“Kingsley Shacklebolt’s trying to kill me,” Draco announced, as he tossed his cloak, marched into the kitchen and found Crabbe and Goyle snogging against the sideboard.
He gave a martyred sigh, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “Tell me when you two are done. Don’t rush on my account,” he added. “I’m only going to die in the bloom of my youth, cruelly abandoned by my best friends. Don’t give it a second thought.”
“We’re done,” Crabbe said.
Draco opened his eyes cautiously, and saw Goyle peering at him critically.
“You weren’t home last night,” he commented. “Again.”
“The Patil twins Owled me when I was coming home last night,” Draco told him. “They said ‘We have sherbet and we must have you.’ I had to go. I’m an Auror. I have to help citizens in need.”
“I don’t think it’s good for you to spend all night working,” Goyle said. “I’m going to fix you a meal.”
Draco opened his mouth to protest being coddled like a five year old, and then remembered who the chef in the house was. He closed his mouth and subsided unhappily into a chair by the kitchen table, in an attitude of pure despair.
After five minutes it didn’t seem like they’d noted his attitude of pure despair, so he said irritably: “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“You said Kingsley Shacklebolt was trying to kill you,” Crabbe said. “Is he trying to ration the coffee again?”
“No,” Draco said dramatically. “Much worse. He’s assigned me a new partner.”
“You didn’t tell us your old partner dumped you,” Goyle remarked as he started chopping vegetables.
“Jenkins didn’t dump me!” Draco said indignantly. “It was mutual. Sort of. Anyway, he had rice pudding for brains and if I’d had to put up with him another moment I would’ve set him on fire.”
“Who’s your new partner?” asked Crabbe, a single-minded man.
Suddenly the image of Jenkins was bathed with a gentle golden glow in Draco’s memory.
He wasn’t even in the mood to pause for effect. He just said miserably: “Potter,” and waited for the explosions to follow.
“Oh dear,” Goyle said, and went hunting for the soy sauce.
“Oh dear?” Draco repeated, his voice rising. “Harry Potter. You do remember the name, don’t you?”
“Yes, you mentioned it every day in school,” Crabbe said.
“I most certainly did not,” Draco told him with hauteur. “And anyway that was because he was unbearable, and guess what, he has not improved. He’s just the same as ever, strutting around the office just like he used to strut around the school, with swarms of horribly misguided and visually impaired women running after him, thinking he’s so special. And he’s still crazy. And he’s still got a filthy temper.”
“Sorry, are we still talking about Potter?” Goyle asked over his shoulder.
Draco made a horrible face at his back. “He goes on suicide missions,” he added forcefully. “Probably just to show off, the enormous git. Which means I have to go on suicide missions too. I’ll be killed. I hope that makes Kingsley Shacklebolt happy.”
“It probably will if he’s trying to kill you,” Crabbe agreed dryly.
“You’ll be sorry for those heartless words once Harry Potter kills me,” Draco said darkly, and put his head in his arms. “I made a plan to bait and trap a sea monster today,” he added. “And Shacklebolt looked at me as if I was insane. He’s always doing that, it’s because he’s surrounded by Gryffindor lunatics and Hufflepuff cretins, I swear there are more paper clips in our office than original thoughts—”
“Your plans are always good, Draco,” Goyle soothed him. “I’m sure it would’ve worked.”
Draco lifted his head from the table. “It will work,” he said. “It’s getting made. Potter spoke up for me. Which, I admit, gave me a moment’s false hope before I realised he was probably planning to throw me off the pier.”
“Maybe not,” Goyle said.
Goyle was the optimist. Draco gave him a long look to tell him what Draco thought of optimism.
“The only reason he likes the plan is because it involves him speaking Parseltongue to that great big underwater snake,” Draco drawled. “Which in turn leads to him being—yet again—the great big hero.” He rumpled up his hair with both hands, looked vacantly into the distance and said in a deep, bored voice: “Oh, I’m Harry Potter. I never wanted all this attention, but by the way, this side is my best side. I’m so burdened—by the bodies of my hysterical hormone-crazed fans. What d’you mean, I should actually captain the Quidditch team? Baby, I am the Quidditch team.”
Goyle made a contented sound. “I’ve missed the Potter impressions,” he confessed. “They were always my favourites.”
Draco looked mordantly around the big kitchen. When they’d all been searching for a house together in London Goyle had insisted on a really spacious kitchen, and just now it was filled with August sunlight. It was nice and warm here. Draco wondered if Goyle would let him go to sleep on the kitchen table.
Crabbe patted him on one of his slumped shoulders. “I’m sure he won’t drop you off the pier, Malfoy.”
“I bet you anything he will,” Draco said. “Think about all the horrible things he did to me in school. Think about the insane mud assault and the insane Quidditch pitch assault and the insane bathroom assault. They were insane, Crabbe, and they were assaults. In fact, Crabbe, now I come to think of it—Potter bullied me when we were at school.”
Crabbe made an amused noise at the back of his throat. “No, he didn’t.”
“He did,” Draco insisted, alight with this new idea. “I felt victimised. School bullies can ruin your life, Crabbe, they can scar you forever. Psychological studies have shown that—”
“If he was bullying you, you were bullying him right back,” Crabbe said.
“Fine,” Draco said. “Suit yourself. Ignore the anguish and torment of my past. I don’t care.”
“Also he did sort of make up for things when he killed the Dark Lord and saved the world,” Goyle put in brightly. “That worked out well, I thought.”
“Oh no,” Draco told them. “No, you see, because in actual fact, that was just another thing Potter was doing to make himself look good.”
Crabbe grunted and left the room, heading upstairs. Goyle put a plate of food in front of Draco and lingered for about five minutes in an effort to pretend he wasn’t going to follow Crabbe upstairs as soon as possible.
Draco stabbed at his food vengefully. “I feel victimised by Potter saving the world,” he told Goyle. “I really do.”
Outlined against the grey morning skyline was Brighton pier, a huge cage with a sea monster in it, and about a hundred people.
Draco walked down the pier with all the boyish enthusiasm of a man walking towards his execution. He elbowed some people pretty sharply out of his way as he struggled towards the front of the crowd where he saw Shacklebolt, looking impassively off into space, and Potter, being interviewed by the paparazzi.
Typical.
“Er,” Potter said, staring at his shoes and doing his bashful routine, pretending he didn’t love the attention. “Well…”
He looked up from his shoes at that point and saw Draco.
“Malfoy designed the whole thing,” he said abruptly. “He can explain it to you.”
“I—what?” Draco said.
Potter smiled a cheerfully cruel smile at him, turned the woman reporter’s shoulder so she was facing him and stepped back with the heroic air of having well and truly thrown someone else to the wolves.
“I’m not really at my best in the mornings,” Draco said.
The woman reporter looked somewhat unhappy as well. She must’ve been enjoying talking to Potter. Women did. Draco put it down to the interference of evil gods, or Potter using Love Potions as cologne.
“Do you feel inspired by Harry Potter’s courage?” she asked him at last.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Draco said. “I am wondering why he doesn’t get a move on, though,” he added in a louder voice. “That cage is only going to hold for two hours. Approximately. And then the sea monster will start eating fishing villages again and won’t be in the mood for a chat.”
“We were waiting for you, Malfoy,” Potter snapped. “You were late.”
Draco had no answer for that, but he wasn’t going to apologise when Potter said ‘Malfoy’ as if it were several insults all rolled into one, and anyway, Draco was always late because he hated his job. And now thanks to Potter, he hated his job even more. So really, when you thought about it, everything was Potter’s fault.
Draco just sneered. “Well I’m here now.”
“Well great,” said Potter, and took off his shirt.
The cry of a woman turned Draco’s chivalrous head, and he saw the reporter had become extremely flushed.
”… my mouth’s gone all dry,” she said in a breathless whisper.
Draco stared.
She took out her quill and started scribbling. “Would you describe his back as sleek and golden?”
“No!” Draco said, appalled.
Potter glanced around and gave no sign of noticing reporters developing lust-induced epilepsy. He undid his belt and a sort of faint sound rippled through the crowd, like wind through a cornfield.
“Are you coming or not, Malfoy?” he asked, kicking off his shoes. His jeans hit the pier.
The reporter made a sound mangled beyond all human understanding.
“Oh for God’s sake, woman,” Draco said. “Pull yourself together. I’m sorry, Potter, what was that? Coming where?”
Potter dived off the pier.
He emerged shaking back hair gone flat and black as seal fur just as Draco said: “In there? In the water with the sea monster? Oh no, no, no, Potter, I don’t think you quite understand my part in all this. I devise the brilliant plans, you see, and then I don’t endanger my brilliant brain by leaping into sea monster-infested waters.”
Potter shook his head again. “There’s water in my ears,” he told Draco. “What was that?”
“I don’t plan on joining you, Potter,” Draco said. “Bear it like a man.”
Potter squinted up at him, obviously not seeing all that well without his glasses. The myopic git could see well enough to sneer at him, though.
“Fine,” he said, lip curling. “If you’re scared.”
“Excuse me?” Draco asked, finding his voice a long, outraged way away. “I’m not—”
Potter shrugged a wet shoulder and turned away, swimming into an oncoming wave. Draco lost his hold on rational thought and his sense of self-preservation, feeling them scream as they went, and said ominously to the sea air: “Right.”
He felt the crowd would not be particularly appreciative of him stripping after Potter’s little show—Draco suspected that he’d got those muscles from steroids, he’d read about those in the drugs manual and really it would explain a lot of Draco’s school years if Potter had roid rage—but he did kick off his shoes and glare at Kingsley Shacklebolt before he went.
“I hope you’ll be sorry when I’m lost to the deep.”
“Not particularly,” replied Shacklebolt, and returned to peacefully contemplating the horizon.
Draco gave him a glare of hatred and reproach, and then threw himself into the sea. It was just as freezing cold and unpleasant as he’d expected, but he didn’t have time for that because he had to catch up to stupid Harry ‘If-you’re-scared’ Potter. He closed his eyes, cut through the waves and surfaced only to find Potter miles behind.
“Hey!” he shouted over the stretch of sea. “What’re you playing at?”
“What’re you talking about?” Potter demanded. “I’m—I don’t swim that well, okay? Jesus,” he added.
Draco squinted at him, scrunching his eyes shut against the stinging spray to watch him properly, and saw that he was telling the truth. He was sort of clumsily dog-paddling. Through the sea. Towards a sea monster.
He wondered why Potter hadn’t mentioned the whole swimming thing yesterday when they’d been discussing trapping the sea monster. Then he remembered that Potter was a crazy person, and besides that an arrogant git who probably thought that he’d discover super swimming powers in his time of need.
Draco cursed, put his head down and swam back. Swimming was easy, once you got used to the numbing cold and the imminent being devoured by monsters from the darkest depths of the ocean.
“All right, come on,” he said irritably. “Put your arm around my neck.”
“I will not,” said Potter flatly, looking annoyed and astonished. “I’m all right.”
“Sea monsters have pow-er-ful magic,” Draco told him, as if explaining to a child. “That cage—see the cage?—is not going to hold it for long. If the monster escapes, it will eat us. I’m not getting eaten because Muggles don’t teach their children how to swim properly.”
“Most Muggles do,” Potter said, looking even more annoyed. He didn’t argue the point when Draco grabbed his arm, slung it around Draco’s neck and started forcibly hauling him towards the sea monster, though. He was probably dying for his moment in the spotlight. “Don’t make assumptions about—”
“I don’t care!” Draco said loudly, and put his head under the water. A few steady strokes in blissful silence, and he popped up from the waves. “See?” he said to Potter. “Wasn’t that easier? Now here we are, and here’s the nice—”
Then Draco got his first proper look at the sea monster.
It was huge and terrifying. It had eyes the size of caverns and filled with blank hunger, and fangs the size of pillars. Its great green body was doubled up dozens of times within the cage, and the bars creaked as it moved.
Draco became suddenly convinced that he hadn’t carried the one in his calculations, and the cage wouldn’t hold the monster for two minutes.
This thing should have been fought by battalions. This thing should have been fought by armies.
Instead it was just him and Potter, and Potter, Draco thought hysterically, didn’t even have his clothes on.
“You all right, Malfoy?” Potter inquired.
Some crazed defiant part of Draco’s mind rose from the crippling terror to answer at once: “Absolutely fine! Never better!”
“Okay,” Potter said doubtfully, and then he took a deep breath, looked up at the monster and hissed long and low.
Sound carried horribly well over water, and besides Potter was practically talking in Draco’s ear. Draco took deep calming breaths and tried not to think of red eyes in the darkness. It wasn’t him. It was just stupid Potter. If Draco could understand him, he’d probably hear him saying ‘Er’ in his stupid snake language.
The soothing familiarity of reflecting on how annoying Potter was soothed Draco. He was also distracted by the fact that Potter was leaning on Draco more heavily as he spoke to the snake, and the stupid muscles he’d probably worked on to impress overly impressionable young girls weighed a ton.
Draco tried to get a better grip on him, and then the sea monster answered, its hot breath blowing the wet hair back from Draco’s face. The sea monster’s breath smelled overwhelmingly of rotten fish.
Draco tried hard not to breathe himself, and also tried not to imagine that the monster was saying ‘I will eat you up and crunch your bones’ and Potter was saying ‘Eat the blond one, the Dark Mark makes him extra spicy.’
After a moment, Potter stopped and cursed. “She’s under Imperius,” he said shortly. “It was Dolohov.”
“Son of a bitch,” Draco said. “I knew Dolohov was dirty. He never should’ve got that pardon.”
“He won’t get another one,” Potter said in a particularly grim tone.
The monster hissed again, and Draco’s sense of smell shut down.
“What’s it saying now?” he asked in a stifled voice.
“She,” Potter corrected absently. “Just thank you.”
“Oh I see,” Draco said. “It’s a girl monster. How silly of me, I shouldn’t have worried at all. She’s just tossing her gills coquettishly and saying ‘oh however can I thank you? Harry Potter, you’re my hero!’”
Potter bit back a laugh, and Draco was rather gratified.
“Stop raving, Malfoy,” Potter said, and Draco was considerably less gratified. He considered leaving Potter to drown, but there were hundreds of witnesses on the pier and anyway, Draco probably would’ve gone down with him.
They climbed up the steps of the pier and went to report to Kingsley Shacklebolt. The reporter performed rather a complicated dance trying to stop Potter getting to his clothes and Draco despaired of womankind.
“Sorry,” Potter said. “Could you—you’re kind of in my way.”
“Move it along,” Draco drawled. “I’m catching my death here in these wet clothes. I can feel the chill settling into my lungs. Then the pneumonia will come. And I will die.”
“Maybe you should’ve taken your clothes off before jumping into the ocean,” Potter muttered, snatching his jeans out from under a dancing heel.
“Potter,” Draco asked in an innocent and conversational tone. “What’s Parseltongue for ‘Screw you’?”
Potter looked up from doing up his jeans, grinned faintly, and hissed at him.
”… oh my,” said the reporter.
Draco hissed experimentally and Potter shook his head.
“You’re just kind of—sneezing at me in Parseltongue,” he said, grinning wider.
Draco was still hissing quietly when Shacklebolt walked up to them and asked for their report, which was just Draco’s luck. Nevertheless, he seemed pleased with the report and he even said they could interrogate Dolohov.
“As long as you don’t try to feed the prisoner Veritaserum again,” he said levelly to Draco.
“I didn’t!” Draco protested. “It wasn’t Veritaserum! It was a cunning ploy. I was trying to psych him out.”
“And as long as you don’t punch the prisoner again,” Shacklebolt said to Potter.
“Sir,” Potter said, which Draco noticed wasn’t a yes or a no. He almost approved: it was sneaky.
The reporter tried frantically to interview Potter while Draco scanned the pier for Katie Bell. She wasn’t there.
“—Look,” he heard the woman say. “Here’s my address. Owl me if you ever feel like—a private interview. Any time. Day or night.”
Potter chucked the address into a bin as everyone headed back for the Portkey.
“God,” he said. “Anything for an interview, right?”
Draco scanned his face incredulously for a sign of sarcasm, and found none. Then he put it together: of course, Potter didn’t notice. After all, every woman in sight had been diving for Potter with a yowling sound since he was sixteen. Why would he ever have to notice someone was flirting with him? He obviously conducted his affairs much like Blaise Zabini, who occasionally glanced over the swooning crowds and picked out someone who couldn’t believe their luck.
He narrowed his eyes at the back of Potter’s scruffy head and was disgusted by the blatant unfairness of life. At least Zabini had classical features and was impeccably groomed, he thought. Also, there was the whole part Veela thing.
With Potter it was obviously just the celebrity. And possibly the muscle-enhancing steroids. And quite probably the Love Potion cologne.
These reflections did not make Draco feel any better, since Potter was clearly ravished every night by a lust-crazed horde and he couldn’t work out how to make Katie Bell give him a smile.
That night when Draco got home he crawled onto the sofa, moaned, threw his hand over his eyes and commanded Crabbe and Goyle to leave him lest they see a strong man weep.
“Take your shirt off,” Crabbe ordered, every inch the healer. “What happened?”
“Well, we interrogated a sea monster and then we caught the bad guy and then we squeezed a confession out of him,” Draco said triumphantly.
“Today at work I made a really nice risotto,” Goyle volunteered, and looked thoughtful. “Your day was probably better, though. But why are you covered in bruises? Did the bad guy resist arrest—really, really hard? Did the sea monster?”
“Well, no,” Draco said. “Potter made these. Be careful, Crabbe, I fear I may have internal bleeding.”
“Oh, that’s it,” said Crabbe. “No. Absolutely not. If he’s punching you now he’ll be cutting you up in the Aurors’ bathrooms by Monday. I’m going to go talk to Shacklebolt.”
“What?” Draco said, sitting bolt upright and ignoring the agony in sheer horror at the idea of Crabbe going to his boss’ office and saying that Harry Potter had been cruel to his little Draco. “No, you’re not. No, look, it’s not like—we weren’t fighting. We were sparring,” he explained helpfully. “In the practise rooms. Aurors do that. To, you know, test their reflexes and build up their strength and they heal each other afterwards.”
“Yes but he didn’t,” said Crabbe, angrily.
“Ah well,” Draco said. “About that. He did fix the bloody nose. He might’ve—not known about the covered in bruises and so forth.”
“Malfoy,” Crabbe said, in his slow, heavy, explain-this-to-me-carefully voice. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“I couldn’t do that,” Draco told him, outraged. “That would’ve been admitting he’d won!”
“I’m fairly sure he was able to work that out!” Crabbe shouted.
“Now, Vince,” Goyle scolded. “Malfoy’s hurt. Please use your indoor voice.”
Draco looked for a way to escape, but both Goyle and Crabbe were totally capable of blocking any doors and windows, and he wasn’t at his speediest right now.
“I landed a few good punches,” Draco argued. “He didn’t know he’d won by very much. And next time, I’ll win!”
Overcome by the force (Draco presumed) of his argument, Crabbe tottered into a chair and put his face in his hands. “I’m getting these terrible flashbacks to school,” he told them in a hollow voice. “And a migraine.”
“You should go to bed, Malfoy,” Goyle told him kindly. “I’ll bring you up something to eat.”
Crabbe lifted his head. “Malfoy,” he began in a reluctant voice.
“Vince, not when he’s like this,” Goyle hissed.
Draco sat up again, more carefully this time. He’d had enough of hissing for the day. “What,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s an Owl from Azkaban,” Crabbe said.
Draco got up without another word and took the Owl, and sat on the stairs and read it. It was just the normal Owl, saying that Lucius Malfoy had requested and received permission for a visit from his son. Draco turned it over and over in his hands, paper pale in the dim light.
He couldn’t go. He couldn’t go.
He’d gone once, right after the war ended. Dad had sat, skeletal and wearing worn prison clothes, and talked in a brittle politician’s voice about how Fudge could be manipulated and bribed into letting him out, and inquired how Draco’s mother was doing, and carefully outlined his plans for the future.
Draco had shook and sweated, and said very little, least of all that Scrimgeour was in office now and he didn’t have any truck with Death Eaters, that Dad would never leave the prison, and that Mother had been dead for years.
He was almost sure his father knew, but not sure enough to tell him. He just sat there and let Dad tell him what to do.
He hadn’t been able to go back.
There was a mirror set in the wall of their hall, gleaming slightly in the low light. Draco saw himself in it, hunched and desperate on the stairs.
He’d never cared much about the way he looked—he knew he wasn’t spectacular and he didn’t mind particularly. He didn’t find good looks all that interesting. He’d known that he was like his father and he had minded about that, but it was always in a smaller, paler, less significant way.
His father’s face had been sharpened by starvation in Azkaban, pale with never going outside, an air of desperation clinging to him despite the way he strived for confidence. He’d never been more like Draco.
Draco looked at the mirror now, and then turned his face away from the hungry ghost inside it.
He burned the Owl.
The next morning he rolled out of bed at a disgustingly early hour and went out for a run. He was going to have to start going to the gym with Crabbe too, he realised as he ran in the cold rain. He had to get faster and stronger, he couldn’t visit his dad and he couldn’t seem to convince Katie, but he could do this. He thought he could.
Potter had said: “Good fight,” when they were done yesterday.
Of course, he’d also fought with systematic, concentrated fury, edging on actually terrifying at certain points. Draco might’ve been scared if he had not known down to his bones that whatever else he might be, Potter was a complete twerp and it was Draco’s sacred mission to show the world.
He did wonder why Potter, who had everything, seemed to be so angry at the world. He blamed it on the roid rage.
The first time he was on stakeout with Potter, he brought a huge thermos of coffee and about a thousand sugary snacks. It was very important that he stay awake.
Not a lot of his partners had wanted Draco out on stakeout, which had suited him fine, but he knew he had kind of erratic sleeping patterns and all this running and weight-lifting wasn’t helping him keep awake at nights. He really didn’t need to fall asleep on the job in front of Potter: for one thing, he was told he murmured pretty constantly in his sleep and Potter would never let him live it down.
He was distracted by the fact they had a real Muggle car that was enchanted to go invisible to sit in. Usually Aurors had to huddle in their cloaks.
“This is great,” he said, trailing his fingers curiously over what Potter told him was called the ‘dashboard.’
“It’s not bad,” Potter said. “Ron sold it to me. It’s a thing he’s doing—you know, just while he’s waiting to get through the Auror exams.”
He gave Draco a look that dared him to say anything, but actually Draco’d had his gloat out the first time Weasley failed the Auror exams. Anyway, he was out alone in the dark with Potter. Potter could kill him and there’d be no witnesses.
“I bet lots of people want an invisible car,” Draco said instead of gloating. “He should advertise. Pansy’s in advertising,” he added with a certain pride. “She’s excellent. She’s in Bulgaria doing something about talking furs right now, but he should Owl her when she gets back.”
“Pansy,” Potter said carefully, as if he found it rather hard to recall one of their classmates of seven freaking years. “Pansy Parkinson. Your girlfriend.”
“Yes, when we were sixteen,” Draco agreed cautiously.
He was tempted to say ‘Ginny Weasley. Your girlfriend’ but he didn’t because of the alone in the dark and being killed without witnesses thing. Not to mention that they couldn’t actually have a fight, because they had to sit in the car and watch this man’s house. Hours alone with Potter and forbidden to fight. Draco found it unnatural and perverse.
Ginny Weasley, as everyone in the Aurors’ gossip pit knew, had left for Paris under a cloud. Draco believed the rumour that she’d discovered Potter in bed with the Patil twins. These things happened at war. So Draco had heard.
Mostly what had happened to him at war were terrifying sessions with the Dark Lord, lots of hiding at Professor Snape’s house and even some hiding at the old Black house, and escaping actually having to kill people by dissecting bodies of war victims for Professor Snape’s Potions. Draco did not treasure these special memories.
“So, um, what happened to Crabbe and Goyle?” Potter asked abruptly. Seeing Potter try to make polite conversation was like seeing a bear at a tea party.
“They live with me,” Draco said. “We all share a house in Knightsbridge. Goyle is a chef in a restaurant in the West End where they say the food is magic,” Draco permitted himself a smirk, “and Crabbe works in St Mungo’s. He’s a nurse.”
“A nurse,” Potter repeated.
“It’s actually a noble calling and allows for much more personal interaction with the patients,” Draco said sharply. He hadn’t gloated over Weasley but oh, he could. Let Potter say one word about Draco’s friends, that was all he asked.
Potter blinked. “Er. I’m sure.”
Draco relaxed a bit. Potter studied the house, which entirely failed to do anything criminal.
“I don’t go out on stakeout much,” Potter said at last. “People generally say that it’s okay and I’ll be bored and I can go home. Not that I’m saying—I mean, I’ll stay.”
“They send you home too?” Draco asked. “Huh.”
Potter frowned, profile outlined in the dim light becoming somewhat less than perfect. “What d’you mean, they send me home too?”
Draco held up his left arm with the shirt sleeve open. Potter turned his head and looked at the Dark Mark, green eyes sharp but not betraying much. A lot of people shivered and looked away when they saw it. There weren’t many alive and free who bore the Mark these days.
Draco hadn’t expected Potter to shiver or look away. He’d seen plenty of Marks in his time.
“Alone in the dark with a Death Eater,” Draco explained, smirking. “They get a little scared.”
“Oh really?” said Potter noncommittally.
“Sure,” Draco said, and smirked some more. “Why, aren’t you scared?”
Potter threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, Malfoy. I’m terrified,” he said in a lazy, amused voice, and reclined his seat.
“Show me how to do that,” Draco commanded him. After some difficulties he made his car chair lean back too, and was even more pleased with the car. “It reminds me of the movies I have watched about Muggle Aurors,” he told Potter, which was high praise.
“Um—cop movies?” asked Potter.
“I go to the cinema to see them,” Draco informed him. “I blend in with the Muggles like a snake in the grass. I can do this, because I came top in Muggle Studies and I know their Muggle ways. It’s research, you see.”
“Right,” Potter said. “Of course.”
“That is why I like this car,” Draco said. “Also I want a gun, but Shacklebolt said I couldn’t have one.” He brooded about this for a moment. “I think Shacklebolt might secretly be an evil robot sent from the future to destroy me.”
Potter blinked. “What?”
“Do you know what a robot is?” Draco inquired.
“I—do,” Potter answered slowly, as if he was afraid to encourage Draco. Draco got that a lot.
“Well, think about it,” Draco said. “The inhuman stillness of his face. The flat monotone voice. The obvious evil intent to destroy me so I cannot benefit future generations.”
“Malfoy,” Potter said, biting back a laugh in the middle of Draco’s name. “Are you joking?”
“I’m mostly joking,” Draco replied in a thoughtful way. “Before my first cup of coffee, though, I really believe it.”
Potter laughed again, sounding slightly incredulous about it. “You are terrifying me a bit now, actually,” he said. “Are you opening that bag of marshmallows?” he added after a moment, and Draco did.
The next day at work Draco walked around with his cup of coffee humming Muggle songs to annoy people and trying to overhear gossip the way he did, and thought about what Potter had said. People had sent him home at stakeout time too. Draco couldn’t work out why.
They couldn’t be scared of him. He was their big shiny hero who’d saved the world.
After thorough surveillance of the room, he came to the conclusion that they were, and that was why.
Draco rested his coffee cup against the gurgling water dispenser and watched them all. He didn’t think the other Aurors would’ve thought of themselves as afraid—that wasn’t quite it. They all probably thought they were just intimidated, or being respectful.
A couple of the ones who’d been Potter’s previous partners, and thus had presumably sparred with him, were afraid and knew it.
It wasn’t like—everyone’d had to do things in the war, but most people their age had parents to protect them, had still been in school when the worst things were happening. Nobody had been in the thick of it quite like Potter had, because there’d been a prophecy and there was no-one else.
Draco hadn’t been in the centre of the war, but he’d been close enough to know what people in the centre had to do, and how it changed them.
He supposed he could see how people might possibly be afraid of Potter.
But he is such a twerp, his soul cried, and he had to remind himself that for some reason people didn’t see that. People were so blind.
People even avoided touching Potter, he noticed. They kept their safe respectful distance.
Draco shook his head at people and went over to the stupid two-person thankfully-with-a-partition desk they were supposed to share. He shoved Potter’s shoulder by way of greeting. Potter froze for such a brief moment that afterwards Draco wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it.
“You’re late again,” he said, scribbling at his report.
Draco picked up the new cup of coffee on his desk and drained it before he thought about why it was there, and where exactly it had come from. Then he stared at the empty cup, hoping to find an epiphany at the bottom. The cup failed him.
He glanced over at Potter, saw an inky straggle of bad grammar, and forgot about epiphanies and forcibly seized his report. “Give that to me,” he said. “You’re not writing reports like that any more. Oh my God, what does this even say? Are you one of those functional illiterates they tell us about in the papers?”
As a reward for the sea monster case, the next case Shacklebolt gave them was brilliant.
Typically, this meant Potter had to try and ruin everything.
“No,” he said, going red. “No, no, no.”
“Yes,” Draco interrupted. “Forgive him, sir, he’s crazy, his war wounds are acting up. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. We’d be delighted to go to that club. I promise to stay there all night, night after night, until the heinous trafficking in drugs is well and truly foiled.”
Potter looked mutinous. “I could be out there fighting.”
“There is more to being an Auror than fighting,” Shacklebolt told him. “Not that one would know that from your record, Mr Potter.”
Potter’s fingers closed on a lamp.
Draco knocked his hand away. “Don’t even think it, Potter,” he said. “You’re not having a tantrum in the boss’ office. Have some dignity, my God.”
Potter made a growling sound and crossed his arms over his chest.
Shacklebolt cleared his throat. “And Mr Malfoy,” he said. “If you could please refrain from taking bribes or acting in any way inappropriate for an Auror.”
“I was not taking bribes that time,” Draco snapped at him. “I happen to be independently wealthy, thank you so much. I was pretending to be an Auror who could be bought so that we could infiltrate—”
“You shouldn’t have pretended so well that your partner reported you,” Shacklebolt said in his emotionless bass.
“Is it my fault that Jenkins had all the intelligence of an exceptionally backward squirrel?” Draco demanded. “No. No it is not. It might be the fault of whoever is hiring these wretches, who are a danger to themselves and others and who I might add—”
“Now who’s having a tantrum in the boss’ office?” Potter asked, sotto voce.
Draco lapsed into furious silence, crossing his arms over his chest. Shacklebolt looked at them both a bit oddly and then told them to get out of his office. Draco suspected he had some quality pacing to do.
“He was giving us a funny look,” Draco said darkly once they were back at their desk and he was showing Potter how to draft a proper initial report. “I told you he was an evil robot.”
“Yes,” Potter said gravely. “Everything makes sense now.”
Draco laughed and then bit down on his tongue. “Stop that,” he said. “You’re not allowed to be funny. You were never funny at school.”
“I could say the same thing about you,” Potter muttered.
Draco looked up from the report in outrage. “I beg your pardon?” he said coldly. “I’ll have you know I was hilarious at school. Everybody thought so.”
“I didn’t,” Potter said cheerfully.
“And what do you know?” Draco inquired, narrow-eyed. “I had the whole Slytherin table in stitches every day. I was a laugh riot.”
“Maybe they just felt sorry for you,” Potter suggested, mouth quirking.
“Slytherins know a good thing when they see it,” Draco said. “Anyway, if I wasn’t funny, why did Ginny Weasley steal my routine?”
“She what?” Potter said. “Your what?”
“Stole it,” said Draco, who would neither forgive nor forget. “Right out from under me. The whole thing, except for my impressions of you since she was courting you at the time, and let me tell you, that wasn’t much to build on. Obviously once she’d started using my impressions I could never use them again. They were all tainted by Gryffindor.”
“I remember Ginny used to do impressions,” Potter said slowly.
“In sixth year she did impressions,” Draco informed him bitterly. “Mine. I was a little distracted at the time and then I turned around and suddenly she was doing my impressions as part of her, I don’t know, big self-reinvention as the life and soul of the Quidditch team. Don’t ask me. Women are incomprehensible, and also thieves.”
Potter cleared his throat, frowned and said: “Don’t talk about Ginny that way.”
He leaned over the report again, his face set in bitter, tired lines. It was possible, Draco thought, that one of the other rumours about the great Potter and Weasley split was true. Perhaps Ginny really had run off to Paris to be with Gabrielle Delacour, and Potter’s heart was broken.
Oh well, Draco thought. The strip club would cheer them both up.
The strip club was in a basement lit only by pink and purple spotlights, which lingered mainly on the stages. It seemed to be a place to dance as well as a strip club—there were people on the dance floor about as well-clothed as the people on the stages, though considerably less well lit. The bartenders appeared to be bartending in the dark. Muggles were weird.
It was a wonderful place.
Frankly, it had been four years since Draco had seen breasts, on a handful of shining occasions involving Pansy and the prefects’ bathroom. He’d been starting to worry that he’d forget what they were like.
This was the best assignment ever.
“This is the worst assignment ever,” Potter muttered. He was looking at the floor.
Of course he was, Draco thought. Naturally Potter was entirely unimpressed: he probably saw breasts better than these every night.
Just as Draco was thinking about the unfairness of the universe, he realised that the club was stirring around them: that people from the dance floor and the bar had spotted Potter and now gently but inevitably, like waves to a bespectacled shore, they were making their way towards him.
Not fair, Draco thought. They didn’t even know he was famous.
Not to mention, it was going to be pretty hard to scope out the terrain while trying not to be crushed by the oncoming surge of Potter’s misguided admirers. Unless whoever had contacts in the magical world and thus access to certain very unsafe substances became besotted enough to lay their magical stash at Potter’s feet, it was all up to Draco.
He patted Potter on the back. “I won’t be a minute,” he said. “Have fun. Don’t let anyone ravish you, we’re on duty.”
“Excuse me?” Potter said, sounding scandalised. He took a look at the oncoming masses, took a step back and said: “I’ll come with you.”
“You’d only cramp my style,” Draco told him, and dashed away. He saw Potter attempt to follow him, only to be intercepted by three women.
Some people’s lives were so difficult.
Draco went to the bar.
He was putting back a fourth shot glass when, to his mild surprise, the come-hither glances he’d been sending actually worked and the woman he’d been looking at approached.
“Hi there,” she said. “I’m Susan.”
Draco smiled, slow and charming. “Hi, Susan. I’m Draco.”
“That’s a cool name,” Susan told him, smiling slowly back. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I heard this was a place where you could have a lot of—fun,” Draco said.
Susan rolled her eyes. “Usually it is. Tonight nobody can go downstairs, because—” she dropped her voice discreetly. “Do you see the gorgeous guy over there?”
Draco looked over at Potter, who was not waving but drowning in a sea of women. “I suppose,” he said grudgingly.
“Could he be more obviously a cop?” Susan asked.
Draco was cheered by this clear evidence that Potter was terrible at covert operations and the worst Auror ever. He gave Susan a much more genuine smile and Susan smiled back again, her teeth sliding over her lower lip in an obviously deliberate gesture.
“What do you do, Draco?”
Draco thought frantically back to Muggle Studies and the songs that made up their culture: he thought tinker tailor soldier—
“Sailor,” he decided, and then smiled again because he was pleased with himself. “I’m a sailor.”
Susan laughed, throwing her head back. “Well, sailor,” she said. “Do you want to dance?”
Draco smirked and took her hand, then drew her close to him on the dance floor. She was about as tall as he was, but he still managed to smile down at her, reaching up to push her hair off her forehead.
“I like your tattoo,” Susan whispered. Draco’s gaze flickered to his left arm as alarm flickered instinctively inside him. A witch would have screamed at the sight of it. Susan pressed close to him and whispered: “Where did you get it?”
“In a cave with a very evil man,” Draco whispered back, his breath on her mouth. She angled her head to catch the curve of his mouth as he continued: “I’ve led a wild life, Susan.”
“It’s about to get wilder,” Susan told him, and dragged him that fraction towards her, so her mouth—and her whole body—was pressed against his.
She kissed him forcefully and Draco smiled in triumph, mouth curving against hers, and kissed her back, easing the kiss down, smoothing it out and making it long and slow and sweet. Susan paused, seeming startled, and then she smiled too and Draco slipped her the tongue over the lipstick-slick curve of her mouth. She turned into moving liquid under his hands, and he stroked up her back, along her shiny red dress, long soothing strokes, and then he said: “Sorry—I have to go to the bathroom.”
Susan pushed herself up against him and said: “I could go with you.”
“Interesting idea,” Draco said, and smiled. “But no. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” Susan whispered.
Draco made sure he was lost in the crowd before he moved towards Potter. He had to elbow quite a lot of women in the back on his way there.
A predatory redhead seemed to be leading the charge and Potter had his back to the wall. Draco wasn’t sure why: surely predatory redheads were Potter’s type.
“Go away,” Potter said in a clipped voice, looking over her head.
“Your conversational skills never fail to amaze me,” Draco drawled, at which point Potter thrust the redhead away bodily. He looked very irritated and he’d gone all red.
“There you are,” he snapped. “What did you think you were doing? We’re supposed to be—”
“Come away at once,” Draco ordered, and he seized Potter’s wrist and dragged him off before he could tell an entire army of women about their mission.
“Come back soon,” the redhead called after them forlornly.
Once they were out in the empty street and the cool moonlight, Draco dropped Potter’s wrist and Potter turned on him.
“Are you completely drunk or are you insane?” he asked. “Why were—what were—We’re on a mission! And you were making out with a man!”
Wonderful, Draco thought. As if there weren’t enough glaring problems with Potter’s personality. He had to be a homophobe as well.
“Oh, I was not,” he snapped.
“I—” Potter stopped and looked vaguely horrified. “Okay, you’re drunk,” he said. “But that—that was a man. Kind of obviously a man. In a dress. Obviously you weren’t aware of—”
“If you are talking about the fact that Susan was biologically a man,” Draco said. “Naturally I was aware of it. I did, after all, get the opportunity to observe her much more closely than you did. I think it’s kind of tasteless of you to mention it, though.”
Potter’s mouth sort of opened and shut a few times.
“She was dressed like a woman and acted like a woman,” Draco said. “So obviously she should be treated as a woman. It isn’t easy for the Muggles,” he added reprovingly. “When one of them is born feeling they’re the wrong sex, they can’t just take a Potion to fix it.”
“There are Potions to fix—what?” said Potter, staring blankly.
“Poor little Muggles,” Draco said, feeling much more virtuous and understanding than Potter. “I heard they need horrible invasive surgery. It must be very hard for them.” Potter was still staring, so he added crossly: “Come on, Potter, it’s not like someone in our year didn’t turn into a woman.”
“They did?” Potter said, and stared some more.
“In sixth year,” Draco said, and stared back. “Did you not notice? How could you not notice?”
“I was busy in sixth year,” Potter said defensively.
“No, I was busy in sixth year,” Draco snapped. “But I still noticed when one of the Hufflepuffs started sleeping in the other dorm!”
“One of the Hufflepuffs,” Potter said. “Uh—which one? Was it Ernie Macmillan?”
“No,” Draco said.
“Well, I know it wasn’t Smith,” Potter said, with a funny bitter smile. “Um,” he said. “I don’t know all their names.”
Maybe Ginny Weasley had run off to Paris with Zacharias Smith, Draco speculated. What a comedown for Smith: Draco had quite liked him.
Then what Potter had said actually registered with him.
“What? Oh, I don’t believe this. How can you not know all their names?” Draco demanded. “We were all in school together for seven years! You shared classes with them! There was a roll call!”
“You don’t need to shout,” Potter said coldly.
“Part of our job is information gathering! Do you know who Stephen Cornfoot is?”
“No I don’t,” said Potter. “Is that the one who turned into a woman?”
“No, that was Finch-Fletchley,” Draco replied absentmindedly. God, Potter was crazier than Draco had ever realised, this was so weird.
“What?” Potter squawked. “Justin Finch-Fletchley?”
Draco eyed him disapprovingly. “Justine.” He thought for a minute and then laughed. “I can’t believe that’s one of the only names you know, and she changed it.”
“Oh my God,” said Potter, looking poleaxed. Because he was crazy stubborn, however, he shook his head, apparently dismissing important facts about their world and all of his classmates’ names. “Anyway you shouldn’t be getting drunk and making out with anyone,” he persisted. “It’s totally unprof—”
“Who’s drunk?” Draco asked coolly. “Do I seem drunk to you?”
“You seem crazy to me,” Potter said after a pause. “But—”
“I put the bartender under Imperius so she’d give me water in shot glasses,” Draco said. “And I made eyes at someone who was obviously in the know about the drug trade and on the lookout for Aurors. I mean cops,” he added, pleased with the word. “And…” he fished inside his pocket, and beckoned Potter with one finger. “Look at this.”
Potter leaned forward to see, and Draco opened his hand to show him a tiny key.
“It was taped to the back of her bra,” Draco said with modest pride. “She mentioned going downstairs. I bet there’s something locked up down there that we might be interested in seeing.”
Potter’s face was impassive, and then Draco realised what exactly he’d just said. Admitted to using Imperius, and also engaged in unprofessional behaviour with a suspect, and oh God, this was going to be another one of those times with the reports and having to Explain His Actions and—no it wasn’t, because this was his last chance and he was just going to get fired—
Then he realised that Potter had slowly, wickedly, started to smile.
“Wow, Malfoy,” he said, and actually laughed. “Excellent.” He took the key. “Let’s go break in now.”
“Yeah?” Draco asked, and sounded incredulous even to himself. “Yes,” he said. “Obviously. You don’t need to tell me I’m a genius,” he added. “It’s been clear to me for years.”
“You have lipstick on your mouth, genius,” Potter said, rolling his eyes. He tossed the key and caught it, glittering in the light of a street lamp.
Feeling weirdly light in the chest area, Draco scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Gone?”
“No.” Potter turned and looked at him, then took a swift step towards him. He hesitated, black lashes lowered, then reached out and touched the edge of Draco’s mouth roughly. “There,” he said, looking away and stepping back.
“You might at this point be thinking, but Malfoy, how are we going to break in?” Draco said brightly after a moment. “Well. I have a plan.”
The corner of Potter’s mouth came up. He said: “I thought you might.”
Draco had obviously won the club case, and he decided that he’d actually won the sea monster case as well.
“On points,” he explained. “I thought of the cage and I helped with the swimming. So I’m ahead six to four.”
“Malfoy, nobody knows about the points system but you,” Crabbe said. “It doesn’t count if he doesn’t know.”
It did count: Crabbe and Goyle were so wrong. They were also acting all twitchy and strange these days. When the news came in that Potter had gone off and defeated some ghouls all on his own Draco felt his eyes narrow and saw hunted looks being exchanged over the dinner table.
“Excuse me,” he said in a strangely peaceful tone, channelling his inner Kingsley Shacklebolt. “I need to go.”
When he came back, Crabbe said at once: “Malfoy, what did you do?”
“I chained him up,” Draco said. “It was the only way. He urgently requires to be restrained, and thus—restraints!”
“You didn’t,” Crabbe said.
Draco smiled brilliantly. “Oh, I did.”
“You cannot keep doing this, it is crazy,” Crabbe told him. “You need to change partners.”
“I don’t want to change partners,” Draco snapped, and stole the last piece of bread.
He hadn’t told Crabbe and Goyle how bad things were at work: hadn’t told them that this was his last chance with the Aurors. He’d never meant for things to get this bad, but everyone was so stupid and most of them disliked him, and he didn’t react well to that and he’d started coming in late, and the rules were so stupid that he’d started breaking them just to spite people, and before he’d realised it everything had just spun out of control and he felt almost too trapped and miserable to care.
He couldn’t tell them because then they’d tell him to quit, and he couldn’t quit because this was what Katie wanted.
He remembered perfectly well that there’d been a time when what Katie wanted had not been the most important thing in the world. She’d just been this Gryffindor girl he hardly knew and then he’d almost killed her and he hadn’t been able to stop himself running around after her, terrified that she was going to break somehow and he would have killed her after all.
He carried her books to class and watched her all the time in frozen terror, and it was only slowly that he realised she thought he had a crush on her. He didn’t care, really: Katie was kind to him because of it, and let him hang around and he had to hang around and watch her in case she died. His libido had been pretty much switched off at the time, what with the constant nightmares about his parents dying edging out more pleasant dreams.
Then he hadn’t killed Dumbledore and he’d had to flee the school and Snape had saved him and his nightmares had all come true.
He remembered being told that his mother was dead, carelessly, by Mad-Eye Moody on the steps of the Black house. “These things happen at war,” Moody said, eyeing him with distaste, and Draco wanted to scream at him: not to my mother, not to me.
But they did: to Mother, to him. He opened the door and almost fell into the hall but someone caught him, almost automatically, and then Potter said in disgusted tones: “Oh it’s you,” and somewhat irritably: “Are you all right?”
“I’m perfectly fine. Get off me,” Draco had snapped, pride rising somehow out of the endless wretched misery, and he was going to collapse, he was quite aware of that, but he could hold onto control for a moment and Potter wouldn’t see it. He could do that much.
He stalked up the stairs with an appearance of absolute calm, and then went into the nearest room and cried as if he was four years old, a stupid howling, screaming thing who wanted it all to stop, wanted it to go away, wanted his Mother.
He woke up to find Katie in the room, sitting beside the window and looking at him with quiet concern. He blinked swollen eyes and she told him to rest, told him she was so sorry, and her blue eyes were soft with sympathy and her hair was lit gold by the sunlight and she was the most beautiful thing in the world and he loved her impossibly.
And he’d almost killed her, he’d thought, then and now, sick at the thought of what he could have thoughtlessly destroyed. He’d wanted to save her somehow, save her a hundred times and make up for everything, but he couldn’t save her, he was left trying to save strangers he didn’t care anything about and he couldn’t see the point.
She’d said, though: “I hear after the war Harry is joining the Aurors. I think that’s so brave—it’s really, it’s admirable, you know, that after all this is over he still wants to help people.”
With anyone else Draco would have dismissed this as raving, but this was Katie and he loved her, and he listened intently. Well, he’d thought, he could do that too. Just as well as Potter. Better. She’d be proud of him.
He was less sure about that when the ravening ghouls Potter had defeated turned out to be just the front runners of a plague of ravening ghouls.
Potter took him to the graveyard this time. Draco was glad Potter had learned his lesson.
Draco was less glad when he was walking through a misty freezing graveyard and four ghouls lunged at him, teeth snapping and faces bloody, and he killed one with the standard issue flaming sword and then fell over a gravestone in the mist and dropped his sword in a slimy puddle.
He scrabbled for the sword as the flame died, stared up at the ghouls’ teeth, and cursed his luck.
At that point Potter pulled the nearest ghoul away by its hair and sliced off its head. The other ghouls snarled and turned on him and Potter snarled right back at them, looking lit up as if facing bloodthirsty ghouls was the most fun he’d had for weeks. They came at him and he swung again and again, sword bright in the darkness, mist bright white with the sword’s light and crowning his black hair.
They were all dead in seconds. Some of their blood got on Draco and it smelled really terrible.
Potter still looked elated and in his element, chest rising and falling hard, as he offered Draco his hand. Draco took it and glared.
“Oh, you may have won the battle, Potter,” he said as they washed their hands. “I admit you’re ahead on points. But you have not won the war.”
“Points?” Potter said interrogatively, and Draco explained. “Oh,” Potter said, resting his chin on the pommel of his flaming sword and looking thoughtful. “So I get ten points for this,” he said.
“No, nine points, because I worked out the pattern and established which graveyard they’d be going to. One point to me,” Draco told him sternly.
“But I still won,” Potter said. “I should get something. For winning.”
“You may be right. I will have to think more on this,” Draco admitted. “The points system needs refining.”
He went triumphantly home to tell Crabbe and Goyle that now Potter knew so the points system totally did count, and found Pansy having tea with them.
She looked beautiful, expensively dressed and extremely unhappy. Goyle was hanging solicitously over her, offering her scones. Crabbe looked embarrassed.
Draco went over to her immediately and leaned against the back of her chair, wrapping her black hair around his fingers and wrists like ribbons. “What’s the matter?”
“Viktor broke it off with me,” Pansy said, and kicked a chair with a pointed black toe.
“What an idiot,” Draco said. “We should have him killed.”
Pansy sniffed. “No. I cast a really complicated curse on him, and I want him to live so he can suffer the full effects.”
Draco played cat’s cradle with her long hair, lifting it to kiss her ear. “Well, if you insist on letting him live,” he said. “What can we, as your friends, do for you?”
Pansy sniffed again. “I was thinking you could get drunk with me.”
“Sure,” Draco said. “We can do that.”
Pansy brought out some Bulgarian vodka and they all got well and truly toasted. Pansy told them all in detail about Viktor Krum’s prowess in the bedroom or lack thereof, and Draco did vicious impressions of Krum’s accent.
“Vy do you say zese theengs to me?” he was saying as Crabbe and Goyle went upstairs to do unspeakable things. “All zer Bulgarian ladies, they admire my manly broomstick.”
Pansy snorted and hit his chest, her legs looped over his. She’d kicked off the pointed shoes, and now she hid a yawn against his shoulder. “Can I stay over?” she asked, yawning again. “I don’t think I can move.”
“You don’t have to,” Draco told her smoothly. “I’ll carry you.”
“Don’t be ridi—” Pansy said, and shrieked, throwing her arms around his neck, when he got up and made for the stairs.
It was considerably easier than the last time he’d tried it: he’d suspected the weightlifting was paying off. He was now up to two to eight in the sparring sessions with Potter, which wasn’t great but was considerably better than the starting point of half a point (on a technicality) to nine and the other, less technical half.
Once he got her on his bed, though, things were a little awkward, since he recalled she was now a single woman.
“I’ll take the sofa,” he said as soon as her head hit the pillow.
She pulled him down beside her. “Don’t be an idiot,” she murmured, and curled up close to him.
She smelled rather wonderful, and her breasts were crushed against his chest. Draco tried to be a gentleman and ignore it, as well as ignoring her warm mouth lying a breath away from his jaw.
Then she pressed that warm mouth to the spot between his ear and his jaw, and slid her mouth down to nip at his neck. Draco froze.
The tricky wench, he thought miserably but with a certain amount of affectionate pride. She knew perfectly well he had a neck thing.
She didn’t even need to use the tricks she’d found out in all the fourteen-to-sixteen year old rolling around they’d done, because Draco was desperate. Now that the job was less grindingly miserable and far more filled with adrenaline and strenuous physical activity, now that he’d kissed someone for the first time in two years… Before Susan the last time had been Mandy Brocklehurst when he was eighteen. She’d grabbed him in a shelter with the Potion bombs falling and snogged him wildly until it became clear they were going to live, at which point she never spoke to him again.
He tilted Pansy’s chin up and kissed her, stroking her hair, and she rolled easily on top of him, stretching so that their bodies fitted together at every point, and laughed when he groaned. He reached up blindly and traced the curve of her shoulder, the line of her collarbone with a light, light touch, slow and pausing every few minutes so she caught her breath, and by the time he traced a hand over her breast she’d made a noise of her own, and bit down on his lip.
He kissed her and kissed her, and she pressed down against him and kissed him back hungrily, both their hands roving, until her hands found his belt, and undid it.
The metallic clink stopped Draco for a moment, held him still and looking into her eyes.
“What is it?” she whispered, her mouth red. “Do you not want to?”
He looked up at her in disbelief. Of course he wanted to, he was dying for it, he was twenty years old and sometimes he worried that nobody in the world was ever going to want to with him. He was so, so tired of his manly purity. He wanted to right now.
Only—
“I love her,” he said in a low voice, and hated himself.
He looked at Pansy’s face change, and wished passionately for a moment that he was sixteen again and had never thought about any girl but her.
“It wouldn’t be—a big deal,” Pansy whispered finally.
Oh in that case, said Draco’s libido, and almost leaped at her. But this was Pansy, and he knew her: they’d known each other a long time. He touched her face instead of anything else and said: “Wouldn’t it?”
Pansy looked away, and then rolled off him, collapsing onto the pillow beside his.
Draco was afraid that there would be a long terrible wait into the night while they couldn’t speak to each other, but he’d forgotten how much Pansy’d had to drink. She slung an arm over his chest in a gesture of peace, and was asleep almost at once.
He lay on his back staring up at the ceiling, obviously unable to go have any cold showers or whatever else came to mind since she was holding onto him, and contemplated his love life with despair. He had to prove himself to Katie, he had to prove he could be good enough and he could make her happy, that was all. He could do it. Things had been getting better lately. He wouldn’t fail again.
He closed his hand over Pansy’s arm against his chest, trying to settle into sleep with very little expectation of it happening any time in the near future, and grimaced to himself as he recalled that somewhere out there in this deeply unfair world, Potter was undoubtedly having a wild time with the Patil twins. Or something of that sort.
Unfair, Draco told his ceiling. It showed no sign of sympathy.