Work Text:
Harry shivered under Malfoy’s stern glare. It had been a long time since he’d been on the receiving end of it—he’d forgotten how those narrowed eyes could feel like a dagger in the chest.
“Start from the beginning,” Malfoy advised coldly. “Where were you on Friday, February the fifth?”
Harry glanced at the towering two-way mirror that made up the right wall of the interrogation room. The weight of unseen observers hung heavy in the air. The weight of the shackles around his wrists was worse.
“Potter,” Malfoy snapped. “Answer the question.”
Harry tried to pull himself together—it wasn’t as if he’d never been in an interrogation room before. He straightened. “Southend-on-Sea.”
“Southend-on-Sea.” Malfoy’s tone suggested suspicion. “Who were you with?”
Under that sharp gaze, Harry promptly forgot every name he’d ever known. He paused, contemplating plausible people. “Seamus,” he said eventually. “Seamus Finnegan. And—Susan Bones?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“Susan and Seamus,” Harry said soberly.
“And the three of you went to Southend-on-Sea on Friday the fifth because…?”
Harry glanced at the mirror again. It revealed nothing but the bright, blank, brutal room reflected back at him. He shrugged. “Fancied a day off.”
Malfoy made a show of penning something on the parchment placed on the table between them.
“And you arrived in Southend-on-Sea at what time?”
“We Apparated around eleven. Approximately.”
“What was the first thing you did when you got there?”
Harry glared. Malfoy met his gaze with a raised eyebrow—his expression bordered on bored.
“The first thing I did when I got there? I bought a box of Bertie Bott’s Beans.”
Exasperation flickered onto Malfoy’s face. It was the faintest flash of frustration, but Harry felt a flare of triumph. Malfoy wanted to waste Harry’s time by dragging him here and questioning him, did he? Well, two could play at that game.
“I had a purple pickled pepper flavoured one,” Harry added. “And one that tasted a bit like bitter butter. That one was better.”
There was a strangled squawk and a brisk shushing sound from behind the two-way mirror. Harry grinned.
“Then we went down to the coast.”
“Stop it,” Malfoy said.
“The three of us split up. Seamus—”
“Stop.”
“Seamus started selling seashells by the seashore,” Harry persisted. “But Susan needed to sit down, so she took a stroll to the shops across the street.”
Malfoy had the nerve to look betrayed. But Harry was the one who had been frog-marched to the fourth floor and forced into the interrogation room. Harry was the one sullenly shifting, shackled to the stiff suspects’ seat.
“Don’t you want to ask me which shop Susan stopped at?” he asked.
“I sense you’re about to tell me.”
“It was a shoe shop. So she could sit on the shoe stools.”
The thrill of forcing Malfoy’s firm self-control to fray had never faded. Over the years, Malfoy had got better at hiding it, but Harry had got better at reading it. Back at school, Harry would never have noticed Malfoy’s jaw jutting as he bit the inside of his lip, nor the way he hid his hands under the desk to flex his thin fingers and thumbs into wrathful fists. But Harry knew him better now. He knew that the way Malfoy turned to the two-way mirror was a tacit petition for help.
But the mirror remained motionless, and Malfoy’s once-wintry voice was weary when he whirled to Harry and said, “So, to summarise, Susan was sitting in a Southend shoe shop, Seamus was selling seashells by the Southend seashore. Where were you positioned in all this?”
Harry thought about it. “I was on the pier,” he said. “Watching walruses.”
“Walruses.”
“White ones. They’re supposed to be good luck, according to Luna. It’s a bit of a stupid superstition, honestly, but at least the sun wasn’t shining.” He propped his elbows on the table and leaned forwards as if sharing a secret. “For watching white walruses, wetter weather is better weather.”
Malfoy gazed at him, open-mouthed. “Could—” He swallowed. A flush threatened the flawlessness of his fine throat. “Could anyone else confirm your presence in Southend-on-Sea that day?”
“Oh, sure,” Harry said. “There was a person perched on the pier with me.”
“Magic or Muggle?”
“Dunno,” Harry said. “But he kept checking his wristwatch. It had a little flashy, frilly flag on it. Red, with a white cross.”
Malfoy didn’t take the bait. “Any further details about his appearance? Height, build, hair colour, complexion, clothing?”
“That’s the flag of Switzerland, right?” Harry asked innocently. “Though the watch was a bit grubby.”
“What time were you with him? Was anybody else around?”
“I suppose you just have to find a man who watches white walruses in wet weather and wears an unwashed Swiss wristwatch.”
Malfoy stood suddenly. A thrill trilled through Harry as Malfoy towered over him.
“And after you left the pier?” Malfoy asked through gritted teeth. “What did you do then?”
“Well, we were at the seaside, so we had to eat some fresh flash-fried thick fish and chips. Then we caught some clean clams and crammed them into some clean cream cans. And then…” He fought to keep the smile off his face. “When we walked back to the Apparition Point, there was a shrill shrieking sound coming from a side passage, so we investigated.”
“A shrill shrieking sound? Can you be more specific?”
“It was seriously strange. Not sure I could do it justice.”
Malfoy forced a thin, frosty smile. “Try.”
“Well, it was such a shocking sound. It was like a person was pointedly expressing displeasure to a pretentious prick on patrol from the Magical Law Enforcement department.” He looked at Malfoy meaningfully. “So I suppose if I had to paint a specific picture, I’d say … it had the horrifying air of a cry of an Auror’s prostitute.”
Malfoy’s stone-faced façade shattered again. “What are you talking about?”
“You know,” Harry said, and couldn’t stop the smirk from spilling out. “An Auror whore horror roar aura.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Harry—”
A loud chime sounded, signalling the end of the interrogation. Harry grinned at Draco, who threw his hands in the air.
“That was absolutely nothing to do with me,” Draco said loudly to the two-way mirror. “I want that on record.”
The mirror shimmered and vanished, revealing Head Auror Robards and a row of Auror trainees, who didn’t seem to know whether or not they were allowed to laugh.
“Poor show, Auror Potter,” Robards said. His prominent salt-and-pepper eyebrows were pinched in disapproval, but Harry just shrugged.
“Sometimes suspects are stubborn. No sense in showing them an easy confession.”
One of the trainees squeaked.
“Besides,” Harry said, shaking off the suspects’ seat’s shackles and standing, “I said this was a waste of time. I said I didn’t want to be involved in it.”
“Your partner volunteered both of you for the demonstration.”
“I know he did,” Harry said, narrowing his eyes at Draco. “Because my partner has been desperate to see his face on an Employee of the Month sign for the last decade and refuses to accept that shagging his colleague disqualified him seven shitting years ago.”
“Yes, because there’s nothing in the Guidebook that says we shouldn’t, I checked—”
“I remember, you stopped topping halfway through to make sure—”
“Gentlemen,” Robards snapped. “I’ll thank you to take this marital spat out of my interrogation room. Moreover”—his moustache twitched in a way that sent shivers sliding sharply down Harry’s spine—“lamentably, Mr Malfoy has managed to make a minor Auror error: although Potter supposes erroneously that your union forces you to be unfit for the trophy, the unfortunate fact is that the persistent existence of the incentive of Employee of the Month is a monumental misconception.”