Draco’s reward for the preservation of his manly purity came the very next day. Though he had to get beaten up first.
He promised Potter a sparring session that morning as long as the reports were done, which—in illegible Potter fashion—they were. So it only seemed fair.
Draco noticed as they entered the sparring room, walking through people resting on benches and lifting weights, that the practise mats cleared as they came towards them. He and Potter were already circling each other, round the benches and weights, watching each other and ready for what was coming.
“Tell you what, Malfoy,” Potter said, voice curling round the air in the same sort of way that his hand had curled around the hilt of his flaming sword. “You can have first swing.”
Draco was aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it wasn’t very clever to keep fighting with someone who massacred him every day and whose idea of a good time was killing ghouls wholesale. He certainly didn’t like the bruises, he’d never been the type to start fights though when they started he didn’t hold back.
“That’s so kind,” he drawled, and punched Potter hard, catching him off guard so that he fell backwards and sent a bench crashing. “So sorry,” he said when Potter stared up at him with wide green eyes and made an incoherent snarling sound. “Were you not ready?”
He was getting better, though, every day. And it was a challenge, Draco thought as he watched Potter get up and stalk towards him, deliberately falling back so they reached the practise mats where any landing would be soft. Potter was very good at this, and Draco was damned if he was going to have it all his own way.
Potter hit him, quite lightly for a start, and Draco fell. He’d been learning to fall for the past few weeks and he could do it now, landing easy and rolling and pulling Potter’s legs out from under him before Potter realised that Draco had meant to fall all along. Once Potter was down he kicked him in the stomach, but missed and kicked his ribs.
It was kind of like Quidditch, the way it should have been: no horrific anxiety about people watching, letting down your team, who happened to have a professional Quidditch broom in school: just racing blood, one on one, seeing who was really, truly better.
“You’re getting better,” Potter said in a low voice, possibly because he had just been kicked in the ribs.
Draco got to his feet. “I know,” he answered, and then Potter moved like a snake and scythed his legs out from under him and he realised as his back hit the practise mats that he shouldn’t have got to his feet while he was anywhere within range.
Potter was on him in a second, one hand pinning down his shoulder and one knee on his chest, the other hand planted beside Draco’s face to brace himself over him. Potter grinned down at him. “You’re not good enough,” he murmured. “Not yet. Surrender?”
“I don’t think so,” Draco said, and bit down hard on the wrist by his head.
Idiot Gryffindor: he kept forgetting that Draco was perfectly prepared to bite. And pull hair.
Potter shouted, and Draco elbowed him in the throat. He remembered his lesson about rolling out of range this time and then he was up again, tasting blood in his mouth. He grinned this time.
After a moment Potter, crouching on the ground and looking ready to spring in any direction, grinned back. He sat waiting for Draco to move, which Draco calmly did not do.
“I can wait around here all day,” he said. “I really like it here. It’s peaceful. Nobody’s hitting me.”
“Things change, Malfoy,” Potter said, and lunged for him.
Draco just about managed to dodge the blow, then tried to kick Potter’s legs out from under him again, at which point Potter grabbed his arm, almost wrenched his shoulder out of its socket and Draco ended up on the floor with his arm twisted around and Potter’s knee in the small of his back.
“Mmmf,” he complained into the mat.
“Well if you’re going to bite,” Potter pointed out. “Some of us are bleeding, here.”
Draco lifted his face a crucial fraction of an inch from the mat. “Some of us aren’t breathing, here,” he said, testing the strength of Potter’s grip. It was pretty strong.
Potter leaned down closer to his ear and said: “So surrender.”
“Oh fine,” said Draco. “For now. Let me up.”
Potter did, and Draco scrambled to his feet and felt every muscle scream at him in despairing reproach. Potter was nursing his bleeding wrist.
“Good fight,” he said, like he’d said the first time.
Draco raised his eyebrows. “Next one will be better.”
Potter laughed, a small slightly breathless sound in the back of his throat, and said: “Looking forward to it.”
It was after that the reward came.
He was filing away his and Potter’s case records—since he suspected that filing was yet another thing beyond Potter’s deeply limited abilities—and as did so Katie came in. She smiled when she saw him, and he wanted to take her smile and keep it in his pocket all day long.
“Hi there,” she said. “I haven’t seen you around much lately.”
“My devotion is unaltered and unalterable,” Draco said, and laughed as if he didn’t mean it. He was aware the laugh wasn’t all that convincing.
She laughed too, a little uneasily as if she was joining in with him to be polite.
“I’ve—you’ve been doing really well,” she said in her soft voice. “You and Harry. I heard all about the sea monster and the drug bust.”
“He is a burden to me, but I soldier on,” Draco told her.
“Could you grab down that file for me?” she asked, walking in and standing close to him. She pointed upward and he smelled her hair, her flowery perfume at once very sweet and very faint, like summers long gone.
He realised he was acting like a twelve year old boy with a crush. (When he actually was twelve he’d never had a crush, unless you counted the picture of a Firebolt he had taped over his bed and which he’d burned when he was thirteen.)
He stretched up and got the report down for her. Oddly enough, this gallant deed did not make her fling herself into his arms and promise to be his forever.
She did tilt a glance at him he couldn’t quite interpret, and said: “Have you been working out?”
“Ah,” Draco said. “Yes?”
Katie patted his arm. “I could tell.”
“Do you want to go to the movies with me?” Draco asked.
“Sure,” she said, and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t add what she always added, but she did. “But just as friends, Draco.”
Sometimes in the cold hours of the night when he thought things like you deserve this he thinks that Katie has only ever pitied him, and he could hate her for that but she’s so gentle and he’s already done so much to her, so much he can never make up for half of it.
“I live in hope,” Draco told her.
She raised her eyebrows, that look he couldn’t really work out flickering over her face again. “You don’t look like you’re exactly pining away,” she said, and he understood it was a compliment: it came with a smile. “Thanks for the file, Draco,” she added, and left.
It had never occurred to him that working out might be a step on the road to Katie. He’d always thought of it as having to prove his true love and shining virtue, but now he came to think of it the only person she’d ever mentioned fancying was Oliver Wood.
Draco paused to have vicious thoughts about Oliver Wood, an entirely pointless human being who had as much brain as a Bludger and also, Draco would grudgingly concede, a magnificent physique.
Obviously, though, a crucial part of making people fall in love with you was inspiring them with frenzied passion. Draco congratulated himself on making headway there and speculated on whether he should get an Oliver Wood haircut.
Since it was actually due to Potter that Draco was now apparently in possession of a physique that found favour with Katie Bell, and since Draco was in the kitchen making himself an urgently needed ninth cup of coffee anyway, he made Potter a cup of tea as well. And smiled at him when he pushed it over.
Potter raised an eyebrow, but he smiled back. “You’re in a good mood.”
“Is that not allowed here?” Draco inquired. “We are entering Potter land, people. Look grim. Make your jaws as square as they’ll go. Heroing is serious business.”
Potter laughed and tried to hide it, not all that successfully. Draco nicked the report he was trying to write and fixed it. It was shaping up to be a good day.
Until Potter said abruptly: “Can we go out for coffee or something?”
“Yes,” Draco said automatically, because Potter had said coffee, but then he actually heard what Potter had said and started to worry as he followed him to the café. Potter couldn’t actually chuck him as a partner because Shacklebolt had made clear that they were fired if this didn’t work out.
Maybe Potter was going to tell him he was quitting the Aurors. No, Draco thought, ordering several coffees to alleviate his distress, that couldn’t be right. Potter never quit anything.
He tried to find some clues in Potter’s face, but it was kind of hard to see him since they were sitting at the window, the sun turning their white table into a blinding disc of light, and all he could really tell was that Potter was scowling.
“If you are a bastard about this,” Potter informed him, “I will kill you.”
So this was an elaborate murder plot in which Potter planned to drop poison in Draco’s coffee. No, surely even Potter wouldn’t tell his intended victim. Maybe he would, though. He really wasn’t good at covert operations.
Potter was sort of weirdly hunched and clearing his throat. Draco peered at him suspiciously for a moment, and then against his better judgement made a vaguely encouraging sort of gesture.
“I like men,” Potter hurled at him like a hex.
Draco’s brain did not process this for a minute. All it did was sit there and offer Draco inane suggestions such as ‘D’you collect them?’ and ‘To eat?’
He said: “Oh?”
For a heart-stopping minute it occurred to him that this might be a pass. Then he remembered that they’d always hated each other and also that if Potter was saying what Draco thought he was saying—and Draco was still open to the whole thing being a terrible misunderstanding—then he could probably just go off and sleep with Oliver Wood.
“Remember that partner I had a while back, what was his name, Grant,” Potter said.
“Do you mean Gillam?” Draco asked. He scented gossip, forgot confusion and gripped the table. “Wait, the one you almost put in hospital? Oh my God, were you having inappropriate relations with him, was it a lovers’ tiff?”
“No!” Potter snapped. “It’s just that he found out and was a bastard about it, all right? Which is why I punched him,” he added. “So I thought I should tell you and get it out of the way.”
He glared at Draco. Draco stirred his coffee with a spoon and tried to process. Mostly he felt puzzled: the world made less sense when Potter wasn’t secretly having orgies with the Patil twins.
“Well?” Potter challenged him.
“Oh?” Draco said again. He didn’t have any soothing responses for twitchy outed guys. When Crabbe and Goyle had told him he’d had screaming abandonment issues and sulked at them for three weeks straight, but they had understood that he did it out of love. “Okay,” he tried. “I don’t care.”
Potter looked extremely taken aback. Draco tried to remind Potter about hi, Crabbe and Goyle, but apparently Potter hadn’t known about them any more than he’d known about Justine Finch-Fletchley.
Draco made him pay for coffee, since he’d made Draco think he was planning to poison him and everything.
While watching Potter pay, it occurred to Draco that this might be a way to make the points system work, but then he remembered that he’d rather chew his own hands off than spend time with Potter in a social context, so that was that.
On their way back to the office Draco realised there could still be gossip in this for him, and he inquired with interest: “So do you have a boyfriend?”
Potter looked intensely uncomfortable talking about this on the street, which rather amused Draco. “No,” he said gruffly.
Of course he didn’t, Draco thought. Really, Draco had been right all along, except for a few tiny details that he couldn’t be expected to have figured out. Potter obviously indulged in orgies with—the male equivalent of the Patil twins.
Unfortunately at that point Draco’s mind, searching for men twins, presented him with the idea of the Weasley twins. This mental picture upset him too much to continue with that line of questioning.
As soon as he got home, he shouted out in the direction of the kitchen: “Guess who’s a homosexual!”
Crabbe emerged, eating one of Goyle’s from-scratch spring rolls. “Right, we heard too,” he said, and Draco stared in outraged disbelief.
“Who told you?”
“He told us himself,” Goyle called from the kitchen.
“What?” Draco demanded. “I was not aware you were in any sort of contact with him!”
Crabbe gave him a reproachful look. “Slytherins have to stick together, Malfoy.”
“You’re raving, Crabbe,” Draco informed him. “Tell me why you’re raving. Have you been out in the sun?”
“We’ve promised to support him,” Goyle said. “Take him to a gay bar. You should come too.”
Draco found himself too appalled by this sudden turn to the dark side by his best friends to speak, when Goyle added: “Poor little thing,” and Draco flatly refused to believe that anyone under any circumstances could refer to Harry Potter that way.
“Who are we talking about?” he asked piteously.
“Malcolm Baddock, of course,” Crabbe said.
“Oh Baddock,” said Draco, much relieved.
He remembered a small curly-headed blond boy who’d cried because the Weasley twins had teased him at his Sorting, and followed the bigger Slytherin boys around a lot.
“Well that makes sense,” Draco said after a moment’s pause. “I suppose.”
“He’s got a Muggle dad who’s not pleased about that kind of thing,” Crabbe said, a little bleakly.
“Poor little thing,” Draco said. “I was his prefect, you know. He was always very good about doing his homework once I’d made him cry a few times,” he added reminiscently. “We should take him to your favourite bar and get him drunk.”
Goyle emerged, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “Wait,” he said. “Who were you talking about?”
Draco became gleeful again in short order. “You’ll never guess,” he said. “Go on. Try to guess.”
Crabbe frowned, and said: “It’s not Potter, is it?”
”… well, yes,” Draco answered rather flatly.
“Huh,” Crabbe said. “So Cho Chang was right about that, then.”
“Cho Chang? I’m sorry, this rumour was being spread around five years ago and I’m only hearing about it now, what kind of friends do you call yourselves, why did you not tell me?”
“Well, the thing is,” Goyle admitted, looking rather shamefaced. “The thing is we were pretty sure you’d instantly start, like—a homophobia club. Which we didn’t want for obvious reasons.”
“I would not have!” Draco protested violently.
“Malfoy, you would so,” Crabbe said. “We all had to wear badges supporting a Hufflepuff because of your epic hatred. A Hufflepuff.”
“Cedric Diggory was the one true Hogwarts champion,” Draco muttered rebelliously.
“Plus you were racist in school,” Crabbe said.
“We were all racist in school,” Draco yelled. “It was our thing.”
“We didn’t all use the M word,” Goyle said primly. “My mum says that’s vulgar.”
“Especially since you started using it because you were trying to upset Potter’s friend,” Crabbe said.
“This is outrageous calumny,” Draco mumbled. “I am outraged by your calumny. Because it is outrageous.”
“So does Potter have a boyfriend?” Goyle asked with interest.
“He says not,” Draco said. “I bet he has orgies. With twins. But not any twins we knew in school,” he added hurriedly, and went off to get changed for the club.
Malcolm Baddock met them outside Rick’s, Crabbe and Goyle’s favourite bar. Draco quite liked it too. Since his devotion to Katie was unalterable he didn’t go to bars to pick people up, and at Rick’s he always had company and the bar was quiet even if the club downstairs got crowded.
Little Malcolm was wearing glittery eyeshadow, Draco noted. Had Potter taken to wearing glittery eyeshadow, Draco probably would’ve guessed his dark secret before now. Also, Draco would have found it hilarious.
He smiled involuntarily and Baddock smiled shyly back at him.
“Hi Malfoy,” he said. “It’s nice of you to come too.”
“Of course,” Draco told him grandly. “I am deeply concerned about the welfare of all my former midgets.”
“I had a terrible crush on you in school,” Baddock continued, going pink.
“Did you?” Draco said, delighted. And people said he hadn’t been a good prefect! He bet nobody’d ever had a crush on Weasley.
Crabbe nudged him in the back. “Malfoy.”
“Oh right, of course. My devotion to Katie Bell is unalterable,” Draco said. “Sorry.”
“But she’s a Gryffindor,” Baddock pointed out, looking slightly horrified. “And a girl,” he added in much the same tone.
“I like girls,” Draco explained. “I admit the Gryffindor part is a drawback, but it can’t be helped.”
“Didn’t you make out with Blaise Zabini that one time?” Baddock chirped.
“Well yes,” Draco admitted. “But that was Blaise Zabini, he has insane Veela powers, I cannot be held accountable.”
“Is Zabini coming here tonight?” Baddock asked, a look of wild hope in his eyes.
“He’s in Milan with his lovers,” Crabbe said.
“What?” Goyle said. “All of them?”
Despite the lack of Blaise Zabini on the bar menu, Crabbe and Goyle managed to make little Baddock fairly happy. They left him talking to a benevolent-looking leather queen, widening his eyes and telling him how much he liked men to be masterful.
“See how your prefecting ways have marked him,” Goyle said.
“Children need a firm hand,” Draco informed him. “I stand by my methods. Hi, Rick,” he added to the bartender. “Three vodkas with lime.”
They spent a pleasant couple of hours leaning against the bar and watching with a certain amount of awe as little Baddock tore his way through the room like a tiny sparkly whirlwind.
Then Crabbe and Goyle went off to dance, and since leaning against the bar alone when you didn’t want to be picked up was an unwise move, Draco went outside for a bit of air. He stepped out through the back door, walked exactly two steps down a darkened alleyway and then realised exactly how stupid he was being when someone grabbed his wrist in an obviously violent rather than amorous way, and twisted his arm behind his back.
He had the brief yet familiar thought that the universe was unfair, since Crabbe and Goyle never got hassled like this. Which might’ve been because they were the size of small countries.
While he was having that thought his body moved smoothly, without his permission, without any thought at all, in a way he’d become used to. He stepped back into the grip, knocked the guy off balance, ducked down and kicked his legs out from under him, and then threw him over his shoulder into a brick wall.
Then he stood waiting for Potter to get back up and charge at him, only of course this wasn’t Potter, it was a total stranger, and he mostly lay there in a heap.
Draco stood looking down at him for a few minutes. He was really still: Draco was starting to panic.
He made his way back into the bar pretty sharpish, and elbowed through the crowd to find Crabbe and Goyle, who were romantically slow-dancing.
“Okay, don’t get upset,” Draco said. “But I think I killed a man.”
“Oh my God, I knew you were going to become a homophobe!” Goyle shrieked.
Draco made a distressed sound. He and Goyle trailed after Crabbe talking over each other in loud voices, and then Crabbe said the man was just concussed.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he added, looking from the heap to Draco in bemusement.
Draco found himself looking at his own hands as if they’d betrayed him. “Neither did I.”
He was going to tell Potter all about his display of astonishing battle skills, but then he came in the next day and everyone was having triple heart attacks because someone had kidnapped Scrimgeour’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s children and were threatening to take other politically connected kids.
Potter was pacing the room like a caged tiger, ready to snarl and leap if anyone approached him. The cautious way the other Aurors always dealt with him was starting to look a whole lot more like fear.
When they found a location Potter seized his cloak and headed for the door.
“Stop,” Draco ordered, and Potter ignored him. Draco looked around for support and saw none, so he cleared his throat and shouted. “Hey, idiot! Do you want those kids to die?”
Potter whirled to face him. “What did you say?”
“I said don’t walk into an unstable hostage situation without a plan,” Draco said. “You idiot,” he added, in case Potter hadn’t got it the first time.
“We don’t have time,” Potter snarled. “He’ll kill those kids.”
He’d probably already killed those kids, but Potter was clearly on the edge and Draco thought it best not to mention that.
“He’ll kill more,” Draco said. “We need to know who he’s working for, how they get into the houses, and what their agenda is. Now sit down because I have absolutely no compunction about hexing you when your back is turned. We need a plan.”
A muscle in Potter’s jaw twitched. He threw himself into the chair across from Draco, green eyes narrowed and suddenly feline, fixed on his face.
“Come up with one, then,” he said, his voice rumbling in his chest like a giant cat’s.
Draco had actually meant that the entire department of the Aurors should piece together a massive wonderful plan, with him obviously contributing vital parts of it and being lauded for his genius, but not actually being responsible for the whole thing. Potter, however, did not look open to reason or aware that there was anyone else in the world.
“Oh, help me, then,” Draco said with irritation born of panic, and thrust a whole pile of notes and maps into Potter’s hands.
“We should look at the pictures of the help,” Potter said suddenly after half an hour of silence, voice hoarse as if he’d been screaming the whole time. He added: “Kreacher,” which made no sense at all to Draco, but it was a good idea and so Draco started sorting through the pictures of the help. He didn’t let Potter do it, Potter had a lousy memory for names and faces and would be no use.
There were distinct similarities between some of the faces. Clearly, this was a family kidnapping affair.
Once he’d seen the common link he was able to send Owls ordering arrests across the board, and then the kids were safe. The nearest detachment of Aurors got sent to the family home and the last of the kidnappers were rounded up. The kids who’d been taken were dead as expected, but on the whole Draco thought they’d done pretty well.
Until Potter threw a chair at the wall and tried to throw a punch at Draco. Draco hit the floor and rolled out of range. He noticed his fellow Aurors conspicuously failed to rally to his aid.
This was probably because they were all gossiping in the kitchen. Draco found them there when he stamped in to make his fifteenth cup of coffee and think about ways to get the drop on Potter and then strangle him.
“—Best just to stay out of his way,” Chrysanthemum said wisely, because that would certainly teach Potter how to interact normally with society, it wasn’t like the lone wolves were the crazy ones or anything.
“I heard it was the orphanage,” Dawlish said in a conspiratorial whisper. “The one You-Know-Who was raised in, he went and found it and I heard Potter was the first one on the scene and saw what he’d done—”
“I heard he killed You-Know-Who right afterwards,” someone else said.
Draco put his coffee cup down, pushing it away sort of blindly, and walked out of the kitchen.
He’d seen the orphanage. He’d been one of the last on the scene, just there for the last of the clean-up and to get a few body parts for Snape’s potions. He’d still been sick and had screaming nightmares for weeks.
Nobody who still had parents was allowed on that scene.
He saw that the entire office had been cleared by the awesome force of Potter’s insanity, and was a bit impressed.
Potter was sitting at his desk with his head in his arms.
Draco went up to the desk, paused for a moment and thought about the wild furious way Potter had swung at him and wondered what on earth to do, and then something about the way Potter was sitting reminded him of the way Crabbe had sat, head in his arms, after losing the first patient he’d ever set his heart on saving.
Draco abruptly stopped thinking, reached out and smoothed down Potter’s hair.
Potter hadn’t been moving before and didn’t move now, but nevertheless he froze. The whole room seemed to freeze, as if what Draco had mistakenly thought was a safe, normal floor was an iceberg about to tilt and tip him off.
Draco realised slowly, point by point, that a) Crabbe was his dear friend and thus certain gestures were appropriate with him which were not appropriate with your psychotic former schoolboy nemesis, b) Crabbe was not insane and twitchy and liable to take Draco’s head off with one swing and c) Goyle had come in the very next moment and saved Crabbe and Draco from having to deal with being emotional and unmanly.
Goyle was not going to come in now.
The memory of all those idiots crowded in the kitchen saved Draco: he remembered that they were afraid, but he wasn’t.
He recovered himself from the small check in his movements and smoothed Potter’s hair down again, and again. It took a lot of smoothing down.
“Those kids were dead before we heard a word about it,” he said in Potter’s ear. “Don’t be such a twit.”
Potter swallowed thickly. “I should’ve done something about it.”
“What could you possibly have done?” Draco demanded, and added: “Cretin,” because it just felt right. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“I should’ve been able to do something!” Potter snarled.
“You did,” Draco said. “You thought with your actual brain. I was very impressed. It is possible, Potter, that you are not as stupid as I’ve always supposed. I am an Auror: I plan to investigate this further.”
Potter made a choked sound between a snarl and a laugh.
Draco felt a bit like he was trying to take an enraged wolf out on a walk, with his control of the situation extremely tenuous and only existent at all because Potter wasn’t trying to break it. This feeling was rather exacerbated by the feel of Potter’s atrocious hair, thick and wild under his fingertips: he thought that at any moment it was going to bristle.
He wondered wildly if Potter had been personally acquainted with any of these children, to take on like this, but of course he hadn’t been. Of course it wasn’t just about the orphanage—Draco felt the iceberg in his mind tilt and tried hard not to think about that, and found himself tipped into understanding instead.
Potter’s whole crazy life had been built on the weird terrible responsibilities the world had piled on him, and the conviction that the children should live.
Not fair, Draco thought, and the thought was clean and uncomplicated by all the cold midnight doubts he had, when he thought yes, but you did deserve it, and your father deserved it, both of you deserved it, deserved worse, because this time was different. Potter was a twerp, but that didn’t mean he deserved being turned into a weapon to win a war and then feared because he’d become what everyone had wanted him to be.
“Ease it down a notch,” Draco commanded. “I’m going to make you one of your horrible cups of tea, and then we still have reports to write. The day isn’t over yet just because you want it to be, Potter. Stop being such a slacker.”
“I’m not a slacker, Malfoy,” Potter growled, but he kept his head down.
Draco wondered why he was still frozen, being so obviously careful not to move even a fraction, but then shrugged and put it down to the general lunacy.
“You are so,” he said. “You’re completely spoiled and you always have been, but you’re doing these reports.”
He took his hand away from Potter’s hair because it was high time he did, and put it in his pocket so he wouldn’t have to think about that. Potter straightened up in his chair but Draco was already whirling away, back to the kitchen where he collected his coffee and made the stupid tea.
When he returned and pushed the tea towards Potter, Potter was already looking at the initial reports page in despair. He looked sidelong at Draco as he came in.
“So,” he said, a little awkwardly, and Draco prayed for the roof to fall in so they wouldn’t have to have an emotional moment. “Um,” said Potter. “Exactly how many points did each of us get for that one?”
Draco was immediately both hugely relieved and rather thoughtful. “I think I won.”
“We’ll have to sort this points thing out properly,” Potter said, his mouth on the brink of a smile. “Otherwise you’ll cheat.”
“It’s not cheating,” Draco told him severely. “It’s being smarter than everyone else.”
“Everyone else thinks it’s cheating.”
“That’s because they’re stupid,” Draco said, and realised Potter had fed him that one. He glanced across the desk and Potter was looking at him already, smiling properly, and Draco finally accepted what he’d already sort of known: the Potter fans weren’t crazy. Well, they were crazy, but they weren’t blind, Potter was sort of supernaturally good-looking.
Loyal to Slytherin until the end, Draco assured himself that Blaise Zabini still had infinitely better hair. Hell, even Oliver Wood had better hair, which reminded Draco that he’d been thinking of an Oliver Wood haircut, which made him think about why.
Oh my God, he thought with sudden cold fear, what if Katie fancied Potter? It was completely possible. It was even likely.
It was a great relief to remember that Potter was gay.
Not all of their cases were the brilliant successes they should have been, considering Draco’s awe-inspiring genius. The infamous time when they were both captured and utterly defeated got them zero points each.
They were on surveillance detail, trying to find out if Scrimgeour’s mistress was just his mistress or a spy for the French, and Mademoiselle Madeleine was meant to have gone out that night but instead she’d stayed home with a headache. She’d switched the lights on and screamed, Potter had gone into attack mode, Draco had been half blind and lunged at him, and she’d somehow shoved them both into an enclosed space, barricaded them in and presumably gone off to Owl the Aurors.
“Why did you have to grab me?” Potter demanded.
“Because you were about to hit the Minister for Magic’s mistress!” Draco hissed. “You can’t hit the Minister for Magic’s mistress!”
“I’ve hit the Minister for Magic,” Potter said thoughtfully.
“I have no words,” Draco told him. “No, that’s such a lie—”
“I knew it was too good to be true,” Potter said.
“Shut up Potter—where are we?”
Potter shifted, and almost asphyxiated Draco with his shoulder. “I think it’s a cupboard,” Potter said.
“Please do not move,” Draco said coldly once he could speak again. “I am extremely uncomfortable.”
“Really, are you, because I feel fine,” Potter told him crossly.
“All right,” Draco said. “Don’t move. I am a trained investigator, and I am going to investigate this.”
“What are you—” Potter began.
Draco pushed Potter up against the wall, which meant he was a fraction of an inch further away. “I said don’t move,” he said into his ear, and he reached out with his other hand and felt tile. “This isn’t a cupboard,” he said. “Cupboards aren’t tiled. This is a shower cubicle, and if I can find the door and maybe get to my wand—”
“Malfoy,” Potter said in a strained voice.
“Hold still,” said Draco urgently, and since Potter did not take direction well he bolted backwards like a wild horse, which was not a good idea.
He hit the opposite wall hard, and the shower came hissing on. It was freezing cold.
Draco cursed at the top of his voice. “I told you to stay still!”
“Calm down, Malfoy,” Potter said, sounding far calmer himself now Draco was enraged and soaking wet.
Draco shoved him. Potter shoved him back. They both fell out of the shower when Kingsley Shacklebolt opened the door and looked down at them with a sort of endless, solemn despair.
It was all hideously embarrassing.
The only reason Mademoiselle Madeleine did not register a complaint was that Potter took off his shirt and started wringing it dry, while blinking up through wet black locks and apologising earnestly.
”… oh that’s all right,” Madeleine said, switching tones rather abruptly. “I feel so safe knowing that fine upstanding Aurors like you are… mmm… keeping the streets clean. If my Rufy ever needs bodyguards, I know who to rechest. Er, request.”
“Whew,” Potter said afterwards, when they were squelching towards the car. “Lucky she was a good citizen.”
“Ahaha,” Draco said. “Sure.”
Potter gave him a look that suggested he found him incomprehensible, and Draco just threw him a rueful smile. If Draco could hypnotise women by taking off his shirt, he thought, he would’ve worked out a way to rule the world by now.
“Have you given any thought to ruling the world?” he asked.
“Er,” Potter said, still looking at him as if he found him incomprehensible but smiling. “No. But I imagine you have a plan.”
“I might do,” Draco conceded.
“Get in the car and you can tell me how we’re going to do it.”
Draco actually did award Potter one point for getting them out of trouble with his sexual wiles, but then he took the point away again for getting them both wet, so it was zero points all around.
Not only was it zero points all around, but Madeleine remembered them, and at the next function for the Ministry and the Aurors to all mingle and get along, they both got a special invitation. The kind that meant getting into real trouble with Shacklebolt if they refused.
Draco always went to the functions anyway. They were awful and people looked at him and a few slimy desperate men, clinging to the edges of a social circle they used to rule, always came up to tell him he looked just like his father. Katie went to them, though, so he went too.
That particular night he searched the crowd for her, and saw her wearing blue—she wore a lot of blue—and on some other man’s arm. Draco looked him over and dismissed him as nondescript and uninteresting, and wandered over to her to assure her that his devotion was unalterable.
“Hi, Draco,” she said. “Um, I’m here with somebody—”
“Mm, I saw,” Draco drawled. “I know competition when I see it. Trust me, that’s not it.”
Katie looked a little upset, and Draco wished he could take it back, but her date was returning from the bar and he couldn’t think of the right thing to say and then to cap it all over her head he saw Scrimgeour corner Potter.
Oh, that had worked out really well last time.
“My devotion is unalterable. Excuse me,” Draco said. She looked confused and unhappy and pleased, all at once, but he couldn’t stay to see which won out.
He cut through the herd with minimal elbowing since he was being discreet, and arrived in time to hear Scrimgeour say: “A show of unity would really benefit both the Ministry and the Aurors—and of course your own career, my dear boy.”
“Is that so,” Potter said, throwing each word a like a punch.
“Potter,” Draco said from behind him, quietly. Potter turned at once.
“We were talking, Mr Malfoy,” Scrimgeour said, looking like a lion robbed of its prey until Potter turned and looked back at him, at which point he started looking a lot more like prey.
“Not about anything important,” Potter said contemptuously.
“Instead of having a scene which will get you fired,” Draco said in a low voice, exactly as if neither of them had spoken at all. “How about having a drink? At the bar. Let’s go to the bar and away from here.”
He grabbed Potter’s arm, which felt like iron until Potter let out a small frustrated breath and then said: “I could use a drink.”
Scrimgeour’s expression changed into one Draco could not quite make out.
“By all means go have one,” he said. “Might I have a word with you, Mr Malfoy? I won’t keep you long.”
Draco’s eyebrows rose dramatically.
“I’ll be at the bar,” Potter said, and stalked away from them both.
So here he was, alone with the Minister for Magic. Draco’s father had of course trained him for precisely such a situation. He’d said ‘Persuade him to introduce anti-Muggleborn legislation.’
Draco stared at him and sort of made a face.
“So glad to see you here, Mr Malfoy,” said Scrimgeour, who had never spoken to Draco once in two years.
“It’s a real thrill to see you too,” he drawled.
Scrimgeour only looked very briefly irritated. “Of course, you’re aware that in the current political situation—the economy having never recovered from the war, the general low morale…” he said. “You’re aware of how valuable a figurehead such as the Boy Who Lived could be.”
“I bet he could be,” Draco said cheerfully. “Good luck with that one.”
“It’s most unfortunate that the man seems entirely unable to listen to reason,” Scrimgeour said, impatience flicking like a lion’s tail and then hidden again.
“Bad luck,” Draco agreed, nodding placidly. “Mad as a brush. Can’t be helped.”
Scrimgeour seemed driven to plain speaking, which made him look rather testy. “I put it to you, Mr Malfoy, that if anyone were to exert their influence with Mr Potter in order to persuade him to adopt the right course for all concerned… that person would not find the Ministry ungrateful.”
“Okay,” Draco said. “Well, if I ever see anyone with any influence at all over Potter, I will certainly let them know. It’s been lovely chatting to you.”
“Let me give you my card, Mr Malfoy,” Scrimgeour said, proffering it between two gloved fingers. He looked at Draco, their eyes meeting over gilt edging, and said: “I’m sure that Lucius Malfoy’s son can be convinced in… some way to do his civic duty.”
Professor Snape had tried very hard to teach Draco wandless magic. Some spells had taken, and some hadn’t. He thought of one now.
“When you put it that way,” Draco said, smiling a slow charming smile, his father’s smile, and took the card.
He held the card between two fingers just like Scrimgeour had, as they smiled and smiled at each other. “I think we understand each other,” said the Minister for Magic.
“I doubt that,” Draco told him smoothly. “Incendio.”
The card began to burn, the whispering sound of the flame audible in a suddenly quiet room. Draco kept his eyes locked with the Minister for Magic’s and after a long moment, he leaned forward and blew on the fragile remnants of the card, as if he was blowing on a dandelion clock.
Ash burst softly into Scrimgeour’s face. Draco watched with interest to see if his leonine beard would go up in smoke, but Draco had never been that lucky.
He was still coughing when Draco said: “Enjoy the rest of the party,” and walked off towards the bar.
As he went he realised exactly what he’d done. Shacklebolt seemed to be having a stone-faced aneurysm, Katie looked very upset, and a lot of the other Aurors looked either shocked or disgusted.
Potter was leaning against the bar laughing, his black head thrown back.
“I’ll buy you a drink for the look on Scrimgeour’s face,” he said.
“I’ll have anything alcoholic,” Draco said numbly. “A double.” He shook his head to clear the madness out of it. Potter was a bad influence on him.
He wondered where Scrimgeour had got the idea that he had any sort of influence over Potter at all.
That weekend Katie took him and her six year old niece to the movies. Draco was pretty sure the six year old was meant to be a chaperone to insure that Draco didn’t get fresh, but Draco quite liked kids. They hardly ever took offence, no matter what he said.
He did some impressions for Mary and she wanted Katie to marry him by the time they were at the top of the popcorn queue.
The Bells hadn’t told the younger children about Katie being a witch, so Mary was also under the impression that Draco was the most fabulously imaginative person she had ever met.
They went and saw a movie in an old theatre which Katie apologised for, and which Draco thought was the most brilliant and perfect thing he had ever seen. Then he walked them home. He got to hold Katie’s hand as long as he held Mary’s too.
“Tell me another story about Potter,” Mary said as he attempted to woo her aunt. “He’s my favourite.”
Katie smiled up at him and Draco was pretty sure she looked charmed. “I didn’t know you were so good with kids,” she said.
“I have so many good qualities, I forget to mention them all,” Draco said, and prayed that Mary wouldn’t repeat the things he’d told her about Inferi while Katie was in the bathroom.
He didn’t try to kiss her at the door and she didn’t invite him in, but he also didn’t actually say: “Do you love me yet?” like a crazy person, so he gave himself one point for that.
Then he realised that he was awarding himself points in his actual life like a crazy person, and he had to take it away again.
“I saw the most amazing movie in the world,” he told Potter when he scrambled into the car Monday morning. “It had a beautiful lady in a Gothic Castle. She was being seduced by a large animal in a frock coat.”
“What kind of movies are you watching?” Potter asked in scandalised tones.
Draco was too distracted by the fact there was a new contraption in the car to respond. He poked at the contraption. “What’s this?”
“It’s a car radio,” Potter answered casually.
“Ohhhh,” said Draco. “Show me how to work it.”
Ten minutes later, Draco had mastered the car radio—he was quick and skilled with all Muggle artefacts—and he was in love.
“I shall call her Gilda,” he said, and touched it again to make it change sounds.
Potter kept his eyes on the horizon, and said lightly: “I thought you might like it.”
They were supposed to patrol the sea coast in their car that morning, and Gilda came in very handy for the long drive. So many Aurors had seen the usefulness of their car that Shacklebolt was ordering one of them for every pair.
“I shouldn’t imagine Weasley needs to be an Auror any more,” Draco said. The idea of Weasley actually on his way to earning a competence struck him as bizarre, but with the new light of Gilda in his life he felt he could be charitable.
“I don’t think he does,” Potter said, and looked a bit gloomy. “Hermione wants him to do something more—ambitious with his life. They fight about it all the time.”
“That must be such fun for you,” Draco said, and refrained from asking when Weasley and Granger had ever done anything else.
He got on all right with Granger these days, actually. She was an Unspeakable, and a couple of times their paths had crossed doing slightly nefarious things that their departments should probably not know about. Their system of mutual blackmail had sort of made Draco warm to her: it was so Slytherin.
Plus, as he’d noticed when he was thirteen and had broken up with his Firebolt picture, the girl had something. Unfortunately that something came with a strong slapping arm, terrible hair and the worst taste in men conceivable.
“Right, so these mermaids have been robbing yachts,” Draco said. “So in short—they’re merpirates.”
“I suppose you could put it that way,” Potter said, grinning.
Draco tried out this new word in a variety of ways, such as ‘Let us apprehend these dastardly merpirates’ and ‘I wonder if any of the merpirates are fiendishly though aquatically attractive.’ Potter laughed at him because he was filled with mockery and cruelty.
“There was someone in my movie who reminded me of you,” Draco said darkly. “He fell off the Gothic castle.”
“Did he have a broom at the time?” Potter asked.
“Knowing you,” Draco said. “Probably.” Which made Potter look pleased with himself, so Draco was forced to use his secret weapon. “Who taught Muggle Studies?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Potter said, frowning.
“Hmm,” said Draco. “Can you name me any of the Ravenclaw girls in our year?”
“Er,” Potter said. “Padma Patil.”
“Someone who your best mate didn’t take to the Yule Ball,” Draco said. “That shouldn’t even count!”
Potter scanned the seas for merpirates, turned the car around with the curve of the coast and said: “Malfoy, are you giving me points for this?”
“Maybe,” Draco answered shiftily.
Potter’s brow furrowed. “How am I doing?”
“I don’t want to tell you,” Draco said. “I’m afraid you might cry. Any of the Slytherin girls apart from Pansy?”
“Millicent Bulstrode,” Potter offered.
“That’s very good! And?” Draco said encouragingly.
“Um,” Potter said. “Er. No. Sorry. I’ve got nothing.”
“There were three others,” Draco told him in sad, disappointed tones.
In retrospect, the fact Potter preferred men should have perhaps become clear years ago, since he was apparently capable of remembering most of the boys’ names at school. He knew quite a few Ravenclaw boys.
“And, um—Entwistle, I think,” Potter said. “I don’t know his first name.”
“Hmm, well, that’s better,” Draco conceded, and then a terrible thought occurred to him.
He was dumbstruck by it. He was silent for so long that Potter began flicking him slightly concerned glances out of the corner of his eye.
“Potter,” Draco said at last in a portentous voice.
“Yes?” Potter asked apprehensively.
“What’s my name?”
“Er, Malfoy?” Potter inquired, looking at him as if he had gone insane.
“Yes, but my first name, what is it?”
“Well,” Potter said, and hesitated.
“Oh my God,” Draco said. “You don’t know. You actually don’t know.”
He was overcome by the sheer enormity of this revelation, and the fact that he should’ve thought of it before. Potter couldn’t remember any of his other schoolmates’ names. Or his partners’ names, come to think of it. Why had he simply assumed that Potter knew his? God, this was actually humiliating: he’d spent a lot of his school years hating every letter in Potter’s name, and Potter didn’t even know his. Crabbe and Goyle had been right that time in fifth year when they’d told him that the whole deal with Potter was unbalanced.
Though possibly that wasn’t quite what they’d meant.
“Of course I know,” Potter snapped.
“Why?” Draco demanded. “Why of course? You don’t know Kevin Entwistle’s! Entwistle actually liked you! Which I never did,” he added, in case Potter had failed to notice that as well.
“I didn’t like you either,” Potter growled back instantly.
“I don’t feel like talking to you anymore,” Draco informed him, and knew he was being ridiculous but simply felt too insulted to stop.
He turned Gilda on high and listened to her soothing voices until he felt calmer. Gilda played hundreds and hundreds of songs to him, and eventually he was seduced into singing along with her.
“I would chase old ghosts and watch them scatter, drop old dreams and watch them shatter,” Draco sang to Gilda. “Lose myself and all I own, to find—”
“There,” Potter said, and sent the car into a dive.
Draco switched off Gilda. “Merpirates!”
Potter had to drive the car, so Draco had to be the one to work the enchanted fishing net. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t always had a bit of a problem with Levitation charms.
Potter ended up having to land the car on the yacht and do it himself. At least the net Draco had thought up worked and the merpirates didn’t actually escape, but the owners of the yacht had to be Obliviated and by the time they had the net attached to the boot of the car Draco was wet from seaspray, had been hit with a trident, and was in an absolutely foul mood.
“So you were just, er, stopped by the Coast Guard or something,” Potter told the yachting couple.
“Yes, officer,” they both agreed. “Thank you,” the woman added with shining eyes.
“Say it again, who’s a man amongst men, and then say it once more, who’s a hero next door, who’s a super success, don’t you know, can’t you guess, ask his friends and his five hangers-on,” Draco said in a mocking undertone. That movie had got Potter down all right.
Draco strode back towards the car, yanking the door open, and noticed to his extreme irritation that Potter was leaning against Draco’s side of the car and not getting into the damn driver’s seat so they could both go home. He glared furiously at Potter, but Potter was looking at the ground and probably didn’t even see.
“Draco,” Potter said in a low, rough voice.
“What?” snapped Draco, and then realised what Potter had actually said.
A corner of Potter’s mouth lifted. “I know your name.”
Draco would probably be all right with it if Potter didn’t fall off a Gothic castle.
After a few minutes in the car, Potter said: “Wait—the movie was Beauty and the Beast? You are so weird.”
“Shut up, it was deep,” Draco said.
They flew over and over the coast, the sea hemming the land like shining silver ribbon under the moon, searching the waters for any more bands of merpirates so they could be sure they’d caught them all. Draco was exhausted because he’d been up all night making that stupid net, and he listened to Gilda and tried not to let his eyes fall shut.
He half-woke at some sharp gleam of moonlight on water, warm and blinking at the world and feeling a general lack of interest in it, wanting to turn back to sleep. A small part of his mind was awake and taking notice, though. The possibility of deathly embarrassment rose at him through sleepy confusion, as he realised he was sleeping with his head on Potter’s shoulder.
He flinched and became aware of the hand on his neck, clasp gentle, keeping him in place.
“Shh,” Potter said in a quiet, automatic way, as if he’d said it before and didn’t actually expect Draco to hear it.
Draco frowned, puzzled but reassured that mockery was not about to arrive, and half-decided that since he’d already gone to sleep he might as well—and then he went to sleep again before he could reach a decision.
Sometimes there actually were cases which did what Draco believed they should all do, and showcased Draco’s brilliance for the whole world to see.
Every Auror wanted to catch Sextus Forsythe. They’d been trying to get something definite on him for years.
Draco had just been flipping through Witch Weekly while he monitored Potter finishing his reports Friday evening. He’d read the Sextus Forsythe In Love Nest story with interest, but it wasn’t until he’d turned a couple of pages that he had a thought, flicked back and thought to wonder who owned the property that the love nest was built on.
“Very good, excellent, some days you show almost human intelligence, go ahead, have a good weekend,” he muttered to Potter, and fled to the archives room.
At six in the morning he lifted his face from the tiny, dirty trail that led from a mansion given in security for a bad risk to the real deal under the bad risk and connected Forsythe squarely to the worst people in the magical drugs for Muggles business.
He seized the papers, shoved them in his bag, stopped in the kitchen for a restorative cup of coffee and scared the cleaners, then Apparated straight to Potter’s flat. He walked right in the bedroom door.
On the bed were the entwined forms of Granger and Weasley.
“Malfoy?” Weasley exclaimed, as Granger dived for a bedsheet.
“Augh, my eyes,” Draco exclaimed, and dived for the door.
The door shut, the full hideousness of his situation descended on him. There was really no guarantee that Potter was not also occupied, since everybody in the whole world besides Draco had a sex life, and since Weasley of all people could convince an attractive woman into bed, Potter could well be in there with boy twins. Triplets, even.
“Don’t interrupt your partner’s orgies” had never been covered in the manual on maintaining a civil partnership. Possibly they had felt it was self-evident.
Draco knocked. There was no answer.
Potter might be over at the twins’ house. Or the triplets’. It was obviously imperative for Draco to find him, but even his Auror’s courage shrank at the idea of going back into the bedroom of freckles and horror to inquire where Potter’s lovers lived.
He inched the door open, eyes mostly shut, and squinted around so that he wouldn’t see much of the orgy. Mostly he just saw morning light dimmed by curtains, white sheets and brown skin, and he opened his eyes properly and saw that Potter was alone.
Much relieved, Draco walked in and said: “Hey Potter! Get up.”
Potter made a complaining sound and turned his head into the pillow. Draco walked up to the bed and leaned against the post at the foot of it, noting that Potter seemed to have actually twisted his bedsheet into a rope in his sleep.
“Potter, wake up!” he said, and contemplated shaking him, but really, Potter was in bed and not wearing very much, and that would be inappropriate. “Oh come on, Potter,” Draco said, becoming somewhat growly and irritated: they had things to do and Draco had a glorious triumph to enjoy, here. “Wake up. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Potter opened his eyes a fraction, yawned, stretched over the rope he’d made of the bedsheet and grabbed Draco’s wrist.
“Mm?” he said, his eyes barely open.
“Um,” Draco said. “Morning?”
”… Malfoy?” Potter rasped, clawing his free hand through his hair so it all stood up in spikes. “What’re you—why are you here?”
“I have something to tell you,” Draco said. “Wake up. Also, let go of me.”
Potter looked at his hand and then let go very abruptly, without an apology because the triplets had obviously taught him to grab but not taught him any manners. He lay back against the pillows and frowned up at Draco, looking more awake but considerably confused. He looked at the bedsheet in a way that suggested he might’ve pulled it up if it wasn’t more rope than sheet.
“What is it?”
Draco luxuriated in this moment of triumph. “Oh, you are going to love me,” he drawled. “Guess what?” He paused for effect, and then said: “I’ve got Forsythe. Dead to rights.”
First Potter looked as if he’d been slapped awake. Then he smiled, a sudden fierce smile that he usually only broke out during a sparring session.
“No,” he breathed.
“Oh yes,” Draco said. “Yes.” They locked eyes, and then Draco made an impatient gesture. “Get up,” he said. “Let’s go arrest him right now!”
“Oh, hell yes,” Potter said, and scrambled out of bed. He found his jeans on the floor and started pulling them on.
“Not one of those jumpers,” Draco said, still leaning against the bedpost and enjoying a spot of enormous smugness. “It looks like it’s going to be a nice day, and they make me sad.”
“Fine, whatever,” Potter said, and grabbed a green t-shirt. He looked at Draco as they were going out the bedroom door and said: “You haven’t changed clothes… oh, Malfoy, you’ve been in the office all night.”
“So?” Draco demanded. “I think perhaps you didn’t hear me, perhaps I need to say it again, because we’ve got Forsythe.”
“You could’ve said,” Potter said. “I would’ve stayed and helped out, and then maybe you’d have got some sleep or had dinner or breakfast or one of those other normal people meals.”
But what about the triplets, what would they have done? Somebody had to think of the triplets.
“Oh Potter, you’ll make someone a beautiful wife one day, but can we please go arrest Forsythe now?”
Unfortunately they couldn’t, because between the door out and Potter’s bedroom was the kitchen, where Granger and Weasley were sipping tea dressed in full-length dressing gowns, the collars of which they were clutching tight. They looked traumatised and reproachful.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Weasley said, glaring at Draco.
“What?” Draco demanded. “Oh, for God’s sake. I wasn’t hassling him because he’s gay, I was hassling him because he’s Potter.”
“I see you haven’t changed a bit,” Weasley said.
Draco bared his teeth. “I wish I hadn’t seen anything.”
“This is very mature, boys,” Granger said, eyeing Draco and Weasley with about the same amount of distaste.
Draco certainly sympathised with distaste for Weasley, but since she’d chosen Weasley as her King of her own accord, even he thought that look was a bit much. He recalled Potter indicating that all was not well in the Weasley and Granger dream of love, and broke ahead of Potter in a determined sprint for the door.
“D’you want some coffee, Malfoy?” Granger asked.
“Yes,” he said automatically, and then froze. “I mean—I mean yes,” he said, and cursed his only weakness. “Go get the car, Potter. I want Gilda to see this.”
Potter shrugged and made for the door.
“Don’t order him around,” Weasley snapped.
Draco was about to snarl something back at Weasley, but Potter turned back and caught his eyes. “Who’s ordering me around?” he said lightly. “I always drive. Malfoy always takes the passenger seat. You know—like a girl.”
Draco knew exactly what he was doing, but the hell with it: as if he’d ever choose Weasley to spar with over Potter anyway. “I think of you as—like a chauffeur,” he said thoughtfully.
Potter laughed and made a rude gesture, and was out the door. Draco took a big swallow of coffee in order to get it down fast and get himself out of here. It was only when he’d swallowed that he noticed the aftertaste, and Granger’s glittering eyes.
Unspeakables could carry Veritaserum, and administer it at their discretion.
Draco took another swallow since the damage was done, and said: “You must be really damn worried about Potter.”
“I think he’s doing better,” Granger answered softly. “How do you think he is? How’s the partner thing going?”
“He’s the best I ever had,” said Draco, and gave his cup an appalled look. “I’m going now, because I’m really embarrassed,” he said to the coffee and Veritaserum.
“Wait,” Granger said. “Are you going to tell Harry about this?”
“No,” said Draco. “My friends were worried about me, too.”
That was it, he had to get out of here.
He paused at the door and looked back at them. Both of them looked more relaxed: maybe even a little relieved.
“Granger,” he added. “I’ve always thought you were kind of hot.”
He laughed out loud at the expression on Weasley’s face, and then went easily down the stairs to Potter and the car.
Once in the car, he mostly tried to think about figures and not embarrassing things that he might conceivably tell Potter. He counted up points and case records, since Potter knew about those, and then when Potter was about half-way to Forsythe’s he realised something.
“Potter,” he said. “Do you know what our case record is?”
“Sure,” Potter said, but he looked over at Draco because of the tone in Draco’s voice.
“But do you realise what it means?” Draco asked. “With Forsythe too—we’re going to get Aurors of the Year. It’s in the bag.”
Potter looked about as stunned as Draco felt. They stared at each other, and Draco saw the same thought as Draco was having clear on Potter’s face: but five months ago we were going to get fired, and then they were both laughing, amazed and glad, as the car sailed on to Forsythe’s arrest.
Draco’s laugh went a little hysterical, but he blamed that on the lack of food and sleep and the getting drugged before breakfast.