. The sitting room is dark and empty. This time no one appears to greet him, but Harry steps through anyway. He doesn’t bring any of the leftovers from last night because he doesn’t want Malfoy to read into that—whatever he would read from that.

The milkmaid above the hearth eyes him mildly, hands folded on her lap. The cow behind her kicks one leg into the straw. There is a lingering scent of something fruity and sweet in the air.

Harry wants to call out, but his mouth won’t open. He swallows. The kitchen is as empty and dark as the sitting room, the counters bare. He creaks softly up the stairs. The door to the study is open a crack. Malfoy sits at his desk, his back to Harry. It strikes Harry as a vulnerable position for Malfoy to leave himself in, for a man who once lived in a house with Voldemort, a legion of Death Eaters, and Greyback.

Harry is considering how to announce his presence when Malfoy says, “You missed breakfast, Potter.”

For an instant, Harry wonders if he forgot some plans they’d made and feels an awful pang. Then he recognizes the edge of mockery in the tone and remembers how Malfoy served him whenever Harry showed up unannounced, which was always when Malfoy was taking a meal.

“That’s all right. I’ve eaten.”

Malfoy’s shoulders move as he takes a book from the edge of his desk. There’s a click of a quill against an inkwell. His head is bowed over something he’s writing. Harry leans in the door frame. Uncertainty settles in.

The quill returns to the inkwell. Harry feels the slightest thrill of magic shiver through the air (drying the ink, he guesses), and then Malfoy folds the parchment and sets it to the side. He reaches for another blank sheet. Harry clears his throat.

“So, you’ve quit, then.”

Harry is surprised. Maybe at the tone. Maybe at the abruptness.

“How’d you—” But of course Harry knows how Malfoy knew.

Malfoy gestures at the newspaper atop the stack of books to his side with the hand holding the quill. The blood drains from Harry’s face. He doesn’t know why.

“Yeah, I quit,” he says, steeling himself. “I can’t work for a corrupt Ministry. I’d rather put my attention toward doing something to help. I thought—” He thought Malfoy would be pleased, or at least neutral.

“That was a nice interview,” Malfoy says in a tone that says the opposite. Harry’s heart chills. Malfoy places his quill down to pick up the newspaper. He unfolds it. “You made the headlines.”

For the first time, Harry can see the full headline and the large picture beneath it. The photo features Harry looking unblinking and tight-lipped straight into the camera.

“Quite impressive, really. ‘The Chosen One Quits Aurors to Blow Whistles’ clearly takes precedence over ‘Potion Corporation Makes Muggleborns into Squibs.’”

Harry turns cold, then hot. The newspaper Harry stares at him with green eyes.

“Accio newspaper.” The paper flies from Malfoy’s hand to his own. He scans the article. He feels a little ill. “Malfoy, this isn’t—”

There’s one statement about Malfoy’s case with only a vague mention of the scandal with Poesy Potions. The rest is mostly speculation about Harry.

“I didn’t mean to be on the front page. I just—wanted to add to what you were trying to tell the public. It’s not my fault this was blown out of context.”

“Potter, you need only walk into a room to make the front page. You are a context.”

Harry stares at the back of Malfoy’s head because Malfoy still hasn’t turned around. His pulse bangs beneath his tongue. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Someone to bring positive publicity to your work.”

“To my work. Not away from it.”

Harry blinks with dawning realization. “You’re jealous. That’s what’s going on here. Malfoy, do you think I want publicity? Do you think I enjoy it? I hate talking to the press.”

“Is that so?”

Harry breathes hard, his chest constricting. “I went— I gave that interview—” I gave that interview for you, he nearly says, but he can’t quite catch his breath for it. “Do you want me to stay out of it?”

“If by ‘stay out of it’ you mean not make any more brash demonstrations without consulting me first, then yes, Potter.”

Turn around, Harry wants to say to the back of Malfoy’s head. Turn around, you poncy tosser.

Harry lowers his arms. He’s no longer leaning against the doorway. He’s standing just inside the room. The corner of the paper brushes the ground. Abruptly, he forgets why he’s here. Maybe he didn’t know to begin with. He knows he shouldn’t stalk out of here, not like he did that night from Malfoy’s kitchen, but he has nothing else to say. And his breathing is getting tight, his chest clenching ominously.

With shaking hands, he folds the paper and places it on a shelf nearby.

When he thinks he can manage speaking, he says, “All right, then. Good luck.”

He closes the study door softly behind himself.

His hands are still shaking when he arrives home. He makes a cup of mint tea and sits with it in the drawing room, not to drink it but to breathe in the steam.

Malfoy is right, of course. Who is Harry to steal attention from him and his work? Only, Harry hadn’t been thinking about it that way when he went to the press the day before. He’d been thinking—well, apparently he hadn’t been thinking at all. He just…he thought it was about the work Malfoy was doing, work Harry thinks is important, work that Harry wants to contribute to, as well. At the time, he wasn’t thinking about himself or about Malfoy, not as personalities. But of course the press and the public would only see it that way.

Harry stares at his distorted reflection in the tea. He had only wanted to bring attention to the corruption in the Ministry in the most impactful way he could at the time. Because…because that was the only thing he could do. That’s it. There’s nothing else he can do. He has nothing else to offer. Just his so-called fame. For months now, in fact, he’s had nothing to give. Hermione was right. He was miserable at the office; the paperwork he did could be completed by a trained troll. Except trolls had better things to do.

The tea stops giving up steam. Harry sets it aside to stare at his loosely splayed hands.

***

Harry wakes with a jerk. He is sitting up, his neck stiff. He’s not in his bed; he’s in a chair in a room lit green. The light flares, the bright hue of the killing curse.

He’s awake in an instant, tumbling to his feet from the drawing room chair.

“Harry! Oh, thank goodness. You’re there.”

Harry looks down, breathless with adrenaline. Hermione’s face appears in the fire, shifting in the floo flames.

“Hermione! You nearly gave me a heart attack. What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t know. Possibly nothing. Have you heard from Draco? I haven’t been able to get in contact with him all day.”

Harry’s heart chills.

“Yeah. I saw him just a little bit ago.” He blinks, groping for his sense of orientation. He casts a look at the clock above the hearth. Cards a hand through his hair. “Buggering hell. It’s eight?”

“Yes. Harry. What time did you hear from him?”

“I was there around noon. Just— Just for a few minutes. Are you sure he isn’t ignoring you? He was in a foul shit of a mood.”

“That’s what I’m not sure about. He could be.” But it’s clear she’s biting her lip, even through the fire. “We had plans this evening. He’s never not answered his floo before. Everything was dark, and—I’m sorry to bother you, Harry, but I’ve just got a bad feeling about this. I was calling to tell him Ron’s stuck at work and Rose is sick. I can’t get away from the house.”

“It’s fine, Hermione. I’ll check on him.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Yes. Yeah. Of course.” And he’ll punch the git for nearly giving his best friend a stroke when he finds him in his study with his back to the door.

“Thank you, Harry.”

“It’s fine. Not a problem.”

“Was he very mad about the newspaper?”

Harry, sitting on the edge of the chair, scrubs his face. “Just a little.” It occurs to him that he didn’t tell Hermione about the article himself. “Sorry. I meant to tell you. I guess I forgot to mention I talked with the press.”

“You did.”

When he settles the glasses back on his nose, he sees Hermione is watching him from the fire. “How’d you know Malfoy was angry about it?” he asks.

“Just a guess.”

Harry sighs.

“Go. Take care of Rose. Tell Ron I said hi when he gets home. I’ll give you a call as soon as I’ve checked on Malfoy. I’m sure he’s fine.”

Hermione thanks him again, the edges of her eyes pinched, bottom lip pulled up into her teeth. Harry sits for another few minutes after she’s gone. The fire’s returned to its normal orange. The cup of peppermint tea lies cold on the side table. He takes it to the kitchen to dump it, then lingers to make himself a sandwich. He slept more than six hours in the drawing room after returning from Malfoy’s earlier. Merlin. He washes the sandwich down with a glass of pumpkin juice. He still feels a little off. Probably sleeping through half the day in a chair had something to do with that.

At last, he returns to the floo and throws a pinch of powder in.

The cottage sitting room is dark and empty, just as Hermione said. But it was the same way when Harry came over earlier.

“Malfoy? Malfoy. Malfoy!” Harry knows it’s beneath his dignity to shout into Malfoy’s sitting room, and that Malfoy—if he was inclined—would ignore him, but he can’t help the irritated rise of his voice.

Nothing. Cursing under his breath, Harry throws in more powder and calls out his destination.

Something isn’t right. The sense of it settles around him with the cool, sweet scent of Malfoy’s house, and he understands Hermione’s worry.

“Malfoy?”

He palms his wand.

It’s apparent no one’s been into the sitting room, probably since Harry was there that afternoon. The curtains are still open. The only light in the room comes from the hearth, which—now that Harry’s come through—is no more than smoldering coals.

Glancing above the hearth, Harry finds the milkmaid absent from her painting. He grips his wand tighter.

“Malfoy?”

The kitchen is just as empty and untouched. The entrance hall is dark, the front door closed. He’s standing at the base of the stairs, regarding it, when he recognizes the sensation that has his every nerve on edge, the source of the “off” feeling. The wards have been broken. The air of the cottage sits around him, bare, unshielded.

He doesn’t call out again. He casts a wordless homenum revelio. He’s not surprised when it reveals that no one is in the house.

He takes the stairs slowly and quietly, nonetheless. Now that he’s recognized it, the fact that the wards have been broken is very apparent. In fact, they’re gone completely. Harry didn’t notice before how they lay over his skin like a soft sheet. Now the atmosphere is cold and empty. It feels like the bedclothes were stripped while he was sleeping. The house is exposed. The only thing more concerning than that is the fact that nothing else seems amiss. Harry senses no dark magic. Sees no evidence of a struggle.

On the first floor, the door to Malfoy’s study stands open. The light is off.

“Lumos,” Harry whispers.

The door opens with a gentle push. Harry’s breath catches.

The study is empty. The floor, the side table. Every book, every paper, every piece of parchment—gone. The study is completely clean, the desk chair pushed neatly against the desk, whose surface is a tidy expanse of empty wood. The curtains are drawn over the windows. It looks every inch the way he’d expect the study of neat, fastidious Draco Malfoy to look.

A chill lances through Harry.

He steps into the room. Many books still line the shelves. Whoever cleaned the study out didn’t remove everything. That makes the entire scene more frightening.

Harry brushes fingers over the titles of books in the bookcase, pulling a few out at random. Potions texts. Theoretical magic. More than one volume on dark magic—nothing illegal, but nothing that would be found in the general section of a public library, and nothing that wouldn’t raise questions.

Without really thinking about it, Harry draws out the desk chair and sits down. Facing the desk, Harry is looking into the corner of the window. He pushes back the curtain and realizes he can see the reflection of the door in it. Malfoy was able to sit here earlier and see Harry where he stood. Harry doesn’t know how that makes him feel, and he’s not in a place to explore the feeling right now. He closes the curtain again.

The desk drawers are locked, but a simple spell opens them. There is nothing inside save a few old letters from Narcissa. In the pen holder at the top of the desk is the quill Malfoy was using earlier. Harry knows he should touch as little as possible, but he picks it up, draws it through his fingers.

There is not a thing about Poesy Potions here. Every book, every paper—even his own research—is gone, and not just gone but cleaned out as neatly as if it never existed.

Harry returns to the bottom floor of the cottage. For some reason he can’t explain, he walks past the kitchen down a short hall Harry hasn’t explored before. Malfoy led Hills and Bate here when they visited and he took them to the pantry.

To Harry’s surprise, the hall leads not only to the pantry door but also past it to a back door which opens into a garden.

The garden is bathed in silver moonlight. Harry can just make out the shapes of the pots and trees. A little iron bench sits not far from the door, enclosed on four sides by a trellis of vines. The air smells of night jasmine and lavender.

Harry doesn’t know why he finds the garden so unexpected. Even in the dark, it’s apparent how well kept it is. Of course it is. The front garden is so tidy; why not the back? But there is something about this one that strikes him as—special. Like it’s not made for other people. The front lawn and the manicured shrubs that frame it are for appearances. This, Harry can tell, is for Malfoy alone.

The little circling paths and benches are empty. No one is here.

He steps back into the house, ventures briefly into the pantry as his pulse quickens and the cold dread in his gut congeals into a heavy mass. The pantry is filled with shelves of preserved food, though some of them are empty, as if they recently held something else.

Easing up the stairs, he pulls the cell phone from his back pocket, the one he got for emergencies a couple of years back. Harry had suggested sharing something like the DA coin with Hermione and Ron, something they could call each other with, and Hermione laughed and suggested they just get phones. The suggestion had rankled Harry inexplicably, but they’d got the phones.

“Harry?”

Hermione’s voice is high with worry. Harry never uses the phone.

“I’m at Malfoy’s house,” Harry says in a low voice. “Malfoy’s not here, and it’s been cleaned out. Did he say he was going anywhere? Taking his research somewhere?”

“What? No. What do you mean ‘cleaned out’?”

“I mean his house looks all in order, except all of the books and papers he was using for—”

Something—some little sound—catches Harry’s attention, and he falls silent.

“Harry?”

“Shush. I—”

A bright bolt of magic shoots out of the dark. Harry has a wordless shield up in an instant, though nearly not in time. The spell glances off his knuckle, and he drops the phone with a clatter.

By the little bit of light in the hall, Harry can just make out the shape of a person—a man, by the height and shape. Sparks crackle through the air as the wizard draws back his wand. Harry doesn’t know what the person has planned, but he funnels his magic up into a powerful shield just as a different spell crackles over it.

Harry feels the impact down in the pores of his bones. The shield shudders. If Harry weren’t already on his hands and knees, the force would have felled him.

He tries to draw a breath, but there is simply nothing there. The magic coils tight in his chest where his lungs should be.

Around him, the shield gleams like an oil slick. He can’t see beyond its brightness to his attacker. The part of his brain that remains tactical and removed—ever the auror—notes how vulnerable he is. But it doesn’t matter really, does it, if the man is readying another curse. There’s a fist around his windpipe, and the edges of his vision darken. He’ll be gone, anyway.

He feels a moment of frustration at himself that he let someone sneak up on him, followed by a pang of grief and apology for his friends. He closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

Harry rises from a deep well of blackness and cracks open his eyes. He recognizes the potion-induced dullness a moment before he recognizes the spells breathing for him. There must also be a body-bind in place because he can’t move, can’t react. Thanks to the potion, he doesn’t panic. He drifts into wakefulness and knows a distant horror as his lungs fill and empty, fill and empty, and he thinks, Not this again.

His eyelids come stickily apart as he widens his eyes. They are the only part of himself he can control. He stares at the white ceiling. Sunlight illuminates the hospital room, spreading in from a window out of his line of sight. Someone must have left the curtains open. His friends have been around, then. The hospital staff tend to pull them shut—maybe out of the misplaced notion he needs dark to rest. But paralyzed, silent, and shut in a void, Harry goes mad. Thankfully, Hermione and Ron figured that one out quickly in the early days of his hospital stay almost a year ago. They leave the window open for him. Though he can’t see out of it, the sunlight is enough to connect him to the outside world.

This clue that his family has been to see him relaxes something behind his heart, and he closes his eyes once more.

Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.

It’s easy enough for Harry to detach himself from his body. He has had weeks of practice. From a removed perspective, the sound and feel of his breathing is interesting. Almost comforting, in a macabre way.

The potion pulls him down again. Down and down and down, but Harry skirts the edge of unconsciousness, letting his muzzy thoughts wander. He should be dismayed he’s at St. Mungo’s again, but he can’t find the emotion in himself under the heavy drape of the potion’s weight on his mind. Instead, his thoughts pursue a different track. He was doing something before he woke. Something important. Something.

His eyes blink open as he remembers. Malfoy’s house.

Malfoy.

He blinks rapidly, eyes prickling. Something stirs inside of him under the muffling potion, a thick tendril of reaction.

“Harry? Oi! Mate!”

Then Ron is at his bedside, clasping Harry’s hand in both of his. Tired blue eyes look down at him.

“Harry. Hey. You’re awake. You’re fine, mate.”

Ron’s hands squeeze Harry’s. That’s something Harry appreciates about Ron; especially during Harry’s time in hospital, Ron was one to offer physical reassurance. The Weasleys have always shared physical affection easily, and they include Harry in this. Ron spent a lot of time at Harry’s bedside in the aftermath of the curse, holding his hand, squeezing his shoulder, ruffling his hair. As Harry got well enough to sit up, Ron would drape an arm around his shoulders. He seemed to sense when Harry needed it most. The distress in Harry now eases at Ron’s presence.

His best mate looks haggard, with blueish pouches under his eyes. Harry knows he put them there, and he doesn’t like it. He wishes he could squeeze Ron’s hand back. All he can do is blink at him slowly.

“Good to have you back,” Ron says. He sits beside the bed, propping his elbow so their clasped hands are held aloft. “We were worried about you. Mum just left. I’m off to work in a moment, but ’Mione’ll be here soon. The healers have you all spelled up, but just to be sure: do you need anything? Give me two blinks if you’re okay.”

Harry isn’t. But Ron looks like death warmed over, and he’s off to work. And what he needs isn’t a pain potion or water. What he needs is to talk to Hermione.

He blinks twice.

Ron gives him a smile. Exhausted, but genuine. “Good. Just rest a moment, then. Hermione is on her way.”

He talks with the same voice he uses on Rose, the gentle one. That’s okay with Harry. He lets his eyes drift shut.

When he opens them again, Hermione is sitting at his bedside, reading. Harry recognizes the orange blossom scent of her soap and the intense quality of her silence, the occasional brush of a page turning.

Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.

Hermione senses his attention. That, or she has a spell in place. After a few seconds, she closes her book and leans forward.

“Harry!” she whispers.

Her hand slips cool into his, thumb rubbing over his knuckles.

“Ron said you woke. How are you feeling? Wait.”

She pulls away and mutters something. Harry catches the movement of her wand from the corner of his eye and feels the tremble of magic. A hazy cloud of blue-glowing smoke appears above him. She taps the center of his forehead lightly with the tip of her wand.

“There.”

The communication spell takes some effort on his part, especially when he’s drugged. But maybe they decreased the dose of the potion because his thoughts are clearer now, and the concern and anxiety are closer to the surface.

Malfoy forms the word in glowing blue above him.

Hermione pulls her lip with her teeth. “He’s alive.”

Alive. The news should reassure, but tension steals through him.

Something in her expression, and inside of himself, keeps him from asking for clarification right now. Instead he says, What happened.

“My stupidity happened,” Hermione says in a fierce tone that startles Harry. Her eyes gleam, suddenly and intensely. “Merlin. Harry. I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have sent you to check on Draco when I knew something was wrong.”

Harry gathers his strength and his patience. What happened.

She gives his hand a squeeze. “Well, you flooed to Draco’s. Then you called me. Do you remember that much?”

He gives two blinks for yes.

House empty.

“Yes. Well— Someone attacked while you were there. I heard some of it on the phone. I apparated right away, but whoever it was was gone. You still had a shield charm up. You were unconscious.”

And not breathing, is the silent implication.

He blinks twice to acknowledge this information.

Same attacker.

It’s a question, and he’s referring to Malfoy. Was his attacker the same as Malfoy’s?

“Well,” Hermione hedges.

At that moment, someone else enters the room. It’s Healer Catherine, and she wants to work on untangling more of his core from his lungs. It only just occurs to Harry that maybe this time, he’s done permanent damage. Maybe this time, they won’t be able to free his lungs. He may be stuck on ventilation spells for the rest of his life.

Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.

The mounting anxiety at that, and at Hermione’s tense expression at the talk of Malfoy, dissipates as more potion flows into him. He floats away.

***

Harry pulls in a deep, shuddering breath. His lungs feel tight—an impression that comes with a squeezing sense of claustrophobia—but at least they are his to control again.

Only two days have passed since Hermione took him to St. Mungo’s—nothing at all like the two and a half weeks of his original treatment on ventilation spells, and so, so much better than the eternity he thought he’d spend on them this time. Once he’s out of here, he needs to send his healer a gift. Something ridiculous and over the top. She’s performed a miracle.

“Not a miracle,” she warned him earlier, during her last visit in his room. “This could have ended poorly. You were lucky your friend found you quickly and that we’ve already treated you for this.”

Harry nodded, properly chastised.

Now he’s sitting up, forcing some tasteless muck into his mouth so that he won’t have to drink a nutrition potion again. Ron was by earlier with Rose, and George visited shortly after with a gift wrapped in orange paper. (It sits on the edge of his overbed table; he knows better than to open it in a hospital room.) No one has talked to him about what happened at Malfoy’s house—or what happened to Malfoy—and Harry hasn’t asked. Partly, because he doesn’t know how much Hermione has told Ron about her involvement with Malfoy’s investigation.

And also, he’s afraid to know.

“You’re looking much better,” Hermione says by way of greeting when she arrives a few minutes later.

“I feel much better. The healer says I’ll be good to go home soon.” He pushes aside his mostly-empty dish. He steels himself and meets his friend’s gaze. “Hermione, what happened to Malfoy? There’s something you’re not telling me. Whatever it is, it’s causing me more worry to speculate.”

Hermione sinks into the chair at the bedside. Her face looks drawn and worried. “Harry. I need you to promise me— No, hear me out. I need your word that you will stay in hospital until your healer releases you. There’s nothing to be done right now. Do you understand me?”

Harry recognizes echoes of Molly in her tones and is caught between frustration and amusement.

“I’m not going to promise anything.”

Hermione stands. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Wait. Hermione.”

She’s already halfway to the door.

“I’ll leave this hospital anyway,” he warns. “You can’t stop me.”

She smiles thinly. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Try me.”

In the last year, she’d changed, too. Where Ron had softened around the edges, she’d sharpened. Being mother to a toddler, and dealing with a belligerent and convalescent Harry Potter, had only brought out her ruthlessness. He knows she is well capable of carrying through on her threats to immobilize him.

He swallows. “Fine. Just— What’s going on?”

Slowly, she returns to the chair and sits. The hardness has gone from her expression, replaced with a pensiveness.

“Listen to everything I have to say before reacting,” she says.

He chills.

“Harry?”

“Yes. Okay. Hermione, you’re making this worse.”

“Draco is in auror custody. He confessed to creating the squib compound.”

“What?”

“Harry,” she warns.

“No. What are you talking about?”

“Just listen to me. Please.” She places a hand on his blanket-covered knee. “The aurors arrested him the morning after your visit to his house. When they questioned him, he admitted to developing the potion himself and releasing it into the water supply, as well as attempting to connect it with Poesy Potions.”

Harry clenches his jaw. When he refuses to say anything, Hermione continues, taking a deep breath.

“It’s a load of bollocks. I know it is. I saw his research papers, and I saw the evidence in the Ministry’s public records myself. But Harry—you and I are the only ones who have.”

Harry takes quick, shallow breaths. His mind spins to process what Hermione is telling him.

Bullshit, he wants to say. Why would he say that?

She takes a long, unsteady breath. “I think he’s been obliviated. Someone’s erased his records and his memory. As far as anyone is concerned, Draco’s investigation into Poesy Potions never happened. There are only two sources of evidence remaining.”

Us. Himself and Hermione.

“Of the two of us, you’re the only person who is known publicly to have any inside knowledge of his investigation. I think your attacker had similar plans of obliviation for you. Except you intercepted him, and when I arrived, he left.”

Harry slumps back against the pillows.

“It would have been easy,” he says. “Erase the last couple of weeks and make me think I was still investigating him. Maybe even that I’d found evidence on him.”

Hermione nods.

His pulse races. He pushes a hand through his hair. “Has there been a hearing yet? Or has he just talked to the aurors?”

“The hearing is being postponed.”

He stares at her, his hand frozen in his hair.

“His solicitor and I have pushed for it to be delayed,” she explains. “You’re a witness.”

His hand flops to the bed. “So they’re waiting for my release.”

“We’re fighting for that. Yes.”

They stare at each other.

“No one knows you were involved, though,” he says.

She shakes her head no, in agreement with him.

“Keep it that way.”

She smiles her thin smile again. “I plan on it.” The smile drops. She grips Harry’s hand on the blanket. He grips back, hard.

“Harry,” she whispers, her voice worried.

“Don’t.”

Don’t worry. Don’t give up.

He says, “Just make sure they postpone that hearing. Don’t let him say anything in front of the Wizengamot.”

***

They do not postpone the hearing.

When Harry bangs into the court, there is an echoing silence, then a hissing chorus of whispers.

Harry slowly stalks forward. The truth is he can’t move much faster for fear of losing his breath, but he scowls and hopes to play it off as intimidating. He doesn’t have to fake the anger.

“I’m here to submit myself as a witness,” he says. The acoustics of the courtroom carry his voice.

Kingsley Shacklebolt and the members of the Wizengamot watch him approach, some with flat, unreadable gazes, others with shock. A few with disdain. Robards is there, too, and he looks furious. Harry ignores them, and he ignores the alarmed curiosity of the audience at his back.

Stepping up to the front, he scans the gathered people. His gaze finds Malfoy and stops there.

Grey eyes stare back at him—familiar and a complete stranger’s. The aggression in them brings him back to that first day standing on Malfoy’s doorstep. Except even that isn’t right. The hostility in Malfoy’s eyes then was marked by a stubborn defiance. This look more closely resembles the naked hate from their school days. The wrongness of it puts Harry off balance.

Malfoy sneers at him, his hair sleek against his head, formal robes buttoned up to his throat, and Harry takes a step back.

Minister Shacklebolt recovers first. “Mr. Potter. What fortunate timing you have. Please sit. This does concern you.”

“Harry.”

Harry looks over his shoulder to see Hermione glaring at him from the audience. She hadn’t shouted his name, hadn’t done more than whisper it. He meets her angry look with his own flat stare. Then he climbs into the witness stand not far from Malfoy.

There is a collective shuffling sound in the courtroom. Shacklebolt says, “And then what, Mr. Malfoy?”

More of that wrong feeling assails Harry. His gaze snaps to Malfoy. Apparently, they are directly in the middle of questioning him.

Malfoy raises his chin. “Then he put up a shield charm.”

“After he’d fallen unconscious?” Robards says.

Malfoy’s gaze flicks to the head auror. His lip curls. “I hardly think even Harry Potter would be capable of that.”

The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand up. It’s not like he hasn’t heard Malfoy say his name in that tone before, but now it’s wrong, all wrong.

“So he cast the shield charm just before he dropped unconscious,” Shacklebolt says. “And you left him in that state?”

“Yes. I was hardly going to stand around when someone apparated onto the scene.”

“Indeed.”

“Wait,” Harry says, gripping the banister and leaning forward. “What are you talking about? Malfoy, what are you saying?”

“Potter,” Robards snaps.

Malfoy looks at him. “I was just telling the court how I attacked you.”

“What? Bullshit.”

Robards looks ready to explode, but Kingsley holds up a quelling hand. “Mr. Potter,” he says.

“No! I will not hold my comments. What is this? Malfoy didn’t attack me.”

Shacklebolt rubs his temple. “And yet we have it from Mr. Malfoy himself under veritaserum—”

“You’re under veritaserum?”

“Yes, Potter.” Malfoy sneers.

Harry looks at the Wizengamot. “It doesn’t count.”

“Mr. Potter—”

“He’s been obliviated.”

Silence in the court.

“Anything he says, even under veritaserum, is inaccurate.”

“You do understand the use and purpose of veritaserum, do you not, Mr. Potter?” Shacklebolt drawls, and Harry bristles, because Kingsley knows damned well.

“Yes. But you can hardly tell the real truth if your memories have been wiped and replaced.”

Alarmingly, it’s Malfoy who responds. “What’s this, Potter? Are you so upset at being caught off-guard that you’re resorting to making up stories? You wanted to be the one to bring me in yourself, did you? Are you mad that you didn’t pull the truth from my lips yourself? I took veritaserum willingly, you know. I bet you expected me to cover the truth to the end, didn’t you. You resent that my sentence will be reduced.”

Harry’s head spins. He still hasn’t fully regained his breath from the walk to the courtroom. He left St. Mungo’s against his healer’s orders. He’s still furious with Hermione. She hadn’t told him about the hearing being held today. He learned about it in that morning’s Prophet and flooed to the Ministry directly from the hospital. Now this. Malfoy, punching the breath from him.

Shacklebolt folds his hands and gives Harry a long look.

“I’m not making anything up,” Harry manages to say.

Shacklebolt sighs. “Be that as it may, Mr. Potter—”

“I’d like to submit my pensieve memories for review.”

More stunned silence.

“Let us consider you truly believe what you are saying,” Shacklebolt says. “You submit your memories for review. But by your own reasoning, they are suspect. You say Mr. Malfoy has been obliviated. Who is to say the same has not, instead, been done to you?”

“What? No.”

“Mr. Malfoy is certain of his experience. It sounds as if you are, as well.”

“No. I know I wasn’t obliviated. Who would do that to me? Malfoy just said he didn’t successfully cast a spell on me. Malfoy, did you obliviate me?”

“Potter!” Robards says.

Malfoy stares back at Harry with wide eyes, mouth slack.

“Look! He can’t— He’s not even—” Harry can’t finish a sentence. He’s furious. He grips the banister tighter as his vision greys around the edges.

“Order,” booms the minister.

While Harry gasps for breath, Shacklebolt says, “Mr. Potter, if I understand correctly, you were still recovering in hospital. I understand your condition was fragile for several days. In light of this, I realize you may be confused about events, especially those surrounding your attack. I commend your commitment to attend today’s hearing, but if you can’t hold yourself in check until we’ve completed Mr. Malfoy’s interview, I must ask you to leave.”

Harry sits back in his chair. He simply doesn’t have the breath to say anything more.

It all comes out in the next half an hour. Malfoy shares that Harry was on his case for weeks and had discovered the truth for himself: that Malfoy, in fact, was behind the squib-producing compound he was attempting to blame on Poesy Potions. The story comes out in the matter-of-fact way of people under veritaserum, the words almost tumbling out of his mouth, but in his clipped, sneering tones. Malfoy wanted to put a stop to muggleborns.

“But why bring attention to the compound at all by framing Poesy Potions for it, if that was your intent?” Shacklebolt asks patiently.

“Do you think me an idiot?” Malfoy says. “You’d think no one would notice muggle children being born squibs. But eventually someone would notice the lack of muggleborns in the Hogwarts registry. It may take another ten or even fifteen years, but someone would notice. And when they did, I wanted my research to be there, waiting to be discovered. Poesy would take the blame, the damage would already be done, and I would be completely free of suspicion. It was a long game, your honor.”

Harry is going to be sick. If he had been sitting here just a couple of weeks prior, he would have been convinced of Malfoy’s words. The whole thing is so disgustingly plausible for him—the Death Eater, the blood purist, the potion master, the sneering hateful prick. In fact, a little part of Harry’s mind doubts the Malfoy he’s come to know over the past week. Maybe that person is the fake. His stomach flips, and flips again.

It’s the right thing to do.

Those enraged grey eyes; the study, filled with research.

Has your conscience finally collided with you?

Fear and some other strong emotion reach up to clutch his chest. Dismay, or grief. Somehow, over the last week, he’s come to—admire Malfoy. Care for him, even. This person on the stand isn’t him. This is a puppet, a caricature of the bully he once was.

Partly it’s the breathlessness, partly it’s the sick helplessness, and partly it’s the deep, strangling anger that keeps Harry quiet as he listens through the entire interrogation while Malfoy gives himself up, roasted on a platter to the Wizengamot. Among other things, it’s an insult to Malfoy’s intelligence to believe that he would give himself away like this, even if he had committed the crimes he enumerated.

When at last Malfoy is done and the Wizengamot have stripped him down to the sinew with their questions, Harry tells his version. He speaks calmly and slowly because he has to, and any time he pauses for Shacklebolt to question him, he performs the silent breathing exercise Healer Catherine prescribed to him.

Harry tells them everything—from arriving on Malfoy’s doorstep (minus the ludicrous wards) to flooing to Malfoy’s house to check on him out of concern. He shares his suspicions about Poesy Potions and the appearance of the Poesy CEO at the Ministry. He doesn’t leave out anything except Hermione’s involvement—and his own personal visits. If someone wants to obliviate him, he wants to make damned sure that this entire courtroom hears everything he has to say first.

Hermione was right—he and she are the only ones who know about Malfoy’s situation, and that places them both at special risk. So? Broadcast the truth.

Shacklebolt listens calmly to the whole story, only occasionally lifting a hand to cut Robards off before the head auror can butt in.

“And would you be willing to swear all of this under veritaserum?”

“Yes,” he says immediately, though his face heats as he realizes everything he may feel compelled to spill.

“Minister Shacklebolt, if I may interject. Mr. Potter is too sick,” a member of the Wizengamot says.

Harry wants to hex the person.

Steepling his fingers, Shacklebolt says, “Be that as it may, even if he were to give us his testimony under veritaserum, we are left with a conundrum. Two separate truths.”

“Aye, but only one of the truths is verifiably real.”

Everyone in the court turns to the new voice. A deep voice, rough and familiar. Harry’s heart leaps.

Hills strides up toward the center of the court. And in his wake, Bate.

“Auror Hills,” Shacklebolt says.

The grizzled man nods. “Minister.”

“And Auror Bate. Well. This is a day for surprise appearances.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“And what is your business here, in an ongoing court session?”

“Sir, we understand that there’s been some question about Mr. Malfoy’s testimony and the veracity of Auror Potter’s memories. We’re here to offer our pensieve memories to add to Potter’s.”

***

Hermione is waiting for Harry at the entrance to the courtroom.

“I know,” he says in resignation. “I’m going.”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to for him to know she’s taking him back to St. Mungo’s.

He really does like to breathe—even more than he hates hospitals.

She casts a disillusionment charm on them both in order to avoid the press, who are having a field day. Harry is relieved Malfoy was escorted separately to the Ministry’s jail, bypassing all of these vultures.

In the end, the whole thing was quite simple. They collected Harry’s, Hills’, and Bate’s selected memories, copied them, and returned them to their respective owners. The Wizengamot then adjourned to consider the new evidence. During the whole thing, Malfoy sat looking both mutinous and lost, spine straight, hands pressed to his thighs. Hills remained gruffly cordial. And Bates looked like he wanted to murder someone, though he made no protest when it came his turn to offer memories. Harry wondered how Hills had put him up to it.

Harry kept looking at Malfoy. He felt a sensation in his chest he couldn’t remember feeling before, not quite like this. A sinking, and a ripping, and an aching. He had the overwhelming impulse to cross the courtroom and touch the side of his face. To know that he was solid and to have those grey eyes look at him. Malfoy without his self-righteousness or droll sarcasm was small, mean, and distressed-looking. He clutched his knees and blinked as if, without questions being directed his way, he kept forgetting where he was, what he was doing—vaguely reminiscent of Lockhart the last time Harry had seen him, or Hermione’s parents before their memories had been restored.

The image haunts Harry all the way back to his hospital room, which is still made up for him, he notes with chagrin.

“This time, stay,” Hermione says, her lips pressed together. Then her expression softens, and she squeezes Harry’s arm. “He’ll thank you.”

His healer comes in a few minutes after Hermione leaves. They might have passed in the hall.

“Nice of you to join us again.”

“You are my favorite healer,” he jokes weakly.

“I’m sure.” She sits. “I’d just as soon never see you again.”

“No offense taken.”

“None meant.” She regards him unblinkingly for a long moment. “Well. You came back to me alive.”

She doesn’t ask where he went or why. It’s not like his involvement in Draco Malfoy’s case isn’t plastered all over the papers now. He appreciates that about her: her quiet discretion, her focus on the task of healing. But he still knows, somehow, that she is recalling their conversation from his last office visit. The awareness of it sits between them.

Have you ever found yourself on the wrong side?

Haven’t we all? We’re human. It’s how you respond that matters. I’m sure you’ll find the right thing to do.

I did, he thinks. He hopes.

She completes her set of diagnostics and performs a complicated charm that eases his lungs. He takes a deep, relieved breath.

“I think maybe one more night for observation. How does that sound to you?”

“Just fine,” he says. The upside is, the press won’t be able to bother him here. He looks down at the crisp white sheets of his bed. Though he wouldn’t want to stay here for good, he does admit that he feels safe here.

The thought, unbidden, makes him think of Neville’s parents and of Lockhart.

“Can I ask you a question about mind magic?” Harry asks.

“It’s not my specialty.”

“I know. But you still know more than me.”

“Possibly,” she concedes with a twitch of her mouth.

He takes a deep breath. “How likely is it for someone to recover from being obliviated? I mean, badly obliviated. Memories wiped and replaced.”

She sits for a thoughtful minute. “In this, you might actually have more experience than me. Your friend, Mrs. Granger-Weasley, certainly does.”

He picks at the sheet. “Yeah. You’re right. I just feel…” He rubs the back of his neck.

“No. I understand. No need to explain. That must be a painful subject for her.”

“Yeah,” he says, relieved that she understands.

“I don’t know what to say. Would you like my professional opinion, or would you like my reply as a friend?”

Harry lets out a long sigh. “I don’t know. Which one would I like?”

She huffs a laugh. “My professional opinion, Mr. Potter, is that the mind, once tampered with, is never the same. Imagine rummaging through a room. Taking items out. Putting them back in. You can return them all, but inevitably, you won’t get them all back where they belonged. And some things will be forgotten. For all intents lost.” She takes his hand, gazes into his eyes with her kind ones. “But Harry, healing is always improving, and I am constantly amazed at what can be accomplished if one has the will. Just look at what Hermione accomplished with her parents.”

Healer Catherine squeezes his hand and lets it go.

Inexplicably, Harry feels the backs of his eyes heat. He clears his throat and glances out the window.

“Now,” his healer says. “Are you going to ask me my opinion on you?”

“What?”

“Have you forgotten why you’re here?”

“Oh.”

She smiles. It’s tinged with a bit of emotion, more than her usual professional smile. Sadness, maybe. His heart clenches. But he knows. He already knows. He’s ready for the worst.

“It’s not as bad as it could be,” she says, though. “But you’ve certainly set back your healing, and you’ve demonstrated that your body is still incapable of casting powerful spells.”

“I’ve already resigned from the aurors,” he says.

She nods. “That’s for the best.” But her gaze is unwavering.

He feels a spark of anger at her censure. “I’m always going to be in danger because of who I am. I can’t avoid all risk for the rest of my life, and if I’m in danger, I’ll respond automatically. I just will.”

She sighs. “I fear as much. Then all we can do is work to loosen and strengthen your core. You may be attending therapy indefinitely.”

“That’s better than dead,” he says grimly.

Her eyes crinkle with her smile. “I wish all of my patients were as optimistic as you.”

Dinner arrives, and she departs. Harry tucks into this evening’s mush. The image of Malfoy is still there in his mind, blinking and squinting in the courtroom with that little frown on his face.

***

Hermione visits late the next morning. Harry’s few belongings are packed in a bag on his bed, and he paces in front of the window, tight little movements. He pauses when she appears in the doorway, reading what he can from her expression. He hasn’t heard a thing yet that day, hasn’t talked to anyone except the orderly who brought his breakfast and the healer’s assistant who told him Healer Catherine would be in later with the discharge paperwork. Otherwise he’s been alone with his thoughts since dawn.

Hermione is roughened and lined with exhaustion. Harry’s breath hitches in his chest, but before he can say anything, her gaze falls to the bag on his bed, and her mouth tightens.

“She’s discharging me properly,” he says, unable to help his defensive tone. “Really, Hermione.”

She frowns but decides not to argue with him. That, or she’s simply too tired.

“What’s going on?” he says, moving away from the window. He gestures to the bed. (His guest chair disappeared in the night, the way furniture sometimes mysteriously appears and disappears from hospital rooms.)

She sits on the edge of the bed. He joins her.

“They resumed the hearing this morning. After comparing his memories to yours, Hills’, and Bate’s, they finally decided to call in an authority on mind magic.” An edge of bitterness creeps into her voice, presumably because it had taken the combined memories of three aurors to convince them to call an expert.

Not that any of it surprises Harry.

“They found that Draco Malfoy was obliviated. They don’t have enough yet to prove that the obliviated memories have to do with his research surrounding Poesy, or that any of that terrible monologue of his was artificial.”

Harry’s heart twists.

“Not enough evidence?”

Hermione stares straight ahead, her expression as dark as a storm cloud. “Right. Not enough evidence.”

Harry is alarmed by the force of her bitterness. Then he understands. She’s angry at herself, or at least angry that she cannot step forward as a witness with her own memories. Harry doesn’t ask why. In the past, Hermione would have stepped forward without a thought. In the past, before Rose. Before Hermione had someone else to live for.

The fact that she is upset forces him to be calm, when all he feels like doing is standing up, charging out of the room, bursting out of his skin. He says, “What next?”

“More tests. They’ll call in more consultants.”

“All right,” he says, and maybe his voice is too calm, maybe he holds himself too still, because she slants a sideways look at him, eyes bright with a hard amusement.

He grips the edge of the bed. “So what happens to Malfoy? What about his memories?”

She blinks, turns away again. “He’s been transferred to Spell Damage.”

He’s here, then. In St. Mungo’s. And not in the Janus Thickey ward.

“Do they— Is there—”

“They’re doing what they can for him,” Hermione says briskly. “They’ve made a lot of strides in the last few years, you know.”

“That’s what my healer said,” he mutters.

Hermione regards him. He pretends not to notice at first. Then: “What?”

Her mouth twists. “Nothing.”

“What?” His voice, and his neck, heat.

“You just seem awfully worried about Malfoy. It’s sweet.”

“Lay off. I’m not worried, anyway. I’m— Worried. Yeah.” He pushes a hand through his hair. “What those bastards did to him. What they almost did to me.”

The gleam leaves her eyes. Her face darkens. “Yes.”

Outside the room, a healer’s name is called out overhead. A trolley rattles past the door.

Hermione says, “Anyway, I just meant it’s nice. That you care. It’s awful, what they did to him.”

With alarm, Harry recognizes the roughness of tears in her voice. It hits him how much this might be affecting her. Not only because Malfoy has become her…ally, but because the situation brings back memories of her parents and all the buried emotions with them. He grasps her hand awkwardly.

“He’ll be fine,” he says, though he has no idea if it’s true. “Your parents are fine. You’re fine.”

She gives him a watery smile. “You’re fine.”

Oh. Right. And she might be worried about him.

“I’m fine,” he concedes.

Ron comes in a few minutes later, and Harry meets his wide-eyed gaze with his own as he cradles a sobbing Hermione against his chest. Ron raises both eyebrows in a look of, What’d you do, mate? and Harry can only raise his own and shake his head minutely. I don’t know.

Thankfully, Healer Catherine comes in shortly after to discharge him, and Hermione jumps to her feet and glances up at Ron sheepishly, and Harry casts a spell to dry his shirt.

***

Harry doesn’t visit Malfoy in the hospital.

He can’t think of a reason to. He’s not family. He’s not even really a friend. Maybe if he were still an auror on his case, he might stop by, even if briefly. Anyway, Hermione calls in each day, distracted and baggy-eyed, to give him updates. She keeps it brief and business-like. Essentially, Draco is alive, and the aurors are investigating Poesy Potions.

Once, Ron visits with Rose, and they pull weeds together in the garden.

Otherwise, Harry moves around his house alone, cleaning the kitchen the muggle way, avoiding journalists, waiting for news, any news. He tries not to think about what he might do now that he’s quit the aurors. He tries not to think about much of anything, especially Malfoy with his back turned to him in his study, or sitting in the courtroom looking angry and lost, or passing a plate of fresh-baked pastries to him, or how fragile he must look lying in a bed in St. Mungo’s.

At midnight that first night, Harry bakes three sheets of biscuits.

The second night, he makes two pots of soup.

The third, he stays up till dawn creating tiny quiches—first mixing the dough by hand, then pressing it into tiny crusts, then filling them with savory custards.

They smell delicious, and they turn his stomach, and he can’t eat a single one.

Sometime after sunrise, he must have fallen asleep on the sofa in the drawing room because the next thing he knows, he is waking to noise and green light, and he surges to his feet, looking for the emergency.

His gaze skates down to the fire.

“Potter.”

“Malfoy. Hey. Hi.” He runs a hand through his hair and blinks the stickiness from his eyes, runs the back of his hand surreptitiously over his mouth to catch any drool.

It’s Malfoy in his floo, looking simultaneously annoyed and sheepish in the way only Malfoy can, and he’s not insulting him or accusing him of making up stories.

“You’re back.”

Malfoy sighs and rolls his eyes. “Yes. Brilliant as always. The DMLE’s finest in action.” He looks abruptly uncomfortable. “May I—are you going to invite me through or not?” He tries to sound haughty but comes off as uncertain.

“Yeah. Of course.” Harry steps back from the hearth. Then Malfoy is standing in his drawing room, tall and slim, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves. There are deep pouches under his eyes, but his hair is combed, his clothes clean and pressed.

“If you’re done staring, I’d appreciate a cup of tea.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. I was…sleeping,” he says, as if this is some explanation for…being a rubbish host, or staring at Draco like he’s been confunded, or…whatever. “I’ll just get that, then.”

He goes into the kitchen. Malfoy trails in a few minutes later, hands in his pockets. He leans a casual hip against the counter and takes in the kitchen. Harry is conscious of the sheets and sheets of tiny quiches along the countertop. The kitchen still smells of pastry and ham and butter.

Harry doesn’t know what to say or ask—nothing that isn’t self-evident, in any case. But the silence stretches on until he has to break it some way. As he hands Malfoy his tea, he says, “So they discharged you.”

Malfoy accepts the cup with a quick, grateful glance that does something instant and funny to Harry’s gut. He blows on the tea, makes a noise of approval, and sips. “Actually, I left against healer’s orders.”

Harry gives Malfoy a long slow blink, an expression he learned from Malfoy himself.

Malfoy’s gaze meets his and then cuts away. “They’d done all they could and were just using me as a test puff at that point.”

Harry leans his hip against the counter, too.

Still gazing into the distance, Malfoy says, “They took all of my research.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, heart sinking. “I’m sorry.”

“I assume they vanished it. Granger had copies of the manuscript she turned over to the Ministry. But no one’s supposed to know that.”

“I guess we’re no one, then.”

Malfoy glances at him with a twitch of his mouth. “No one, except for the important people in the room.”

By which Harry understands Malfoy means that Harry is the no one and Malfoy is the exception. Harry only smiles wanly in acknowledgment of the hit. He doesn’t mind it just now, because Malfoy is standing in his kitchen drinking tea like a civil person and talking about his lost research.

“Did you really bake all of those?”

“Hm?” He looks over his shoulder. “Oh. Yeah. Something like that. Here. Try a few.”

Malfoy looks dubious, but he accepts the plate Harry offers him. He regards the little quiches with a curled lip.

Harry pops a quiche into his own mouth as hooks a chair with his foot and sits at the table. Malfoy makes a noise.

“What?”

Malfoy glares at the little pastry in his fingers. Harry’s concern mounts, and he’s ready to ask if a spider got into the dough when Malfoy says, “I find myself in a difficult predicament.”

“Huh?”

Malfoy’s shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. “If I acknowledge how bloody good this is, it’ll inflate your head. But if I don’t, you’ll think me a bad guest.”

Harry laughs. “Come off it!” Then: “I already know you’re a bad guest.”

“Thanks,” Malfoy deadpans. “Potter, these…quiches…are atrocious.”

“Try again, Malfoy. That’d be more convincing if your mouth weren’t stuffed.”

Still chewing, Malfoy flashes him two fingers, but his cheeks redden. The rest of the quiches on his plate go the way of the first.

“Are we really doing this?” Malfoy says abruptly.

“Doing what?” Harry can’t help the wary tone in his voice. A barb of defensiveness disrupts his cozy, peaceful feeling.

Malfoy turns to him helplessly. “Standing in your kitchen—sitting in your kitchen—and eating hors d’oeuvres? Like—like civilized people?”

“Er…yeah? I guess. Do civilized people eat hors d’oeuvres, or are those plebeian, too?”

Malfoy lets out a bark of laughter. “This is mad. Are we—”

Harry waits for the rest.

“We’re not friends,” Malfoy says, and the way he says it—a little forceful, and a little incredulous, and a little like a question—makes Harry’s heart squish.

“I don’t know,” he says levelly. “You tell me.”

Malfoy runs a hand over the nape of his neck. “I have absolutely no idea.” Before Harry can speak, he continues: “They restored my memories. Most of them. Granger saw to that, apparently. I have no idea— No idea why she’d do that. That’s just the thing. I can’t remember much of the last three weeks. You, arriving on my doorstep. It’s mostly a blank after that.”

“All right,” Harry says, slowly, as he absorbs this, his voice calm despite the fact that his throat is squeezed tight. “But you flooed me, and you’re here. Did Hermione tell you I was helping you?”

“She mentioned something to the effect. Though I was busy being surprised that she was there, talking with me.” He frowns. “But not as surprised as I could have been.” The frown deepens. “Sometimes, it feels like I almost remember. It’s that sensation of having a word at the tip of one’s tongue. I—remember that we talked. Not what we talked about, only that we did. I remember—” he hesitates briefly, “—that I trusted you.”

Malfoy is looking away, so Harry can’t see his expression. But he can make out the bob of his Adam’s apple, the click of him swallowing.

“Oh.”

“Anyway,” Malfoy says briskly. “I wanted to say thank you. For your help. I understand you’re the one to thank for saving me from that hearing. Again.” He cuts Harry an annoyed look. “So thank you. This is not— I’ll have a more formal thank you, of course. But I wanted to tell you in person now, today. And thank you for your hospitality, of course. These—were actually quite good.” He nods his head once, with finality.

“Malfoy—hold on.” Before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s out of his chair and has gripped Malfoy’s elbow. Malfoy looks at it, and Harry lets go. Harry shakes his fingers out at his side. Up close, Harry can see the strain around Malfoy’s eyes, the paleness of his skin. It’s nearly translucent, like the skim milk Aunt Petunia had tried to get Dudley to drink, though he refused, and so Harry had been made to drink it.

“Do you really not remember?” Harry asks. His voice is hoarse, low. His face heats at the sound of it.

Malfoy sneers. “What? Holding hands? Singing songs? No, I don’t. And I think I rather prefer that. Much as you loathe someone forgetting you, I’m sure.”

Harry scowls. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

Malfoy’s face goes cool and blank. “As I said, I just wanted to thank you. I’ll be on my way.”

But as he reaches for the floo powder in the drawing room, he pauses, looking down, gaze unfocused. He looks at Harry, and Harry can’t read his expression.

“I could share my memories with you,” Harry says, before he realizes he even planned to say it.

The expression sharpens. “What?”

Harry gathers himself up. “I could share my memories with you of the last couple of weeks. Help fill in the gaps.”

“Your memories are not my memories, Potter.”

“They’re not. But at least you’d have an idea of what’s happened.”

“Spent that much time together, have we?”

Harry’s jaw tightens. “Enough time.”

High spots of pink appear on Malfoy’s cheeks. “Let me see if I can get this straight. You’re suggesting I use legilimency on you.”

“No.” The suggestion sends an immediate lance of fear and nausea through him. Malfoy flinches, and Harry says again, in a more even tone, “No.”

Eyes cold and opaque, Malfoy crosses his arms. “What, then?”

Harry’s mind spins. Then, with confidence and relief: “The pensieve.”

“The pensieve. You have a pensieve?”

“Yes.”

Malfoy scrutinizes him.

“They’re just memories, Malfoy. They happened to you, too. Or are you afraid about what you’ll learn?”

Malfoy scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Really? What are we? Fifteen?”

Harry watches him with his own arms crossed and doesn’t respond.

A sigh. “Fine, then.”

“Fine?”

“Fine. I’ll watch your memories. But only because I need any insight I can get into…this disastrous situation.”

“All right,” Harry says with a nod, and he turns, almost weak with the relief that goes through him. He tries not to examine that, nor the fact that the thought of Malfoy forgetting the last three weeks bothers him so deeply.

Malfoy follows him up the stairs and hangs back as Harry pulls the pensieve out of its cabinet. The liquid is pearly with a memory, and he stares at it until he remembers the memory of the letters the Ministry sent Malfoy. Instead of removing it, he decides to leave it in. He adds the rest of his memories in with it: from first arriving on Malfoy’s doorstep till the end of the court hearing. Maybe he should leave that particular memory out, but he thinks Malfoy ought to know what he was made to believe and say.

Finally, once they are all transferred and in order, Harry looks up. Malfoy is leaning on the back of a chair, examining him. The expression on his face is somewhere between a sneer and fascination.

“Right,” he says. “You ready? I figured—” And here, Harry’s voice goes a little breathless, “—I figured we’d go together. That way, I can explain anything you need.”

Malfoy pushes away from the chair, rolling his eyes again, like Harry is making demands of him. “Fine. Whatever.”

Harry can’t help the small smile that pulls at his lips. “Come on, then. You’ve used one before?”

“Yes I’ve used a pensieve before. Merlin, Potter. Can you get anymore patronizing?”

“Would you really like to know?”

Malfoy mutters something that sounds an awful lot like, “Unbelievable.”

“After you,” Harry says, with a gesture toward the opalescent liquid.

Malfoy scowls, but Harry catches only a flash of the expression before it disappears into the pensieve. Harry braces himself against the edge of the table and plunges in after Malfoy.

…And tumbles into the bright morning outside Malfoy’s cottage. What possessed him to begin with this memory, he isn’t sure. As the scene plays out, showing an increasingly agitated (and glittery) past-Harry shouting threats and insults, Harry wants to sink into the floor. Next to him, Malfoy stands stiffly and watches without a word, without a twitch of his expression, and that only makes it worse. At past-Harry’s shout of “dickhead!”, Malfoy raises a cool eyebrow at him. Harry steadfastly ignores it, willing the memory to change soon. It does.

This time, past-Harry shows past-Malfoy the FORCE notice, and beside him the present Malfoy’s shoulders stiffen. Harry is uncomfortably aware of how he’d shoved his way into Malfoy’s home. When past-Harry glances at the Ministry letters and thrusts them back at past-Malfoy, accusing him of forgery, Harry clears his throat. “I looked at them later in the pensieve.”

Malfoy slides a cold look at him. But the expression on his face a few minutes later—when past-Harry asks about the Poesy research and begins to show shock and interest—is different. Unreadable.

They watch as past-Harry researches Malfoy’s records at the Ministry. Harry did not consciously choose to include this memory, but the magic must have pulled it in. Unfortunately.

“Did you—take my picture, Potter? Did you put the photograph from my Ministry record into your pocket?”

“Er.”

The scene changes again, saving Harry from having to answer, and they watch as past-Harry notices the Poesy Potions CEO cross the Ministry atrium.

Malfoy leans forward. “No fucking way.”

Then past-Harry is sitting with Hermione consulting her on how to proceed with Malfoy’s case. He hadn’t specifically chosen to include this memory either. He remembers something Malfoy said days ago—that Harry can’t make a decision without her. Malfoy says nothing about that now. Harry shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

“I served you a lot of tea,” he thinks he hears Malfoy murmur, just before past-Harry admits he’s wrong and he and past-Malfoy get into a short argument.

Then past-Malfoy and Hermione are leaving Harry in the sitting room to look through Malfoy’s research.

And

Hermione is sitting at Malfoy’s table, they’ve just written the editorial for the Prophet, and past-Malfoy is praising her strategic thinking.

And

“I’m not backing out of this,” past-Harry says to past-Draco.

And

Everything.

It all plays out around them, including Harry’s compulsive cooking for Malfoy and even Harry’s sleepless nights over the weekend as he worried about the hearing. (How had those ended up in the pensieve?) His shock that the hearing had been postponed, his anger that Hermione and Malfoy hadn’t told him about the postponement, him sitting alone in his house with shaking hands.

Helplessly, Harry watches Malfoy take it all in with increasing silence and stillness.

In the memory, the two of them drink and play exploding snap, and Harry winces. It’s so obvious now. His own movement had been thick-fingered and fumbling, and he was hardly looking at the cards. He was looking at Malfoy’s hands.

Past-Malfoy asks past-Harry, “Why did you come back that day? Why did you really come?”

The rest of it is no more than a blur to Harry. Hills and Bate visiting, Malfoy’s back turned to him in anger. Hermione’s call. Malfoy’s empty house. The alarming and embarrassing scene of Harry lying in bed surrounded in the blue glow of the breathing charm.

Malfoy standing trial.

Harry feels sick all over again at that. He sneaks a surreptitious look at Malfoy and finds him still as stone and pale.

It ends on Harry moving around his house, restless, waiting for news. That scene has a disconcerting echo to it, being as it happened so recently. Does he really look that pasty and unkempt?

Then they are standing above the pensieve once more, and Harry is looking at the room through his own eyes.

Malfoy’s gaze remains trained on the surface of the liquid. Harry is half-stunned, himself. Seen like this, his feelings for Malfoy are obvious.

“So,” he says. “That’s what you missed.”

At his voice, Malfoy looks up, though his eyes remain unfocused. Calmly, Harry gathers the swirls of memory from the pensieve and returns them to his temple before he can decide he doesn’t want them. All of a sudden, he’s done with everything. He’s tired and heartsick and he just wants to be alone again, preferably buried under the covers in his bed.

“Thanks,” Draco says faintly.

Harry sighs. “Come on. I’ll make you some chamomile tea.”

Back in the kitchen, Malfoy sits at the table, docile as a puffskein, while Harry sets the pot to boil. He takes the proffered cup with a murmur of thanks and gazes at the wall while he holds it near his mouth. Harry sips his own but mostly wants something warm to hold. He wonders if he should be concerned about Malfoy, but honestly, he doesn’t care. He’s far too frustrated with himself, and he is over this entire situation. He wishes—suddenly and fervently—for drinks at the pub after work, the drained but satisfied feeling of accomplishment following a day in the field, and the tingle of residual magic. He wants his old life back so sharply he could shout. He’s been living as a ghost for months. Seeing himself from the outside in the memories, he almost didn’t recognize himself.

That’s not to mention the other thing the memories revealed to him, which he needs time and space to examine—or simply bury.

“So what the fuck is wrong with your lungs?”

“Hm?”

Malfoy has come out of his stare and has fixed Harry with lucid grey eyes.

Harry resists rolling his own eyes. Of course Malfoy would home in on his weakness. But he should probably be glad it’s that and not Harry’s other apparent weakness he’s focused on. Maybe it wasn’t as obvious as he thought. Maybe Harry only noticed because he knows what to watch for.

“I took a curse.”

Malfoy does roll his eyes. “I figured that much. I’m just—surprised, frankly. I thought you were too good for that.”

Harry blinks. “Thanks. I think. There wasn’t much chance of dodging it, considering I jumped in the way.”

“You what?”

It sounds utterly mad to say it now. “I jumped in the way of the curse. It was aimed for my partner. Alex.”

“You used your body as a shield for your auror partner.” Malfoy speaks slowly, as if trying to get all the words correct.

Harry raises an eyebrow.

“Of course you did.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Harry says, but there isn’t much heat in his voice. He’s had time to think about the entire incident. Too much time. And he’s heard possibly every version of chastisement and rant. “He has a wife and a newborn son.” And I have no one to leave behind, he doesn’t add. “I acted on instinct.”

“You…have heard of a shield charm, correct?”

Harry releases a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, Malfoy. It was a close thing. The shield charm might not have gone up in time, or it might not have been strong enough. I didn’t recognize the curse, but it felt strong—and I did the only thing I knew would be 100% effective.”

He doesn’t know why he’s defending himself to Malfoy. Maybe out of habit, or maybe because he bristles at the thought of Malfoy thinking him an idiot—not that it matters, and not that Malfoy would think anything besides that anyway.

The truth is, a part of him regrets the decision. Sometimes, in his darker moments, he thinks he ought to have let the curse hit Alex as intended, or at least tried the shield charm. Then he immediately feels guilty and pulls back the thought. But it always lives there, lodged beneath his heart, like something small and flat and hard-shelled that lives beneath a rock. It’s not like ending up in a desk job would have hurt Alex in the long run. It would have got him out of the field; it would have been better for his family. And Harry could still be out there, doing the one thing he’s good at. The one thing he’s useful at.

“So you used yourself in lieu of a protection charm to save your vulnerable young partner, and then what happened?”

Harry sighs. “The curse messed up my magical core. It was all tangled up with my organs, so my magic was strangling me. The healers disentangled it from most everything but my lungs. They couldn’t get that bit free without outright killing me. So now my magical core is wound up with my lungs, and that’s the way it will stay.”

Malfoy scrutinizes him, tapping his long fingers on the tea cup. “So when you cast powerful spells, you can’t breathe.”

“That’s the long and short of it.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Thanks, Malfoy. As brutally on point as always.”

“You’re welcome.” The bastard has got a small smile on his face.

Harry realizes he’s smiling back. In fact, he’s been holding Malfoy’s gaze for longer than is socially acceptable. He looks away.

“Why did you come back to my house to hand-deliver that letter?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Harry takes in a deep, slow breath. What the hell? he thinks, and says, “Because you were all self-righteous about your cause, and I was intrigued by that.”

“Self-righteous?”

“Sure. Indignant, fired up.”

Malfoy bristles. “I was not—”

Harry smiles serenely.

Malfoy’s shoulders drop. “I resent you, truly.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” Harry sips his tea.

Malfoy regards him with narrowed eyes. “You don’t though, do you?”

“Don’t what?”

“Resent me.”

Harry shrugs. “Resentment would mean I care one way or another.”

Malfoy smiles a grim little smile. “And you do. Care.”

“Whatever your ego needs to hear, Malfoy.”

But Malfoy doesn’t rise to the bait, only scrutinizes Harry. Harry gazes back, raising an eyebrow and ignoring the quickening beat of his heart.

“In fact, I think you care a lot.”

Harry glances heavenward. “I’m tired, Malfoy. Now you know what went on.” A thought occurs to him. “How is your house being secured?”

“They’ve stationed a patrol.”

“No,” Harry cuts in, all but rising from his seat.

Malfoy continues coolly: “But considering the DMLE had their hand in this, or at least the attempt to discredit me, I’m not actually staying at home. None of my research is there, anyway. They stripped that rather neatly, as you saw.”

“Yeah, I did,” Harry says, hotly.

At this, Malfoy gets a puzzling little smirk, and Harry says, “So where are you staying?”

Malfoy looks as if he is about to say something Harry won’t like, but instead, he says, “Malfoy Manor, if you must know.”

“I don’t, really. But thanks.” Actually, he does. He really does. His mind is already spinning through considerations: the manor will be well-warded, but on the other hand, his enemies will expect him to go there. “Will you be there with anyone else?”

“No, Potter. I’ll be by myself. My mother is on the continent. But no one needs to know that.” There is an outright speculative look on Malfoy’s face now. And all right. That’s enough.

Harry stands. “This has been great and all, but I think I need some proper sleep now. In a bed, and not on my sofa.”

Malfoy rises, more slowly. He’s still looking at Harry like Harry’s a puzzle to which he’s just found the last pieces, only he doesn’t know how they fit. “Of course. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.” Without thinking, he uses a charm to collect the teacups and put them into the sink, and that little bit of magic takes his breath. Fuck, he hates this. Back to square one. Again. Malfoy is still watching him, this time with a different sort of expression, and Harry says, “Don’t say a thing.”

Malfoy only raises an eyebrow, and Harry feels relief, just relief, when he then turns in the direction of the drawing room. Harry trails behind, ignoring the way the straight, narrow shoulders fill his shirt and the way the trousers fit snugly against the slim waist.

Yes, just go.

In front of the hearth, Malfoy pauses. “You know, Potter. It’s not a bad thing that you care.”

“That’s nice.”

The pale lips tug into a smirk. “It’s all right that you don’t resent me. That you cook me food and stay up all night with worry. Will you stay up all night, worrying about me all alone at the manor?”

“Fuck you, Malfoy.” Though Harry laughs, despite himself. He covers his face. Groans. “Oh, my god. You weren’t supposed to see that. Just—fuck off, will you, and leave me to die in peace.”

Harry doesn’t hear Malfoy approach, maybe because of the blood rushing in his ears. But seconds later, cool fingers grasp the edges of his hands and pull them away from his face. Gently, though. Tentatively. Harry didn’t know that Malfoy’s touch could be so unsure.

Harry knows his face is red—it must be, if he can feel the tips of his ears burning—and he doesn’t want to open his eyes, but they open on their own. Malfoy regards Harry with an odd expression. The mocking edge is gone, replaced with something softer, a little open, a little wondering. Harry drinks it in, mesmerized.

Malfoy lowers their hands to waist level. If he moves his thumb a few centimeters, he’d be able to feel Harry’s pulse jumping in his wrist.

But he lets his hands go and steps back, crossing his arms. His expression clouds with a shrewd look. A corner of his mouth quirks up, cool and cruel. “Just what wasn’t I supposed to see, Potter?”

Harry’s hands are shaking. He rubs his damp palms over his trouser legs. “You arse. You can’t help prodding a sore spot, can you?”

One supercilious eyebrow raises. “Sore spot,” Malfoy deadpans.

Harry isn’t sure how he feels. Not—angry. A little sick, maybe. Annoyed that he’s trembling. Frustrated and confused with Malfoy. He runs a hand through his hair, clenches his fist at the back of his head. He takes a deep breath. “I’m really tired, Malfoy.”

Mafloy’s gaze follows the movement of Harry’s hand from his head to his hip. “You’re nervous.”

Harry huffs an incredulous laugh.

“You are. Harry Potter, nervous. What do I do with this?”

Harry draws himself up, crosses his arms. “Nothing, Malfoy. You leave.”

“Do I?”

Merlin, give Harry strength.

“You haven’t asked me yet,” Malfoy says.

Harry heaves a sigh. “Asked what?”

“If I’d like to stay. Since you’re obviously so worried about my well-being.”

Harry stares. Malfoy gazes back, calmly, a reflection of Harry with his arms crossed at his own chest.

“Malfoy,” he says slowly. “Would you like to stay in the guest room?”

“I don’t know, Potter. Last I truly remember, you were beating down my front door in your finest auror robes.”

“Well, thanks to you, I’m no longer an auror.”

“You— What?”

Malfoy looks honestly startled.

Oh. Maybe that hadn’t been in the memories. “Yeah. I quit. The entire investigation into you was a farce. I didn’t fancy being a stooge for the Ministry.”

“Oh.” Malfoy blinks. The expression of cool mocking slips. He turns toward the floo. “Okay. I’ll be going now.”

“Malfoy?” He strides to his side. “What’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing. You asked me to fuck off. I’m fucking off.”

“No. Something else is going on. I can’t— You’re impossible, you know that?” Harry can hear the helplessness in his own voice. Then, not understanding why, he says, “Stay.”

“What?”

“Stay. Here. I’m not asking.”

“Oh ho! Is that so?”

Harry slips in front of Malfoy, blocking his way to the floo. The fire warms his backside. “Yep.”

Malfoy scrutinizes him.

Harry gives him a grin. His heart races recklessly. He holds out a hand. Malfoy glances at it like he’s never seen one before. Harry squeezes and releases his empty fist, beckoning, challenging.

Malfoy snorts. “And just what is this supposed to accomplish?” But he places his hand in Harry’s.

Harry shrugs. “Nothing, really.” He twines their fingers together, and Malfoy lets him. Their palms feel good, fitted like that. Harry squeezes once, gently. Malfoy stares down at them. Swallows.

“Stay,” Harry says. “I’ll protect you.”

Malfoy snorts. “Fucking Gryffindors.” But his smile quickly drops from his face. He looks uncertain.

Raising his eyebrows, Harry says, “No jokes about my inadequacy to protect anyone right now? No references to my recent hospital visit? Have I rendered you speechless?”

Malfoy laughs, once, startled and open. He tugs Harry closer. “Watch it. You’ll catch on fire.”

“Huh?” Harry glances behind himself. “Oh.”

They’re standing close now. Malfoy does not step back. Harry slips his thumb to Malfoy’s pulse point. It flutters beneath his touch.

Malfoy’s gaze drops from Harry’s mouth to their joined hands.

“I wondered if I was imagining this.”

“Imagining what?”

“This.” He lifts their hands a little. “I felt…something I didn’t before. It didn’t make sense because I couldn’t remember.”

“And now?”

He draws an unsteady breath. “I think I get it.”

“Then maybe you can enlighten me because I’m still a little in the dark.”

A small smirk. “That’s because you’re not a man of words, Harry. Let me speak in your language.”

But the smirk drops away when he looks at Harry. He hesitates. Harry raises a hand, brushes his jaw. Malfoy’s breath hitches. He leans in, grey eyes guarded, but Harry doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, and so Malfoy closes the space and kisses him.

And he’s right, the smarmy bastard. It really is rather enlightening.

Chapter Text

Two weeks following the hearing of Draco Malfoy on 16 April 2013, the Ministry of Magic initiated an internal investigation.

Harry is happy not to be a part of it.

In a parallel investigation, three employees of Poesy Potions swore under veritaserum that they were involved in the plot to obliviate and frame Draco Malfoy for the crime of releasing a toxic byproduct into the muggle water supply.

No staff members of the Ministry of Magic have thus far been implicated in the plot.

The investigations are ongoing.

In June 2013, Draco, Harry, and Hermione founded the Muggle Justice Watchgroup.

As their first and primary goal, they continue to seek justice for the men and women affected by Poesy Potion’s pollution.

No one will ever know the true extent of the damage done by Poesy Potions.

A countless number of squibs born to muggle parents will never fathom the crime done to them.

***

Harry walks up the path to Draco’s cottage. He’s in the mood to go on foot. He’s been thinking, and the air is sweet today, the sun warm.

The cottage door opens for him as easily as his own. He takes off his shoes and drops them next to Draco’s neat line of brogues. He follows the smells and sounds of cooking into the kitchen.

A flurry of plates and utensils and vegetables swirl around the kitchen. Draco stands in the center of the storm, hair tousled, eyes wild. It takes him a minute to notice Harry leaning in the doorway with his mouth turned up in a lopsided grin.

“What took you so long?” he snaps.

Harry pushes his hands deeper into his pockets and shrugs. “Would you like a hand?”

“It’s too late now. I’ve basically done everything.”

As if to emphasize the fact, a teetering stack of pots and bowls clangs into the sink. Draco shoots a stream of soapy water at it.

Harry rolls his eyes and steps calmly through the storm of cooking implements to collect a couple platters of hors d'oeuvres. He smiles to note that one platter is heaped with sausage rolls, Ron’s favorite. Delicate canapes with puff pastry and slivers of salmon and fresh dill and white cheese line the other.

In the sitting room, the curtains have been tied back, and bright sunlight fills the space. Harry activates the table’s extension charm, and it dutifully expands. Harry thinks it might be enough space for all of the food.

“It’s just dinner with Hermione and Ron,” he says, returning to the kitchen. The cooking storm has ebbed. Draco has finger-combed his hair and straightened his collar. He pauses in chopping herbs to shoot Harry a harassed look.

Draco and Hermione have some kind of news, and Hermione is bringing Ron and Rose over for it. It must be good news, so Harry isn’t concerned, but this is Ron’s first time over, and Harry realizes this will be the first time Draco has met him since Hogwarts.

“Hey,” he says, stepping up behind Draco and wrapping his arms around his waist. Draco remains stiff and continues to thunk, thunk, thunk the knife. Harry presses a kiss to the corner of his neck.

“If you keep that up, I am going to chop a finger.”

“That won’t be my fault,” Harry says, breathing over Draco’s skin, and Draco shivers.

Someone clears their throat delicately from the kitchen threshold. Harry and Draco spring apart. Hermione stands there, looking contrite and amused. Mostly amused.

“The door opened for us, and no one answered when we called, so we thought we’d come in,” she says.

Other voices approach from down the hall, one low and one high and sweet. Ron appears a moment later, followed by a wide-eyed Rose.

“Pies!” she says as she spots the two cooling in the corner.

Harry glances at Draco to share a grin and finds him pale but smiling.

Dinner goes well. The sausage rolls are a hit with Ron and Rose. Hermione cuts her daughter off after two, but she can’t save Ron. He barely has room for the chicken, and he begs off the salad completely.

Harry nudges Draco’s foot under the table and gives him a wink. He thought he was being subtle, but Hermione raises an eyebrow at him. Later, when he leans in to bump shoulders with Draco and ask if he’d like more wine, he glances up to find Ron giving him an appraising look.

“All right!” Hermione says. “Draco and I have an announcement to make.”

“You’re getting engaged?” Harry says.

Draco kicks his ankle, hard.

“Ow! Shit!”

“Uncle Harry!”

“No. We’re not getting engaged, thank you very much. But we will be coauthors. Well, we are coauthors, now. Look!”

She hands over a slim volume that reads Annals of Practical Potions. Their article is the first listed, and is prefaced by a letter from the editor.

“’The Sociomagical Impact of Large Vat Potions Production: A Retrospective,’” Harry reads.

While Draco slices pie, Ron asks Harry to show him the garden. Harry reckons Ron isn’t actually interested in seeing Draco’s plants, so he’s not surprised when Ron pulls him behind a screen of hops and says, “Something’s going on between you and Malfoy, isn’t it?”

“Something” is about the right word for it. Harry’s not sure what else to call the thing that has him spending half his nights in Draco’s bed, nearly every morning in his kitchen, and all of his evenings in the sitting room with him, or in his study while Draco pores over his books and Harry tries to come up to speed on his research (but mostly succeeds in dozing).

Harry bites the corner of his mouth. It’s not like he’s trying to hide this…“something.” Hermione already knows; well, if she didn’t before, he’s sure she does after this evening. It’s just that this thing between him and Draco simply…is. He can’t define it yet. Maybe he feels a bit like it’ll shatter if he tries to hold it too hard.

He nods to Ron. “Yeah.”

Ron presses his lips together. Harry feels his neck heat under his friend’s regard. Then Ron nods. “All right. But if you need me to help move the body, let me know.”

Harry laughs, half in relief.

Shortly after pie, Ron heads home with Rose. Hermione and Draco head up to Draco’s study to go through some letters or draft some rebuttal or other.

A while later, as Harry sits in front of the fire with a bottle of cider, he hears the creak of the stairs and familiar footsteps.

“I thought I’d find you in here,” Draco says.

Harry tilts his head back against the chair and gives Draco an upside-down smile. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself. I thought I’d come check on you.”

“Remembered I exist, did you?”

“More like the silence makes me nervous. Makes me wonder what you’re up to.”

Harry lifts the cider bottle. “Enjoying some alone time.”

“Hmm.” Draco gives him a mock-suspicious look, but his smile is fond. Harry wonders if Draco knows just how fond.

“Next week is going to be busy,” Harry says. He has to look away from Draco before the expression on the other man’s face opens him up and Draco can see all of him.

“Yeah.”

Fingers card softly through Harry’s hair. He lets his eyes drift shut. Hermione thought it would be a good idea for them to make a tour of wizarding institutions across the UK. Mostly secondary education institutions, but Hogwarts is on the list, as well as a potions research collective. Harry will be the main speaker. He doesn’t care for the speaking engagements—he would rather be nodding off at the kitchen table as Draco and Hermione go off on another tangent—but a lot of people do show up at them. They show up to see him, but who cares if he’s the draw, as long as they stay to listen to what he says?

As exhausting as the speaking engagements are, they give him a feeling of strength and hope—he feels something long asleep stir within him. The fighting spirit. A sense of purpose and justice.

But, well, they are tiring. And Harry still doesn’t like the publicity. Draco seems to understand that now. He hasn’t said as much, but the sympathy is there in the brush of his fingers over Harry’s temple.

“I still think Hermione should have scheduled them over the course of the month,” Draco says.

“Nah. It’ll be all right. At least it’ll be over and done with, and then we don’t need to worry about traveling again until…”

“Next month,” Draco puts in.

“Next month,” Harry sighs.

Draco smirks. Then he says, “I have something for you.”

Harry leans his head back to meet Draco’s eye. Their mouths are whisper-close. “Oh yeah?”

“Mmm. I have it right here.”

Harry blinks as Draco hands him a slim bound volume. It’s a copy of the Annals of Potions Research with his and Hermione’s article. “Oh.”

“What? Were you expecting something else?”

He thinks Draco is teasing, but this is the part he’s still unsure about. This is where he falters. His mouth goes dry. It’s like they’re dancing, and his body wants to move in a certain direction, but he doesn’t know if Draco will move there with him. He stares into grey eyes and doesn’t know what to say.

Draco’s eyes darken. “Hey.” Strong, slender fingers cup the back of Harry’s head. The mocking expression flickers, and for a moment, Harry sees uncertainty like his own reflected back to him.

“This,” Harry breathes, and raises a hand to draw Draco closer.

A little while later, Draco whispers, “Stay tonight?” and Harry hums in approval. “Good,” Draco says.

Then a little while after that, Draco pulls away. His lips are red and his cheeks are pink and his hair sticks up in attractive clumps. “Hermione’s going to wonder where I am.”

Harry relaxes back against his seat, heart racing. “Believe me, Hermione is not wondering.”

Draco snorts. He straightens his shirt. “I’ll leave you to your alone time.”

“Fine. I have a magazine to read.”

“Peer-reviewed journal,” Draco corrects. “And—” He cranes his head over the cover of the publication as if checking that it’s right-side up. “Just making sure.”

Harry holds up two fingers.

Draco Malfoy, reads the name on the article, next to Hermione’s, and the sight of it on the page warms his heart.

“Hey. Draco?” He reaches for Draco’s hand and grasps it before the other man can pull away.

“Hm?”

Harry squeezes his hand. “Good work,” he whispers.

In the end, Hermione does wonder where Draco disappeared to, though her response when she finds them isn’t one of surprise. She only complains that they’re blocking the floo. But that’s all right, Harry thinks. She can apparate home.

“Draco Malfoy,” he murmurs, smiling at the little grunt of pleased surprise this elicits, and pulls the body atop his closer.