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Harry reclined against a cool stone wall. It was his first reprieve after hours and hours of unfruitful conferences with fiercely agitated revolutionaries and faux-piqued board members arguing about who was right much rather than approaching one another, let alone working on joint solutions.
Next to him sat Drake. It was difficult to describe which role that man played in Harry’s life. To outsiders, Drake was Harry’s counsellor, an employee. To Ron and Hermione, he was another close friend. But to Harry himself, it was far more complicated. He was his closest confidant when he tried to unravel abstruse regulations of the Ministry, he was a shoulder to lean on whenever the world felt like too much, and Drake was someone who, quite simply put, made him feel butterflies in his stomach. If only the wizard wasn’t so elusive! Whenever the two of them stayed late in Harry’s office or whenever one after work pint turned into another, Drake had one or the other reason to make a hasty departure. Usually, Harry wasn’t too thick to understand an unspoken no.
But, in his defence, the signals Drake sent were . . . mixed.
“Come here,” said Drake, turning slightly towards Harry. The gesture was clear and familiar: he was offering to massage Harry’s shoulders. And as always it felt heavenly.
They sat in comfortable silence for a while. Drake’s fingers pressed into all the right places as Harry was contemplating his poor luck in the love game, pondering if he should put his hand on Drake’s denim-clad leg next to him.
Until he did, even more determinedly as he planned, and it was even more effective as he hoped.
Drake stroked through Harry's hair, the feeling made his eyes flutter shut as he turned and leaned in for a kiss. It wasn’t the first time, even though Harry’s heart raced like it was.
They were lost in the moment until—
“I’m so sorry,” Drake said, shoving Harry away with quite the same determined force they shared before. “I forgot about Aunt Margaret—she needs me for her weekly—”
Promptly, Drake stood. “Don’t worry, I’ll be in tomorrow so we can discuss the press conference, and—”
His spine twisted in an unnatural way. It stretched him beyond his physique, and it compressed his outlines into a much narrower shape.
“—‘m sorry, see you then.”
Gathering all his courage, Harry caught Drake’s wrist. “Wait, please, I beg you. I meant to talk to you about . . . us. See, I keep thinking that—”
“I have to leave!”
“—you avoid me whenever we are about to—”
“I really have to leave, Harry, I’m—” Drake gulped, and Harry sat up, alarmed. But before there was anything to do, before he could even ask about his friend’s well-being, Drake’s whole body contorted again. In a spasm, his wand scattered to the floor before he left.
It took Harry days to decide upon any action, days that were spent waiting, looking at doors in the hopes of Drake to reappear. Days spent sending owls after him and sitting alone, wondering what he’s done wrong.
While Harry held Drake’s wand in his hands, feeling how astonishingly familiar the magic was, and well it responded to him, he also began to accept that the spasms he saw were most certainly the symptoms of a Polyjuiced person retaking their original shape.
Hermione was sceptical. “If they’ve Transfigured themselves, they must know you, Harry. They must.”
In the following month, Harry never grew tired of his quest. He kept the wand close, always in search of Drake. He handed the wand to all his party’s employees, to the Opposition, to the Wizengamot members, to the janitors, and to everyone he knew. The wand never responded. In fact, it never responded as strongly as it did in Harry’s own hands.
Until, in a line of work he did for the Auror office, Harry visited the Malfoy residence. It wasn’t the luxurious manor house the ex-Death-Eaters were associated with, nor was it the sordid Knockturn Alley flat other former war criminals were associated with. It was a cottage, far away from the world's hectic fervour. It had a solid natural stone wall and a half-kept garden in the front. Harry inquired about the probation and if Narcissa felt treated fairly, before he asked her to sign with the wand he kept so closely, and the staff responded. It responded poorly, but more than it ever had before but in his very own hands.
“You live with your son, don’t you?” he inquired, and as he did, it all fell into place.