On the award night for the Aurors of the Year, Harry Potter shook his hand and Katie Bell slept with him.
It was pretty much the best night of his life.
The hall the powers that be had rented was glowing and cream-coloured, looking like they were inside one of the masses of lit candles all over the walls and the tables and set in the chandeliers. A lot of people came up to Draco and congratulated him. He kept having more champagne, until the whole world was the champagne-whirling inside of a lit candle.
He danced with his cousin Tonks. She was his cousin, and it made him uneasy that he didn’t know her, had never been allowed to speak about her during his childhood and felt like he should be close to her now but didn’t have the faintest idea how to be. She looked pink all over, her dress and cheeks matching her hair, and was apparently going to have a possible werewolf litter any time now.
She kissed him and told him congratulations.
Draco had thought that Potter might come to the hall with his triplets and cause a scandal, but he brought Granger instead. Even that caused a lot of speculation in the cloakroom debating whether he’d stolen her from Weasley.
He seemed to be mostly at the party with a glass of champagne, so Draco stole it from him. All the champagne should belong to Draco: that was only right.
Potter let him take it. He was looking a little weird: possibly the volume of women who had noticed him in his formal clothes and were now closing in like vultures had alarmed even him. He was looking at the floor a lot.
He said “Congratulations,” and offered his hand, and Draco remembered in precise detail being eleven years old, outraged, confused and wanting more than anything in his life before to make this almost-stranger pay.
He shook Potter’s hand.
Potter continued to look at the floor, and Draco surveyed the circling women with some amusement. Then he saw Katie Bell walking through them. She was smiling right at him.
She agreed to dance with him. She agreed to go out with him.
When they were dancing and he asked if he could kiss her, she agreed to that too.
Later he didn’t remember the kisses in detail, though there were a lot of them, soft, not pushing, though they seemed to have pushed enough because later he was in her room, helping her off with her robes, having her touch his chest and trying to pretend he knew what he was doing, still not quite believing it was real.
He mostly remembered the disbelief, every candle in the room seeming to lose gravity and float around like the bubbles in champagne, as he realised that he’d never really thought it would happen. He’d expected to fail but here she was in his arms, and around him there were—the people who’d congratulated him watching, and Granger in red looking approving, his cousin looking proud, Potter who had shaken his hand. The world was all golden, and whirling.
It wasn’t fair. He would do his best to deserve it.
Draco woke up with a headache and under an atrocious rose-patterned duvet, and was extremely confused for a moment before he saw Katie’s sleeping face on the pillow next to his, at which point the wonder and disbelief came back.
She woke up stretching, and reached her hand out to him. “Hey,” she said, and smiled.
He kissed her hand. “Hey,” he said, which seemed safe. “Good morning,” he added. “You’re beautiful. Thank you. I’ll send flowers. I respect you. Do you want to go out with me? Please God, stop me.”
He felt the urge to babble even more strongly than usual because he didn’t have any clothes on, but crushed it in a death grip lest Katie decided she never wanted to take her clothes off with him again.
“Good morning,” Katie said, kindly overlooking all the rest of it.
“Can I kiss you?” Draco demanded. She nodded and he reached out, carefully, brushing her hair with his fingertips as if she was a bird he didn’t want to scare away. He touched her mouth with his, and she kissed him back gently, and after a paralysing moment of self-consciousness he realised that the naked thing had its benefits.
Her mouth was warm and soft, as was the rest of her, and he shut his eyes and enjoyed the warmth. By the time he opened them she was lying under him, fitting against him wonderfully, and he was thinking about his second time in a creative manner.
“Draco, we have to go to work,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“Nonsense, I am an Auror of the Year, I rule that place with an iron fist, we need to stay,” Draco told her.
“No, but really,” Katie said.
Draco recalled a certain terrible episode of his life, after the discovery of Blaise Zabini’s Veela powers, when Professor Snape had rounded everybody up and told them that no meant no, the answer should be no until they were at least sixteen, and anyone with follow-up questions would be poisoned.
He blinked hard to make the memory go away. “I respect that,” he said quickly. “Your decision!”
She reached up and touched his chest again, her hand small and warm and lingering. “Draco, I’ve been meaning to ask—”
Draco was absolutely certain she saw the look of complete panic on his face. He recalled in terrible detail a few things he had tried last night in an attempt to be romantic and dramatic and not obviously inexperienced.
“Oh no, Draco, you were lovely,” she assured him.
Draco was inexpressibly relieved. Though he had hoped a little for ‘Draco, you’re an animal.’
“It’s just,” Katie said, and frowned slightly. “Where did you get that scar?”
Draco looked down at the twisted knot of scar tissue running from the base of his throat to his heart.
“Oh,” he said. “Ah. You know, a case.”
“It must have hurt terribly,” Katie said, still frowning.
Draco remembered his back hitting the wet bathroom floor, the cracked ceiling dissolving into darkness before him, Potter’s horrified face floating away, and the cold certainty that he was going to die.
“No,” he answered. “Hardly noticed it. I’m heroic that way.”
“You’re not bad,” Katie said, and her frown turned into a smile, and he had to kiss her again. “Draco,” she said once he was done. “I can’t promise you anything. Let’s just—give it a chance, shall we?”
“Let’s,” said Draco.
She was giving him a chance. He couldn’t blow it.
Katie had some strange notion about getting in to work on time, so Draco kissed her goodbye and went to find early morning coffee in a café. While there, he re-ran the highlights of last night in his mind and thought about getting a chance and also getting to have sex and his mood was improbably fantastic for such an ungodly hour of the morning.
Lisa the receptionist gave him one look and said: “Well, somebody had a good night.”
Draco clutched at the receptionist desk. “You can tell?” he demanded. “How? How can you tell? I mean, I don’t know what you mean! Your words are incomprehensible to me!”
The shock upset his nerves enough to force him to the coffee before he went to his desk. While he was adding heaped spoonfuls of sugar he thought about kissing Katie this morning, and Dean Thomas elbowed him in the side and said: “Had fun, then?”
Draco went into the bathroom and checked, but he didn’t look all that different to himself. A little wild about the eyes because he felt hunted, of course.
Damn the Aurors’ trained investigative skills! And Lisa the receptionist’s, too.
He went to his desk and got some reports out, not daring to meet anyone else’s eyes.
Potter was pretty quiet that day. Draco was profoundly grateful.
Katie taking him home to meet the family could have gone better. Draco was slightly distressed about being surrounded with Muggles who were looking at him with judgemental eyes, and enormously distressed about being confronted with Katie’s father when apparently everyone could tell he’d had sex.
Katie’s father hated him on sight. The others followed in short order.
They all ate outside and Draco made polite conversation.
“I like your garden ornament,” he said, nodding at a particularly intriguing-looking contraption.
Katie’s mother looked at him strangely and said: “Do you mean the lawnmower?”
Draco reached for the sangria.
“So, d’you like sports?” Katie’s brother Carl asked a little while later.
“Yes,” Draco answered promptly and delightedly, and he reached out for Katie’s hand over the table. “Katie and I both played Quidditch at school. Different teams, of course, but—”
“Draco, please!” Katie’s sister Anna said, giving him a shocked look. “Don’t talk about that kind of thing in front of my children!”
Draco looked at Mary, who was hovering at his elbow hanging on his every word, and then at the baby, who was asleep.
“Oh, of course,” he said.
“My husband doesn’t know,” Anna continued. “So if you could just—not mention things like that—”
Draco thought about the statistics for domestic violence and how they skyrocketed in Muggle families with witches and wizards in them, and then crushed his father’s voice saying we didn’t create the fear in his head.
“Oh quite,” he said.
“There were four teams in your school, right?” Carl asked. “What were the dirty cheaters called again, Kate?”
Draco gave him a cold look and said: “My team.”
“Do you like football?” Carl inquired hurriedly.
“Um,” Draco said, and had a sudden flash of empathy for Potter being asked ‘Play Quidditch at all?’. “What’s that?”
Later, he overheard Carl telling Katie that he was ‘totally home-schooled.’ Draco remembered with a pang of longing cool days in the Manor with the house elves teaching him his times tables, and wondered what on earth else he was supposed to be.
“What does your father do?” Katie’s father growled suddenly, his eyes narrowed at the defiler of his daughter.
“Well, he’s incarcerated,” Draco answered, and reached for the sangria again. Katie was utterly silent at this point, and looking more distressed by the minute.
Later, walking in the garden in the evening light, he saw a chance to ingratiate himself with the mother. “I see your garden needs de-gnoming,” he said chattily. “Not a problem.”
He swung the nearest gnome overhead and Mrs Bell’s expression told him something was very wrong, even before the sickening crash.
They all went inside and Draco collapsed on the porch steps, and gave Mary a forlorn smile. “You like me, don’t you, little Mary?” he said in tones edging on desperation.
Mary leaned against his knees, gazed up at him with big blue eyes, and said with the intensity of a fanatic: “Will you tell me another story about Potter?”
“It wasn’t so bad, Draco,” Katie said doubtfully as they walked home. “I know you did your best.”
He knew he’d done his best too. It just wasn’t good enough.
It was as if they had two malfunctioning Time Turners and kept trying to meet at the right time, but he kept skipping ahead and sometimes she forgot to use hers.
“Can’t we just be still for a minute?” Katie asked one night with what was obviously exasperation, and Draco stopped his demonstration of his new brilliant juggling skills. They read books together that night, and Draco didn’t tell Katie the best bits of his like usual. He could tell by her slight frown that it wouldn’t be appreciated.
Then there was the terrible talk in the café.
“Am I,” Draco said, and tried viciously hard to sound neutral. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No, Draco!” Katie assured him. “No, it’s—no, it’s really great. It is. Only—just not every night, maybe.”
“Ahahaha,” Draco said. “Obviously. Not every night!” He wondered if he could possibly claim that he’d known that, and he’d just been testing her.
It was wonderful sometimes. He got things right and she laughed, she seemed happy, and he could lose sight of the thought that he was failing, that he would fail.
He tried not to think about it. He tried to concentrate on casework.
That was still going well, mostly. There were times when it wasn’t—the time they caught the wizard who’d been stealing those Muggle kids and keeping them to use as ingredients in his Potions, he’d thought Potter was going to kill that guy, but Draco had Stunned him and Obliviated the guy and despite Potter’s violent protests when he woke up he thought he had done absolutely the right thing.
“Don’t do it again,” Potter warned him as they were walking out of St Mungo’s.
“You don’t do it again,” Draco shot back. “And I won’t have to.”
He learned to recognise and be ready for things that would set Potter off. He didn’t think that something would set him off, not until he went onto a crime scene that should have been the same as any crime scene, and saw what was left of the mother on her bed, and the daughter’s face.
He had to go outside and sit on the edge of the pavement in the cold moonlight, hands clasped together between his knees and force himself down before he said or did anything that would alarm the grieving terrified family. He shied away from the noises of several sets of Aurors and the neighbours closing in like vultures and he just wanted nobody to talk to him, nobody to even come close to him, until he could make himself all right again.
After many, many deep fraught breaths it occurred to him that this was exactly what was happening.
For a moment he did not know why and then he realised that Potter, who he’d just thought was walking around aimlessly, was in fact prowling around an invisible perimeter, looking at everyone who approached as if daring them to come closer. Nobody did, because Potter looked bristling and scary and Draco remembered how he’d reminded Draco of a wolf and he somehow still did, only now he seemed to be a wolf somehow turned sheepdog with only one sheep to guard.
At any other time Draco would’ve been grievously insulted at his own brain comparing himself to a sheep. Just then all he could do was gulp grateful lungfuls of the cold night air and reach for calm, putting himself together in the circle of quiet created for him, with Potter keeping the world at bay.
Not that Potter in any way became less of a moody bastard, of course. The next day Draco was detailing his and Katie’s plans for a weekend away—he wanted to go white water rafting and she wanted to go somewhere sunny and relaxing, they were trying to find some way to combine the two—and Potter almost shouted at him to shut up.
Draco’s outraged stare must have let Potter know that he had the manners of a wildebeest, which was a good thing because if the stare hadn’t worked Draco might have thrown a chair after it.
Potter pulled a handful of his own hair, and Draco wanted to throw a comb as well. “I have a headache,” he explained shortly.
“Oh,” Draco said. Much like Katie last night, a voice in his head sneered at him. “Sorry,” he added in a tone that he knew sounded uncertain and hated Potter for, and pulled out a report.
Potter made a snarling sound at the back of his throat, then got up and stalked away. Sometimes Draco thought the stepped-on-xylophone noises Potter made augured something a little not-human somewhere in his ancestry: right then he thought it might be a talking pig.
He took that back when Potter came back and shoved a coffee at him. “Sorry,” he said, and shoved at Draco’s chair as well, as if meaning to back-pat but being too crazy to do it. “It’s not your fault.”
Draco eyed his coffee lovingly and assumed that Potter must’ve had a fight with the triplets. “That’s all right,” he said, and offered: “D’you want to spar later?”
Potter relaxed a little. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice sounded human again.
They had to stay late that night, but it was worth it. Later Shacklebolt expressed quite strongly his feeling that nothing was worth all the destroyed benches or the burned practise mat, but he was so wrong.
Draco had to admit the practise mat was his fault, but he felt that was worth it too. He’d had to do it, anyway. Potter’d had him down with both hands pinning his shoulders, a knee between Draco’s, and a frighteningly intent look in his eye, as if nothing in the world would distract him.
“Surrender,” Potter snarled. It didn’t sound like a question.
Draco bared his teeth and said: “Incendio.”
Turned out having his hair set on fire distracted Potter quite effectively. He shouted and it went out, because Potter’s wandless magic was weird and erratic but when he needed it to work it really worked, but by then Draco had twisted under him, rolled him over and pinned him down.
“You never used that before,” Potter remarked breathlessly beneath him.
“You didn’t know I could do it before,” Draco informed him. “That wouldn’t have been fair.”
“You do play by your own rules, Malfoy,” Potter said slowly.
Draco smirked. “Who else’s would I play by?”
Potter answered by throwing him into a wall.
It took hours, the effective destruction of the practise room, a short break when they actually noticed the practise mats were burning and had to put them out, and ignoring a broken wrist, but Draco hadn’t believed he could do it all and when he did he felt rushing screaming triumph in his veins overwhelm even the fact he thought he was going to pass out.
“Well?” he demanded, holding Potter up against the wall and staring at his ear with that insane triumph. Potter looked as if he was going to pass out too, but he was still straining against Draco’s hold, almost but not quite managing to break it. “Well?” Draco insisted.
Potter turned his face towards the wall and Draco saw his face close up, eyes shut and black lashes long against his cheeks. “I surrender,” Potter rasped.
“Oh thank God,” said Draco, and promptly collapsed.
Potter slid down the wall into a sitting position, and Draco commenced cradling his wrist and bitching Potter out thoroughly for breaking it. Potter told him to shut up and find his glasses so he could fix it, then, and it took forever to find the glasses under the splintered ruin of a bench.
“I do hope I didn’t hurt you too much,” Draco said solicitously. “I know you’re delicate.”
Potter looked both amused and extremely cross at being defeated, which was just how Draco liked him. “Shut up, Malfoy.”
“I wouldn’t like to think my resounding victory had damaged you in any way,” Draco continued blithely. “I’d just hate to think of your ego taking a hit. You must promise me you won’t have a crisis of confidence.”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” Potter said, holding onto the doorframe as they went out.
“Potter,” Draco said, and Potter glanced at him. Draco grinned. “Good fight.”
Potter hesitated, and then grinned back slowly. “Yeah.”
They never said it again. It always was.
Later that night Draco was stretched out comfortably with his head in Katie’s soft lap, and she was petting his hair and reading. “Draco,” she said in a lovely voice, and Draco felt a pang of sheer fear that she would ask him to actually move and do something.
“What?” he asked, doing his very best to sound like an indomitable stallion.
“Nothing really,” Katie said, smiling down at him. “This is nice.”
He lay there quietly, inexpressibly relieved and totally exhausted, and started to have the beginnings of an idea.
He’d known from the beginning that living with Crabbe and Goyle had to be a very temporary thing. They were lovebirds in their first nest, after all, even though Draco’s mind sort of refused to dwell on that. He couldn’t keep butting in.
Katie went with him to look at lots of flats, and he took the one she liked best and asked her to move in with him.
“Oh, Draco,” she said, looking very taken-aback. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”
“You’re probably right,” Draco said at once, and tried not to panic at the thought of having to live by himself.
The stupid Muggle flat was huge when he was sitting in it while Katie was in the bathroom, its trappings alien to him, the pictures on the wall still as the dead. Draco told himself it was just that he hadn’t lived on his own before. He bet he’d really enjoy it. Carefree lifestyle of gentleman of means. Answering to nobody! It would be great.
“You don’t have to go,” Goyle fretted as they were moving Draco’s stuff out. “You won’t eat, I know you won’t eat.”
“I eat,” Draco said, pointing his wand at his chest of drawers.
“Coffee is not a food,” Goyle cried passionately.
Crabbe poked his head around the door. “Uh, Malfoy,” he said. “Potter’s in the drive for you. Crime scene.” He nodded at Draco’s belongings scattered around the place and said kindly: “We can finish moving you.”
“Oh, I want to see Potter!” Goyle exclaimed. “I haven’t seen him since you stopped hating him.”
“I still hate him,” Draco protested vehemently. “Sort of.”
He went out into the drive shaking dust out of his hair and wondering how it’d got there and also how he’d apparently acquired twenty-seven coffee mugs, and saw Potter in the car. Draco shook his head vigorously to get the last of the dust out and Potter half-laughed.
“What have you been up to?” he said, lazy and pleased as he generally was on a Saturday morning crime scene. Goyle made a faint sound behind Draco.
“One moment please,” Draco said, and pushed Goyle back inside, shutting the door behind him. “No,” he said sternly. “No, no, no. Think of school!”
“He didn’t look like that at school,” Goyle said, looking mildly stunned. “Though come to think of it, I guess the potential was always there.”
“No!” Draco said. “I am your leader and I command you!”
“Oh yes, yes,” Goyle said. “My devotion to Vince is unalterable,” he added, doing a very bad impression of Draco himself.
Nobody should ever do impressions but Draco. He considered writing a postcard to France and telling Ginny Weasley.
“Oh, here,” he added as he bolted out the door.
Goyle took the crumpled paper in a distracted way as he concentrated on trying to get Draco to take his cloak.
Draco flung himself into the car and Potter revved the engine, launching it into the air. “Stop!” Draco said in ringing tones. “Quick, make us invisible and then stop and stay stopped!”
Potter flicked the invisibility switch. “Why are we doing this?”
“Because,” Draco informed him with great satisfaction. “I have just given Goyle the title deeds to this house, and I want to see his and Crabbe’s faces.”
“Oh,” Potter said, sounding startled. “That was—nice of you.”
“It was only practical,” Draco told him quickly. “Renting is not very cost-effective. Besides, a chef and a nurse, they don’t make much, it would’ve been stupid. It doesn’t matter to me, I’ve got lots of money. People annoy me when they’re stupid.”
“It’s okay to be nice,” Potter said.
“It’s great!” Draco responded. “I’m sure. It’s just that I wouldn’t know myself. Now shush.”
Goyle, standing at the open door, was unfolding the crumpled ball of paper. His face changed slowly from normal to a rictus of surprise. He looked completely ridiculous: Draco laughed with glee.
“Vince!” Goyle shouted dizzily. “Vince, come and see what that madman has done now!”
“Madman?” Draco exclaimed, much offended. “Is that any way to refer to their glorious leader when his back is turned? I ask you!”
Crabbe appeared at the door in his shirtsleeves, and took a look at the paper. Draco watched him blink.
He said: “My God.”
Draco felt a warm glow at the success of his surprise. The warm glow faded at once when Goyle grabbed Crabbe and started making out with him wildly.
Draco gave a small scream. “Drive! Drive! We’re all done here, why won’t you drive?”
“I can’t drive,” Potter said in a strangled voice. “I’ve got my eyes shut.”
Draco reached out desperately and grabbed the wheel. Once they were turned around Potter opened his eyes and began driving properly.
“That was weird,” he said in a shaken sort of voice.
Draco instantly took umbrage on his friends’ behalf. “I’ll have you know Crabbe and Goyle are actually very attractive,” he snapped. “In some cultures. In a big-boned sort of way.”
“I’m—sure they are,” Potter said, not sounding very sure at all.
“Hmm,” Draco said. “Well, if you’re sure.”
They drove on for a short time in silence while Draco plotted his revenge for this slight to his nearest and dearest.
“Potter, do you know what?” he asked at last.
“What?” Potter asked, in the slow encouraging way he had. Poor fool, how he would regret egging Draco on.
“Goyle thought you were good-looking,” Draco said with calm delight.
Potter swallowed.
“And since you agree that they’re both so very attractive,” Draco went on serenely, “Maybe they’d agree to a threeso—”
At that point Draco had to stop, because Potter almost drove into a tree and Draco was cackling too much to go on.
“You’re not having much success with this driving thing today,” Draco said after he was done cackling. “Maybe I should have a go.”
“No,” Potter said firmly.
“But you know I’ve seen lots of Muggle Auror films!” Draco protested. “I know exactly how to do it! I’m an expert.”
“Shacklebolt told me never to let you drive,” Potter said. “Never under any circumstances, even if I was dead. He said that.”
“He’s an evil robot,” Draco said passionately. “You shouldn’t listen to him. You should fight evil, it is your sacred calling. You should listen to me.” He gazed at Potter and bit his lip, not with much hope since this never worked on anybody but Goyle and then only when Draco wanted to be fed. “Please, Potter.”
He was surprised and thrilled to see a flicker of hesitation on Potter’s face.
He tried to think about what he did when he wanted Goyle to make something extra special, and swiftly cast his eyes down, then looked beseechingly up through his eyelashes and bit his lip some more.
“Please.”
“Oh all right,” Potter said, in the voice of a man goaded beyond endurance.
Draco cackled and relaxed into his seat. Potter was a soft touch. Who knew?
“I can’t believe you bought your friends a house,” Potter said after a moment. “How much money do you have?”
“I don’t know,” said Draco, who tried not to think about it. They’d unfrozen his father’s accounts a while ago. “Why, do you have a gambling problem you want me to fund?”
Potter grinned. “I gave up on gambling years ago.”
“Ah,” Draco said, nodding sagely. “I see. You’ve moved onto hookers and blow.”
“We have a stressful job. Got to relax somehow,” Potter said, and spun the car right around in the sky, heading for a flat rooftop to land on so they could change seats.
Some time later, after the damage to the office building had been mostly repaired and the screaming people inside had been Obliviated, Draco looked woefully at the bits of the car that the other Aurors were carrying away and tried to think of some way, any way, to blame it all on Potter.
“You shouldn’t have let me drive,” he said finally, in a lost voice.
“I’ve come to that conclusion on my own, thanks,” Potter said grimly.
“I’m sorry,” Draco said wretchedly.
“Oh, no—look, it’s all right,” Potter said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Draco burst out, and Potter followed the line of Draco’s vision to Dean Thomas with a piece of the front seat and the mangled remains of Gilda. “I murdered her,” Draco said in a voice of bitter self-loathing.
He didn’t have a home, his girlfriend’s family wanted him dead, and now he had lost Gilda too.
Potter patted him on the back. “No you didn’t.”
“I did!”
“You didn’t mean to,” Potter pointed out. “So it was manslaughter.”
And his partner was a crazy man. There was that, too.
“I want a coffee,” Draco exclaimed.
Since they weren’t going to the crime scene, they went to a café. Draco sat down at the table and realised that once he left he would have to go to that terrible flat. Katie was with her family and Crabbe and Goyle were undoubtedly doing depraved things to each other and he could hardly Owl one of his friends and explain he was terrified of going home.
“Look,” he said desperately. “Are you keen on getting back right away?”
“God no,” Potter said, and his mouth twisted downward. “Ron and Hermione are at each others’ throats.”
Yes, Draco thought, but what were the triplets doing? Maybe they were with their family too.
“Fine then,” he said. “We might as well get something to eat. After coffee, of course.”
The twist of Potter’s mouth turned in on itself, going upward. “Of course.”
Sometime after midnight (there had been wine at dinner) they were walking through Piccadilly Circus and Draco became intrigued by a busker. The music pulled him up short because it reminded him of Gilda, but before he could become too sad the musician started playing a song he knew.
Several songs he knew later, the busker looked very puzzled by the Galleons in his guitar case and he was sitting on the edge of the pavement, arms linked around his knees. Potter was sitting with him, legs stretched out in front of him, but Potter was not singing.
Possibly this was because Potter was a spoilsport or possibly it was because Potter was laughing at him too much. Possibly it was both.
It was about three when Draco got home, and by then he was tired enough not to hate it so much.
Draco and Katie went on their holiday to a quiet seaside resort in Brittany. Katie was happy and peaceful, wore her bikini a lot and read books on the patio. Draco was happy about the Katie in her bikini bit, and also that apparently the not-every-night rule was relaxed on holidays.
For the rest of it, he spent a lot of time at the bar.
He was at the bar when someone said “Oh my God, there’s an owl in here! … How much have I had to drink?” and he turned to find an Owl lying on the bar by his hand.
It was from Shacklebolt and it said COME QUICKLY. CHILDREN, and gave an address.
Draco Apparated from the bar. People could always be Obliviated later.
He found himself on another and entirely different seaside, this one with huge jagged rocks instead of sand, and the sea a grey crashing invader. Seaspray hit his face and four Aurors darted at him through the rocks.
“Thank God!” said Dawlish. “There are eight trolls, a family of them, they’ve been taking human children and keeping trophies and—where’s everyone else?”
“Everyone else who?” Draco demanded. “Where’s Potter?”
“The reinforcements, Shacklebolt went to get them,” Dawlish said, and noticeably did not respond to Draco’s other question.
Draco grabbed the front of his robes and hauled him off his feet. “Where is he?”
“In the cave,” Dawlish choked out.
“Alone?” Draco snarled.
“Shacklebolt said that none of us should go in!” Dawlish yelped at him. “It was orders—Potter should’ve—”
“I’d kill you but I don’t have time,” Draco said, and ran.
He had to scramble over the rocks and kept half-falling down, heart pounding, crashing against his ribs like the sea against this harsh shoreline. He was still a little drunk, aware that his reflexes weren’t quite what they should be, a little too removed from everything, but he couldn’t stop.
The cave was an interconnected series of caves, like big rocky rooms. It was scattered with human belongings, most from children but some not, some looking like the trolls had taken whole families. There were little child-sized shoes, a big green coat and a hat-stand.
There were also a lot of troll bodies on the floor.
Draco counted them even as he was scrambling over them, one two three four five six seven eight and he’d done it, the crazy bastard had done it, and then he heard a snarl and wondered how certain Dawlish had been about that figure.
There was another troll, smallish which still meant huge, and its huge body was crouched over its motionless prey. Draco stood frozen for a moment and watched it worry Potter’s arm. There was blood. There was a lot of blood.
Draco had killed exactly one person during the war. It had been when the war was all but won, when Voldemort was dead and they were trying to round up the remaining Death Eaters and Snape had taken him on a low-risk mission and the man had come from nowhere, Draco had simply thought No, not him too and screamed “Avada Kedavra!” and the man had gone so easily and Draco had stood over him and thought: If he’d done that, with Dumbledore, maybe—but that was wrong.
He hadn’t seen Snape much, since the war. He supposed he was busy.
He felt the same strange kind of calm now. It was so easy.
Draco seized up the hat-stand in his left hand and ran at the troll, swinging the stand down hard on its head.
“Get away,” Draco snarled, and swung again, “from my partner.”
He brought the stand crashing down over and over on its head, casting spells from his wand and without his wand at the same time, setting the troll on fire and casting Unforgivables on it and hitting it, again and again, teeth gritted, until he became aware that it was very still, and that was because it was in pieces.
He Levitated the pieces, sent them crashing into the wall, and fell to his knees beside Potter.
“Wake up,” he ordered his still face, because nothing else was a possibility and he was quite certain about that.
Potter frowned under the blood, opened his eyes a slit and said: “Malfoy, what—”
He tried to sit up and Draco grabbed hold of his shoulders and made sure he didn’t fall back, brought him forward instead so that Potter’s face hit Draco’s shoulder and Draco held onto Potter’s hand, which was the only part of his arm which was relatively whole, and made sure he didn’t move it an inch.
”… I think I got a bit hurt,” Potter said thickly. “Do you mind healing me?”
“Idiot,” Draco raged. “That’s exactly what I’d do if I never wanted you to have the use of your arm again, you stupid, stupid—don’t move, please don’t, you’re going to be all right.”
“You’re really bossy,” Potter whispered. “Did you know that?”
“You’re an idiot,” Draco shot back, his voice furious and trembling. “Did you know that? We’re going to the hospital. I hate you. You’re going to be fine.”
He was pretty sure that was around when Potter lost consciousness. Draco stroked his hair with his free hand, thought desperately and Apparated onto a cold floor in a corridor of St Mungo’s.
A nurse looked extremely surprised to see two blood-covered men crouching on the floor. Draco fixed his gaze on her over Potter’s head.
“Go get a doctor,” he snarled. “Do it now.”
When the mediwitches took Potter away he went to the waiting room, where Shacklebolt and Dawlish were already having a fight. He told them that there were eight unconscious trolls and one very dead one in the caves. Apparently they already knew that. He sat down on a chair and waited.
Crabbe came in after a few hours and told them that Potter would keep his arm, and the full use of it, and that he hadn’t died of blood loss during the operation.
Shacklebolt nodded at him, face entirely unmoved. Draco suspected that Shacklebolt’s face would be entirely unmoved during an earthquake.
Then Crabbe came and knelt by Draco’s chair. “Malfoy,” he said in his quiet way. “You’re covered in blood. Go home.”
“I don’t want to go back there,” Draco said in a low voice.
Crabbe cut his shift short and took Draco back to his and Goyle’s. The next day Potter was back at work because he was apparently more insane than even Draco had supposed, and Draco had to go to the kitchen and make himself a coffee before the tide of insanity swallowed him too.
He stood in the doorway of the office with his coffee and tried to think. He had to apologise to Katie for abandoning her in France. He had to not strangle Potter for being an idiot. He had to work things out.
Potter was going to die. He’d keep taking insane risks and doing it by himself because that was what they’d trained him to do since he was eleven and one day no matter how strong or lucky or chosen he was by fate, strength and luck would run out and fate would give up on him. Everybody would mourn him and say his name in hushed tones and put him in the history books and be relieved, just a little, not to have to see him and deal with what they’d made every day.
Draco wouldn’t let it happen. It would be all right. It would all fall into place, the points system and Katie getting what she wanted and Potter not dying. He was starting to fit the pieces together.
He took a deep breath, felt a little calmer and went over to where Potter was trying to write his report left-handed. Potter glanced at him as he walked up.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” he observed. “Like you’re planning something.”
“I am,” said Draco. “It’s sort of a—structural plan. I’m currently refining it.”
“Oh well,” Potter said, smiling. “Tell me about it once you’re done.”
The plan took on another level when Potter showed up at the door of Draco’s horrible flat soaking wet and saying that Weasley and Granger had broken up.
While Draco’s first instinct was to mock anyone who had thought that disaster train was going anywhere but off the rails, he thought about Crabbe and Goyle breaking up and the horror that might follow that and he started pouring Firewhiskey and ended up saying as much.
“They have to still talk to each other,” Potter said hoarsely after two cups of Firewhiskey. “They have to. I need them. It’s not like—none of the Weasleys but Ron will talk to me now.”
“Why not?” Draco demanded.
“Because,” Potter said through his teeth. “Their daughter moved to France because she thought I was going out with her and then she walked in on me sleeping with Zacharias Smith.”
”… that might do it,” Draco conceded.
It was while Potter was still talking, in a strained continuous way that said it was so difficult he had to keep going or he’d never start again, that Draco realised there were no triplets.
The realisation stunned him and made him almost tune out Potter talking about his relationship with Smith, which sounded as if it had consisted of a lot of rolling around and then staring at each other hissing like upset cats and—reading between the lines—Potter totally ignoring Smith’s existence. Draco had assumed that Potter, given the ridiculous good looks and the fact he always got everything he wanted… well, he’d assumed triplets, but he had not taken into account the fact that Potter and normal human interaction did not get along.
There were certainly no triplets right now, otherwise obviously Potter would have gone to them instead of Draco. In fact, he should’ve gone to someone else anyway—but if he didn’t have the Weasleys and he’d apparently hardly known the Gryffindors aside from Weasley and Granger, then who else was there?
The realisation that Potter was alone hit Draco at about the same time as the thought that it was just possible there had never been anybody but Smith, which had been years ago.
No wonder Potter was so moody half the time.
In the midst of these bleak revelations Draco had rather hoped that Potter would be hilarious when drunk, but he was just kind of quiet and unhappy, smaller than he seemed when sober. He showed Draco how to use his new, beautiful television which Draco was planning to keep on all the time for company, and Draco gazed at the television with rapture and secretly plotted to himself, and Potter totally failed to do anything embarrassing. The only strange thing was when Draco glanced away from the television and saw Potter, closer than he’d thought he was and with his head bowed, lightly touching the cotton collar of Draco’s shirt.
So Potter had a strange fascination with material when he was drunk. Wonderful. Draco had been hoping at least for a fit of the giggles.
Nevertheless, Draco had a plan to carry through.
A few weeks later at the next Slytherins’ poker evening, held at Crabbe and Goyle’s house, he refused to take part in the game and sat around gossiping with everyone, watching the door.
“—So I’ve decided that what I need is a really terrific meaningless fling,” Pansy said.
“I’m really busy right now,” Zabini told her, frowning. “I can slot you in for next October. Possibly next October.”
“Not with you, Blaise, and if you try the Veela thing I will slap you stupid,” Pansy said, and bared her teeth for an instant. “You wouldn’t do at all. I don’t share well.”
The thought of monogamy sent a flash of pure horror over Zabini’s perfect features. “Oh no, then I wouldn’t do at all,” he said hastily.
“I’m thinking someone, you know, big and uncomplicated and good in bed,” Pansy said. “Possibly extremely well-endowed. But it’s hard to ascertain that first.” She paused and added: “Oh, and a Quidditch fan. Can anyone think of someone who might do?”
Draco shook his head absently and continued lounging in his chair, watching the door, until it opened and at last Malcolm Baddock came in. He looked chipper, was carrying a bottle of Firewhiskey—definitely a sign—and was wearing a glittery blue t-shirt that said It’s Gonna Take A Superman To Sweep Me Off My Feet.
He was the only gay person Draco knew, unless Potter wanted that threesome with Crabbe and Goyle after all.
“Oh Malcolm,” Draco purred as if he was going to award points, and when Baddock whipped around he smiled and crooked his finger. “Come.”
Baddock looked thrilled.
“You’re coming to my birthday party, aren’t you,” Draco said as Baddock leaned over his chair. He took hold of the glittery t-shirt.
Baddock swallowed. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
“Good,” Draco said, as if Baddock had just been awarded an enormous amount of house points and the Cup was shining before them. “Because I have a mission for you,” he said, and grinned. “Should you choose to accept it.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Goyle asked in an agitated tone later, while deftly chopping up more vegetables for dip.
“Yes I am,” Draco said, who wasn’t going to be persuaded out of this now.
“I like Baddock, but he’s very—little and sparkly,” Goyle said.
“He’s like a very little sparkly Zacharias Smith!”
“He doesn’t look anything like Zacharias Smith,” Goyle said.
“He’s got blond hair,” Draco said.
Goyle reached out with one hand, chopping with the other, and pulled Draco’s hair.
“Don’t do that,” Draco said. “I am your fearless leader, don’t pull my hair. Also, my hair is not curly.” He paused for a speculative moment, and then said: “I think the curls make them more gay. Anyway, Goyle, don’t worry about it. This is my plan, so it is a brilliant plan and cannot fail.”
It didn’t exactly fail.
Potter seemed mostly distressed and confused by Baddock’s sparkliness, but Baddock remembered Draco’s dire prefectly threats and threw himself into the chase. All the same, for most of the party it seemed like the chase was going to fail and possibly that Baddock was going to get thrown off the balcony.
Potter had brought Weasley with him and Weasley, who unlike Potter seemed to have a normal person’s instincts towards getting laid, spent all his time at the bar with Pansy.
The sight of such horror forced Draco to get drunk. Well, it was his birthday. It was a sacred duty, or something. It was a nice birthday despite the presence of Weasley, tequila smoothing the edges off everything and making Katie’s face glow under the streetlamps when they finally emerged from a bar. Draco shut his eyes and kissed her in order to pretend he didn’t see Weasley actually going home with Pansy, who seemed to have actually decided that Weasley was her Fling. There were no Weasleys in his world, Draco decided, held upright mostly by a lamp post. Everything was safe and warm and clouded by enormous glorious clouds of tequila.
Then he heard Potter snap: “You want to go home with me?”
“Yes I do!” said Baddock.
“Fine,” Potter growled, and then stalked away down the street.
Baddock cast a questioning look over his shoulder and Draco gestured over Katie’s shoulder—go, go!—and Baddock scurried after Potter’s retreating form.
Draco rolled his eyes at the world. “And here we all thought Potter had no game.”
“Hey Draco,” Katie said, close to him in the lamplight, warm and sweet. “You want to go home with me?”
Draco raised his eyebrows and grinned at her wickedly. “Yes I do.”
They actually went back to Draco’s place, since he lived in it by himself and Katie liked it. Which turned out to be lucky, as otherwise Malcolm Baddock would have rung the door of an empty apartment at four in the morning.
Draco tore himself away from a warm soft bed and his warm soft girlfriend, found his pyjama bottoms and found Baddock, dishevelled but still sparkling bright, on his doorstep.
“What happened?” Draco said in a panic. He’d sent poor little Baddock home with a crazy man who was quite possibly into all sorts of weird stuff and had frightened him away. He was the worst prefect in the world.
“Mission accomplished!” Baddock said proudly.
“And you came all the way here to tell me that?” Draco demanded. “It is four in the morning.”
“Oh no,” Baddock said. “Can I sleep on your sofa? Potter chucked me out and I can’t go home, my dad goes crazy if I come in late.”
“Wait,” Draco said. “The mission was accomplished. And then Potter chucked you out.”
Baddock nodded.
“Rude,” said Draco. “Poor little Baddock, I am so sorry. I’ll give him hell for this tomorrow.”
“It was okay,” Baddock said, bouncing a little. “I mean, yeah, he doesn’t talk much and when he does talk it is kind of rude, but that’s okay because the sex was awesome.”
”…Okay,” Draco said.
“Nice chest, Malfoy,” Baddock informed him. “Did you get that filthy great scar from the time Potter attacked you in the bathrooms? I remember everyone talking about that, Pansy said that Potter tried to kill you!”
Baddock said that as if, while not supporting the idea of Draco’s murder, he still found it sort of dangerous and cool that Potter had tried. Draco despaired of the younger generation.
The next day Draco came into work with a vicious hangover and fully prepared to tell Potter exactly what he thought of his ungallant behaviour, but Potter was hunched over his desk looking quiet and miserable, the way he had the night Weasley and Granger broke up. Draco didn’t know what the problem was: self-hating homosexual, hopelessly in love with Zacharias Smith, depressed by glitter, but he knew one thing, and it was that Goyle had been right.
“Sorry,” he said, nudging at Potter. “I honestly thought it was a good idea.”
“So you said that sometimes you played Quidditch,” he said to Potter one day in the car.
“Uh—yeah,” Potter said. “Sometimes Ron and I go out and toss a few Bludgers and the Snitch around.”
“That sounds like marvellous fun,” Draco said in an unconvinced tone. “So I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in a real game.”
“With you?” Potter asked, sounding interested.
“I said a real game,” Draco said softly. “Seven players each side, a proper pitch. Real Quidditch, no waiting.”
Potter’s face was that of one who has found water in the desert.
“Mostly Slytherins and Ravenclaws,” Draco said. “See what comes of planning? We have a match every weekend in the summer.”
He told Marcus Flint to prepare the Seeker on his team for the reserves bench, and showed up the first week of May with Potter at his shoulder.
“Malfoy, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,” Flint began, striding towards him, and then he saw Potter and, going by his expression, choirs and angels and heavenly light. “Oh my God, Malfoy, you are a good person,” he said fervently.
Draco smirked. “Not really.”
That was Saturdays sorted out during the summer. In the afternoon it was easy to be quiet with Katie, the way she liked it, because he was tired to death.
It wasn’t just that, though. Quidditch was always fun, but he was used to having Potter there, a stinging sort of challenge. Losing was miserable, but not in the same grinding way it had been when there was the Cup and the thought of Father and Potter sneering behind that. Now it was more like sparring, except with the clean rush of flying, and afterwards drinks at the pub.
“Go buy me a drink,” Draco said, collapsing on the sofa. “I’m three points up after the last case.”
“Oh, fine,” Potter said, and that was settled: the points system finally had rewards organised.
This generally had a sort of round-up after work on Friday, and Katie came along sometimes too, and Weasley joined Potter at some point with Pansy glowing on his arm in a way that she should not have being glowing since Weasley was a fling. And then Potter asked Granger along, and Draco asked Crabbe and Goyle to provide a buffer zone if there was violence.
He sternly forbade them to interfere if Pansy and Granger decided to wrestle, though.
Granger pointedly talked to everyone but Weasley and Pansy, and this haughty façade became actual interest when Crabbe misread a bar sign and Granger decided to get all excited about Overcoming Dyslexia.
“There should really be a program in Hogwarts,” she confided to Crabbe, eyeing him as if he was a great big house-elf. “Someone should do something. I’d be happy to help out. Someone,” she added with the light of battle in her eyes, “has to Right Social Wrongs.”
“I could make you pie if you want to come around our house,” Goyle offered. “What’s your favourite kind of pie, Hermione?”
Hermione. Goyle, Draco reflected darkly, had always been the weak link.
Their defences once breached, after a few weeks it got to the point where Crabbe actually called Potter Harry when he asked him if he wanted a drink. Draco closed his eyes and waited with dread for Potter not to know Crabbe’s given name.
“No thanks, Vince,” Potter said.
Draco blinked at him. “Goyle,” he said in a testing way.
“Gregory,” Potter shot back.
“Nott?”
“Theodore.”
“And Zabini?”
“Blaise,” said Potter, flicking him a smile of triumph.
It was both the right answer and, of course, answered the question of how he knew all the Slytherin boys’ names, a record that beat his previous record of three and a half Ravenclaw boys’ names hollow.
Clearly Zabini’s Veela charms had caught Potter’s eye. Who could blame him, Draco supposed, crushing a small eleven-year-old part of himself that had wanted Potter knowing his own name to be special. The man was only human.
By Monday Draco had been kidnapped by insane Muggles who wanted to know the secret of his powers.
“It’s in my blood,” Draco snapped, still cross with himself about them getting the jump on him while he examined the crime scene.
The leader of that little Muggle band stroked his knife, and Draco tried hard not think about what the last victim had looked like.
“We’re willing to torture you,” he said.
“Well, that’s—terrible news,” Draco said.
“One of you will talk, sooner or later,” the Muggle whispered. “I know it.”
Draco told himself he was a valiant Auror and would not scream, and screamed anyway when the knife laid open a path along his ribs. He told himself he would not pass out and when they put him in his small locked room he kept that promise, keeping the lips of the wound pinched closed with one hand and listening for the sound of the people in the other rooms. He thought he could count five people besides himself, which was useful to know.
He was disgusted to realise that pain was clouding his mind too much to think up a plan, and he had to resort to waiting for Potter to come rescue him.
When he heard footsteps outside his door fear rose inside him, about to swallow him, he was sure he was going to beg and cry, but then the door broke down and Potter came crashing through it.
“It took you long enough,” Draco snapped.
He was sorry he’d said it after a moment. It didn’t even seem to register with Potter, who was standing there looking at him, eyes raking over every inch of him. Potter’s chest was rising and falling hard. There was a lot of blood on his t-shirt: Draco didn’t think any of it was his.
“Are you all right?” Potter asked finally, his voice a strange growl.
“Well, I’m actually in quite a lot of pain, it wasn’t pleasant, but—anyway, there are five other people in here, I should mention, they’re all alive and I don’t think any of them are too badly hurt—”
Potter walked towards him with a stride that seemed unstoppable or at least as if anyone tried to stop it they would really regret it. There was a look on his face that made Draco panic a little—he hadn’t heard any children’s voices—
When Potter’s knees hit the side of the bed, he stopped and knelt abruptly on the floor, put his face down on the covers. Draco stared warily at his tense shoulders.
“Yes, fine,” Potter said, still in that alarming voice, his fists twisting in the sheets. “But you—you—are you all right?”
Draco was holding one side of his chest closed with his free hand, so he reached out with his chained one and managed to touch the ends of Potter’s hair. His fingers came away wet with blood.
He didn’t think that it was Potter’s blood, either.
“Yes,” he murmured, slightly afraid that his answer was somehow going to hurl Potter over the edge of whatever precipice he was balanced on.
For a moment he thought it had. Potter looked up and the line of his shoulders changed, bunched as if he was going to leap. “I can’t,” he said, and then he looked at Draco properly instead of staring with blind blazing eyes and his voice changed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We need to get you to hospital.”
In St Mungo’s they said that the wound had been open too long and would leave a faint scar. Draco was fairly calm about that: now when people asked him where he got his scars he could say on a case and not be completely lying.
He was back at work the next day. As soon as he was in the door Shacklebolt called him to his office.
“I wished to notify you that you have now been Mr Potter’s partner for a year and your period of probation is over,” Shacklebolt said. “You may now choose another partner or, God help us all, proceed in the same way that you have been.”
“I think I’ll keep him,” Draco said cheerfully. “God help us all.”
“I’m very shocked,” Shacklebolt said with no inflection to his voice at all, and then he hesitated.
Draco had never seen him do that before.
“Mr Malfoy—there’s something else.” Shacklebolt very nearly had an expression in his voice. Draco was filled with dread. “It’s in regard to the prisoner Lucius Malfoy,” he said, and stopped. “Now all his appeals to the courts have failed, Scrimgeour has seen fit to make a final judgement on him. The country—could use a morale boost, and I fear that Scrimgeour has decided to make your father an example. He’s recommended the Dementor’s Kiss.”
Draco held on to the arms of the chair: he looked down and saw that he’d been holding on until his knuckles were white, but he couldn’t feel a thing.
“I assume you’ll be fighting that,” Shacklebolt said, still sounding weirdly, terribly human.
“Yes,” Draco rasped.
“I need hardly say that as one of our own, anything the department can do to help you will be done.”
“Thank you,” Draco managed.
“I have to call in Mr Potter to inform him about the ending of his probation in any case,” Shacklebolt said. “If you would find it easier, I could tell—”
“No,” Draco broke in. “No, I’ll do it.”
He’d have to do it. He was going to have to ask Potter for help. The idea made him feel sick, but he felt sick already and he thought that Potter could make that better, could do that thing he did and guard him for just a little bit, until Draco could be strong enough again.
He left Shacklebolt’s office and made himself a cup of coffee with shaking hands. It was going to be all right, he told himself, controlling his hands and trying to summon calm. He and Potter were—friends, now. They could solve this, too.
He still felt in need of some consolation, so he went to listen at Shacklebolt’s door and catch Potter’s answer before he had to sit him down and tell him.
He leaned against the doorframe casually, tilting his head towards the door, and heard Potter say: “I do. I want another partner.”
From a distance, Draco heard Shacklebolt’s careful voice saying: “May I ask who?”
“Anyone,” Potter said, his voice cold. “Anyone but him.”
Draco felt rather cold as well. He stopped listening at the door: he didn’t think there was much left to say in there, nothing that would be of interest to him. He went back to the kitchen and poured his coffee down the sink. His throat felt tight, and his hands were shaking again.