Draco was very calm about changing partners. He certainly didn’t want anyone who didn’t want him, and he was sure that Theophilus Cardross would be a great partner, and anyway he didn’t have time to think about it.
He had to save his father.
Scrimgeour wasn’t likely to listen to him after that stupid stunt he’d pulled, and there was no question of having influence with Harry Potter. So that left money and politics.
There’d be a council appointed to decide Lucius Malfoy’s fate. Draco had to find out who the five members on it were and get a unanimous ruling.
He approached two of them and established that they could be bribed. He sat in that terrible empty apartment with papers spread before him, deciding whether he had to sell the Manor or not.
“Our house is yours really—” Goyle began when he heard the news and came over to force-feed Draco.
“Don’t be stupid,” Draco snarled. “It wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Draco, are you sure you need to resort to bribery?” Katie asked, her face anxious. “Surely a just sentence will—”
Draco stood from his pile of papers and prowled towards her. “A just sentence,” he repeated, and threw back his head and laughed. He saw her flinch. “Scrimgeour’s got to have a scapegoat for the country if he can’t have a hero, and I antagonised him. And what better scapegoat than a Death Eater who was caught attacking precious little Potter when he was fifteen years old, who the Weasleys will testify tried to kill their precious little daughter when she was eleven? He did it, Katie. He did all of it. A just sentence is the Dementor’s Kiss. The last thing I want is justice!”
He didn’t add: For him, or for me.
Katie stepped away from him, her back hitting the wall. Her face was beside one of the awful Muggle pictures, and for a moment it looked just as still.
“Your father,” she said in a small voice. “He doesn’t sound like a very nice person.”
Draco laughed again and saw her recoil with nowhere to go. He leaned in, traced the line of her collarbone and said in her ear, his voice vicious and shaky: “I’m not a very nice person.”
A voice in his head told him to stop it, he was scaring her.
He left the flat abruptly and went for a run in the rain, splashing through icy puddles with feet turning numb, resisting the urge to strike blows at random lamp posts. He ran until it was cold grey evening, and then he sat on a rain-slick pavement and put his face down on his knees and tried to breathe deeply through his raw throat.
He couldn’t do that again.
He couldn’t lose her too.
That night Blaise Zabini dropped by Draco’s flat. Draco looked up, surprised to see Zabini without an appointment or his entourage, but with his head aching too much to care.
Zabini looked down at Draco and the papers on his floor, every line of his face breathtakingly handsome and inscrutable.
“There’s a man called Everett on that council,” he remarked distantly. “You’ve got his vote.”
“You sure?” Draco asked.
Zabini grimaced. “After the day I’ve had, you do.”
“I—” Draco said, and stopped, touched and tripped up by the feeling, left helpless. He knew that Zabini, insofar as he had a preference in the free-for-all sexual buffet that was his life, preferred women. “Thank you,” he got out at last, scowling around the words.
Mission of mercy complete, Zabini relaxed against the wall and assumed his usual air of comfortably enjoying the position of most attractive man in Britain. “You look terrible,” he remarked lazily. “Worse than usual, I mean.”
“When you get syphilis,” Draco told him. “I will laugh and laugh.”
“Hmm,” Zabini said, and reached out to stroke an idle finger along the line of Draco’s neck. “Are you still doing that funny monogamy thing?” he asked. “Sex with a Veela is really calming, I’m told, since it paralyses your brain with pleasure and everything. I could—”
“Sex is not the answer to all life’s problems, Zabini.”
“Then you’re doing it wrong,” Zabini told him, flashing a perfect smile. “Do you have Firewhiskey?”
They had a drink together and then Zabini checked his watch and said: “My God, I’ve left the quadruplets waiting and the chocolate sauce must be cooling by now,” and Apparated at once.
Draco felt a little comforted by that until he had to go into work the next morning and Theophilus said: “Are you aware that every single one of those suggestions is completely and impossibly illegal?”
“You’re such a Hufflepuff, Theophilus,” Draco snarled, and went into the break room.
Potter tried to speak to him there, but Draco hardly heard him through the thrum of rage. He was fairly clear through the haze that Potter was making some kind of gesture, no doubt figuring that if Weasley and Pansy continued their unholy union and Granger persisted in making a project of Crabbe then they should be civil to each other.
No doubt Potter could manage to be civil, as long as he didn’t have to deal with Draco all day, every day. Big of him.
He’d grabbed Draco’s arm. Draco stared at him and decided in a cold distant way that he’d never hated anyone so much before in his life.
He snarled something at him, yanked his arm away and strode out of the break room and towards the nearest door, anywhere for escape, and found himself in the ladies’ bathroom. Where he saw Potter’s new partner Chrysanthemum sitting on the edge of the sink and howling into a handkerchief.
“M-Malfoy,” she said, and his vague hope that he could slink out unnoticed died quietly.
He was tempted to just raise an eyebrow at her and leave anyway, but a vague sore sense of fellow feeling made him walk over to the sink.
“What’s, ah, the matter?” he asked reluctantly, hoping he was not going to hear anything about mood swings and her Womanly Time.
“You must think I’m ridiculous,” Chrysanthemum wailed, and collapsed back into her handkerchief.
“No,” Draco said, and essayed a vague wave that might, had he been nearer, been a back pat. “No, no. Sometimes you just have to cry. In bathrooms,” he added, and then said quickly: “Not me, of course. I’m too manly. But people. In general. I’ve noticed.” He felt he was wandering and fixed her with an accusing stare. “What is it? Out with it, I don’t have all day.”
Chrysanthemum waved her handkerchief like a distress beacon.
“It’s Harry,” she exclaimed. “He’s awful—I don’t know how you put up with him, he—he won’t talk, and he’s so moody, and sometimes he scares me and he just seems really miserable all the time. Malfoy,” she said, blinking back tears. “Wouldn’t you please take him back?”
Draco felt his expression twist, sharp and swift, into a sneer. “Afraid I can’t help you there,” he drawled. “He was the one who chucked me. And since he said he’d rather have anyone but me as his partner,” he said, rolling the words around as if he was savagely picking at a scab, “I don’t think I could really do that, no.”
“Oh,” Chrysanthemum said, staring at him with wide eyes. Then she buried her face back in her handkerchief. “Oh, and you were my only hope,” she exclaimed woefully. “And it’s torture working with him when I love him so much!”
Draco blinked. “But I thought you said,” he said, “that he was awful and moody and scary and—”
“What has that got to do with anything?” Chrysanthemum demanded, her handkerchief billowing like the sails of a ship in the wind. “He reminds me of Heathcliff,” she continued tragically.
“I don’t believe I’m acquainted—”
“And I don’t think he even knows my name!”
“I’m sure that,” Draco said. “Uh.”
Chrysanthemum sniffled and then fixed him with a watery, accusing glare. “Malfoy, what are you doing in a girls’ bathroom?” she asked. “Do you hang around them?”
“Not lately.”
“Are you some kind of pervert?” Chrysanthemum demanded, her voice hitting a high note.
Draco left.
It occurred to him as he left the bathrooms that Potter had generally had female partners or married partners like Gillam, which since there were strict rules about partners Fraternising meant that Kingsley Shacklebolt probably had a very good idea which way Potter’s preferences lay.
Of course, Draco was neither female nor married, but he’d been a last resort and besides that Potter’s contempt had hardly been a secret. Shacklebolt would’ve been aware that the chances of Potter going for him were about the same as the chances for the earth randomly collapsing in on itself.
Kingsley Shacklebolt, Draco reflected, was a dark horse.
He was not, however, an evil robot. Draco decided that with finality later that day when Shacklebolt called him to his office and informed him that the fourth vote in the council was secure, because it belonged to him.
“I,” Draco said.
“There is no need to strain yourself, Mr Malfoy,” Shacklebolt said, and nodded at the sign on his wall that said No man alone. “Though it pains me every time I remember the fact, you are one of my men. Good day to you.”
That night Draco, combing through old papers of his father’s, found something on Septimus Umber, the last member of the council. He Owled a lot of the men he could remember from his father’s trips to Knockturn Alley, the trips Father had taken him on trying to groom him, trying to get information. He said he would pay for it handsomely.
Then he arranged the sale of Malfoy Manor as fast as he could. It was the only practical thing to do, he hadn’t been near the house since he was sixteen anyway.
Crabbe came to be with him that night, bringing Firewhiskey with him to replace what Zabini’d drunk. Draco put back stinging shots between going through papers and thought of his mother and her elegant robes swishing against the carpets of home, his father tall and authoritative as God striding in through the great echoing hall, and his own bed.
Whenever he was able to wrench his mind away from that he remembered Anyone but him and found himself searching wretchedly through the events of the last year to see what he’d done so wrong.
At about four in the morning the Firewhiskey loosened Crabbe’s tongue and he said: “I don’t get it. I thought he liked you.”
Draco threw the next shot down his throat, coughed as it went down the wrong way and went on coughing until his voice was weak and he could let himself say: “So did I.”
The next day he was dizzy with lack of sleep and miserable, and Granger actually had the gall to turn up and confront him over his lunchtime coffee.
“Malfoy,” she said, and hesitated. “You should have told me about your father.”
“Oh, really?”
“I think that Lucius Malfoy is scum,” Granger said, her dark eyes very cool and hard, and for a moment Draco had great respect for Weasley since he’d actually dared put his manly parts in her ruthless hands. “But since it matters to you that he be executed rather than Kissed, I would’ve helped you.”
“I’ve got it under control,” Draco snarled.
“Or you could ask Harry,” Granger suggested.
“Don’t talk to me about him,” Draco said savagely. “He’s made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing more to do with me, and I couldn’t be more delighted about it. I have to get back to work.”
He got up and then stood looking down at her, not trusting whatever was going on in that bushy head. She looked up at him and he tilted her face up, leaned down and almost whispered in her mouth.
“Don’t you dare tell him one word about this,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “I won’t take help from him. I know enough to break you at work, Hermione, so for once keep your mouth shut.”
“I know enough to break you at work, too,” Granger reminded him calmly.
Draco straightened up and laughed down at her. “Do you think I care about that?” he demanded. “Now?”
That night, with Katie sitting on the edge of the sofa like a visitor unsure of her welcome, an Owl came that promised Draco the dirt on Septimus Umber at a price. He wrote back that he would pay the price gladly.
“Draco,” Katie said. “I know you’re upset, but you cannot just blackmail somebody.”
Draco stared at her. “Do you think it won’t work?”
“That’s not the point—”
“You’d better hope it does work,” Draco said. “If it doesn’t, I don’t think you’ll want to see what I do next. I’m sorry, I know this is disappointing you, I know I am, but—”
“It’s not about disappointing me, it’s about right and wrong! Draco, it might be time to accept that—that the things your father has done are unforgivable—”
Draco crawled over to her over the moonlit papers on the floor, over the deed of sale for his home, and said softly: “I know that already.”
Katie whispered back: “What?”
“He can’t be forgiven,” Draco said. “He doesn’t deserve it. And nor do I.”
Katie said nothing. Draco leaned his elbow against her knees and felt her body trembling against his. He was scaring her again: he couldn’t seem to help it.
“I promised to kill the headmaster,” he murmured.
“I know that, Draco,” Katie said. “But you didn’t, and you were very young—”
“I promised my loyalty to a madman and I put the whole school in the hands of Death Eaters and I killed my mother,” Draco almost shouted.
He’d killed his mother. He’d been too weak to do anything for or against the Death Eaters and his mother had been forced to protect him. She’d promised the Order that she would spy for them if they kept him safe. She’d been caught.
He’d killed her, he’d almost killed Weasley and his brother, he’d almost killed Katie. It wasn’t due to him that they’d lived and it would have been his fault if he’d died, and he’d done it all for a man he’d known was evil, he’d been scared and stupid and he’d wanted glory and he’d wanted to save his father—and now he was failing at that, too.
He looked up through cold moonlight and shadow to Katie’s horrorstruck face.
“I took the Mark and she died,” Draco said, voice soft. “I took the Mark to save him and they’re going to take his soul. There’s nobody left who can forgive me—except you.”
“Draco,” Katie said, and she reached out trembling and put her arms around him. “I do.”
Draco put his face against her wet cheek. She felt warm. “Oh, my Katherine Bell,” he whispered, and kissed the tears rolling down her face, drew her tight to him and clung to her. She felt small under his hands, fragile as a bird, and he tried to be careful even though he didn’t want to be.
Her mouth tasted of tears as it opened for him. “Not the floor, Draco,” she said, and he picked her up and carried her to the bed, laid her out on the white moonlit sheets and did not stop touching her for a moment. She was all he had left.
“Do you love me?” he whispered against her neck. He hadn’t meant to ask that, he remembered, but he was so tired and if she could he had to know.
It was possible. His mother had loved him. She’d said so, once, before she died.
The tears were still shining on Katie’s face as he kissed her, and she whispered again: “Draco, I do.”
He woke beside her to the sound of an owl tapping at his window that morning, with the news that blackmailing Umber had worked and the council had voted unanimously against the Kiss.
He stood with his back against the window, head fuzzy and aching from days without sleep and thought that he had won, and his father was only going to be executed.
He wanted to crawl back into bed beside Katie, but he had to go to work. He was investigating an arson case with Theophilus that day, and Theophilus seemed to be bent on purposely aggravating him.
“Malfoy, that’s illegal too,” he said for the fourteenth time.
Draco narrowed his eyes. “I know you’re just making up laws to annoy me.”
“Christ help me,” Theophilus said.
While they were going over yet another burned-out shell of a house, some builders turned on a radio and it started playing a familiar song. Without even thinking about it, Draco turned and knocked it to the ground hard.
“What is wrong with you?” Theophilus demanded. “Why do you hate radios? Are you utterly insane?”
“Let’s go look at the Unspeakable files on firestarting,” Draco suggested.
“That’s illegal,” Theophilus said.
“You’re just mocking me now,” Draco informed him. “I don’t think it’s kind.”
He stamped off to go look at the Unspeakable files himself and found what he thought was a pattern, and dragged Theophilus off to the next site.
While Draco was trying to make a plan to secure the perimeter and perhaps order in a few more Aurors the place went up in flames.
Sheer instinct made him reach out a restraining hand. “Don’t you dare rush in there, you freakish maniac!”
“I beg your pardon?” Theophilus cried. “Of course I’m not going in there, and—and what did you call me, I cannot believe—”
Draco cursed, mostly at his own stupidity, and there was a scream from the window. Draco looked up and cursed again.
“Go get some other Aurors,” he snapped at stupid Theophilus, and Apparated inside the building.
It was a mess of fire and falling rafters in there. Draco strode through smoke to the sounds of screams, and it wasn’t until he’d already been hit that he realised how much the past few days had told on his reflexes.
He woke up in enormous pain to the sight of Katie and Crabbe leaning over him.
“Hi,” Katie whispered, and held his hand.
“Hello, my Katherine Bell,” he said. “I love you, too.”
Katie’s face went pink. “You’re going to be all right,” she told him. “And I’m sure now that this has happened—I’m sure Harry will come to see you—”
“No he won’t, and who wants him?” Draco snapped, and brittle misery combined with pain and drugs were too much for him: he turned his face into the pillow and went back to sleep.
He woke up warm and safe to the sound of Katie’s voice, and when he opened his eyes Potter was there. He was looking tense and twitchy but determined, and he said he wanted to come back.
Draco was—happy, embarrassingly so, until pain woke him up in the middle of the cold night and he realised what was really going on.
Potter had his hero complex and Draco had been hurt without him. And Potter’s new partner hadn’t been working out. Potter must have figured that at least being partners with Draco worked to an extent. Well, it could work again.
Draco just had to make a plan, back off and be professional, and never make the mistake of thinking they were friends again.
Draco was back at work the next week and at his old desk, beside Potter. It was a little awkward at the start and Potter was obviously paralysed by how uncomfortable it was and kept staring at him.
“Good morning,” he said like a good professional partner. “May I see that file?”
“Morning,” Potter said, and handed him the file.
Draco opened it and read it carefully and did not make any withering comments about Potter’s notes—though, oh, there were withering comments to be made.
Every now and then he looked up and Potter was still staring. Rude, Draco thought. Potter had invited him back, after all, Draco hadn’t done it on his own: he needn’t look like he couldn’t believe Draco was here.
“Thank you, that was very helpful,” Draco said, and went to get himself some urgently needed coffee. Two cups later he came back and said: “Did you get a chance to read my points of information?”
“Um,” Potter said. “Yes.”
“Wonderful,” Draco said with great politeness. “Did you have anything to add to them?”
“Not—really,” Potter told him, looking at the desk.
“Not to worry,” Draco said cordially. “I think that the perpetrator lives in Bath, so the first thing to do might be acquire some aerial information about the water sources near the city. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess,” Potter said. He looked like a whipped dog and Draco wanted to beat him to death with a ruler because what was it that he wanted, anyway?
Draco did not beat his partner to death with a ruler. Draco was very charming and entirely professional, even though it kind of made his teeth hurt.
“Do you want to turn on the radio?” Potter asked him at one point, in much the manner of someone asking if Draco wanted to hand over his money or his life.
“Certainly,” Draco said, and turned it on. “Is there a particular station you prefer?”
“Stop it, Malfoy,” Potter exclaimed.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Draco said obstinately, and looked out the window.
He didn’t know what was wrong, he was behaving perfectly. He tested his perfect manners on Katie that night and she seemed extremely charmed.
“Good morning,” Draco said to Potter the next day, persisting.
“Morning,” Potter said in a stifled sort of voice. Draco wrote reports and carefully did not look at Potter’s, giving him his space.
“Do you want to spar?” Potter demanded after a couple of hours.
“If you’d like to,” Draco said.
Draco fought with studious attention to the rules and got in a few punches that would have put Theophilus out. Potter barely seemed to notice them and fought like a crazy man, as if he was fighting something other than Draco at his most lukewarm. At about the point when a furious coil of muscle hit him in the chest Draco actually felt a burst of panic and struggled properly, but by then Potter had hold of both his wrists and Draco was pinned on the floor.
He was completely helpless, in actual fact, Draco realised with slow indignation. Not that he’d been anything else for a while, with Potter’s stupid random decisions and trying to be so God-damned polite.
“Well done,” he said calmly from underneath Potter, turning his face away and looking at a wall. “Good show. I surrender completely: let me up.”
“No,” Potter said violently, his breath erratic against Draco’s jaw and his shoulders pressing Draco’s down.
No? Draco wanted to repeat scathingly. You’re not allowed to say no! You make no sense! Let me up right now or I will kill you!
“Mind if I ask why?” Draco inquired, most reasonable and polite victim of a madman in the history of time.
He felt Potter’s muscles shift and tense against his body and wondered for a moment if human teeth could tear your throat out. His hands were completely trapped between Potter’s chest and his: this was no good, he was totally at Potter’s mercy, this was so humiliating—
“Please,” said Potter, low against Draco’s jaw.
“What?” Draco asked, and turned his face back, which turned out to be a mistake since Potter was very close, face hovering over Draco’s as he had his psychotic episode. Draco tried to glare and couldn’t actually focus, Potter was that close, and when Draco’s mouth brushed the edge of Potter’s Draco thought it was high time to reverse that face-turning decision and concentrate ferociously on the wall.
“Please,” Potter said again, breath hot on the skin of Draco’s throat. “I know you’re mad or whatever, that’s all right, you can be as stroppy as you like, but you can’t—Just talk, Malfoy, for God’s sake.”
Having people beg him to talk was not something that had ever happened to Draco before, though having people beg him to stop had happened a few times.
Of course, Potter seemed to be more threatening than begging him.
“I talk,” Draco said crossly. “Here’s something I have to say: Let me up right now.”
As soon as Potter’s grip on his wrists slackened he pulled them back, shoved Potter viciously away and scrambled to his feet and out of the damned practise rooms.
The next day in the car, after careful observations about the weather, he thought for a long time and said: “If I’m up on points when you become the ruler of the world, I think you should let me be king of England.”
Potter’s fingers clenched on the steering wheel, but his voice came out sounding almost normal. “If I become ruler of the world,” he said, “and you still haven’t said how I’m supposed to do that—”
“The plan will be revealed in due time,” Draco said grandly.
“Well, anyway, I live in England,” Potter pointed out. “I don’t see why you should have it.”
“But you won’t live in England then,” Draco told him. “You’ll live in distant Araby. The sunny climate in the East will be much more appropriate for your dancing boys.”
“But,” Potter said. “I don’t want dancing boys.”
Draco wondered why Potter had bothered coming out when he obviously had no interest in sex at all. “You’re going to have dancing boys whether you want them or not,” he said sternly. “The ruler of the world has a certain position to keep up. Can I be king of England?”
“Yes, Malfoy,” Potter said with a sigh he meant Draco to hear and a smile Draco was pretty sure he didn’t mean Draco to see. “When I become ruler of the world, you can be king of England.”
Draco was content. After a moment, he started singing very quietly.
“Everybody look left, everybody look right, everywhere you look I stand in spotlight—”
“Who shows you these movies?” Potter asked. “Why?”
Draco was banished to the children’s room with little Mary every first weekend of the month, but he decided not to mention that. “You’ve clearly seen them,” he pointed out haughtily.
“Yes, because I grew up with Muggles, I saw them on Dudley’s old TV—”
“Who’s Dudley?” Draco asked idly. “Boyfriend?”
A look of unspeakable horror passed over Potter’s face. Draco watched it with interest.
”…no,” Potter said at last, and then tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ve changed my mind,” he added. “I don’t want you to talk after all.”
“Don’t give me orders. I shall do exactly as I please,” Draco informed him, and then he informed Maurice the radio that he just couldn’t wait to be king.
He couldn’t change with Potter because he had no idea what Potter wanted him to change to, and besides that he was terrified it would tip the balance he’d achieved, the balance that had made being an Auror bearable, had made Katie love him and had made receiving the Owl telling him the date of his father’s execution was set something he could live through.
He wasn’t going to let Potter know: it was nothing to do with being partners. Draco could deal with it on his own.
When Potter mentioned dreading Christmas, Draco weakened enough to drop a hint, but that wasn’t so bad, he just didn’t want to get drunk on Christmas by himself, he didn’t want to think about his father alone. He wasn’t going to burden him with it or anything.
He and Potter got quietly trashed on Christmas Day, the knot of misery in Draco’s chest easing under the influence of Firewhiskey. Late in the evening Draco actually managed to drink himself unconscious and woke up on the sofa slumped against Potter: Potter’s arm was around him, a little hesitantly, and Draco abandoned all shame for the moment and turned his face into Potter’s shoulder, pretending to be still asleep.
The last Owl from Azkaban came the day after, and for the first time in three years Draco went to visit his father.
When he came in the door of the prison he saw that his father was much too thin. His back was hunched, and the sharp bones looked like the stiffly folded wings of a starved vulture. His long hair was straggling and dry. It took Draco a moment in that dim light to realise that it had gone white.
Dad looked up and Draco saw his father’s eyes in a sunken, unrecognisable face, and he realised something else. Nobody had told him. Who would have told him, when he was surrounded by lunatics and Dementors?
“It’s not going to be the Kiss,” he blurted out, a clumsy stupid child who couldn’t control his tongue once more.
His father’s shoulders eased all the same, as if released from the hands of a torturer, and Draco thought with a rush of panic and despair that he should have known nobody would tell him, he should have told him at once, he should have come to see him every day, he should have saved him.
His father coughed like sandpaper on wood. When he spoke, his voice was thin and weak and almost gentle. It didn’t sound like his father’s voice at all.
“How are you doing, Draco?”
“I’m—I’m,” Draco said, stammering and hating himself for it, trying to think past the burning knot of pain in his chest and tell his father something true, something that would be good enough.
He thought about Katie loving him and Potter coming back, about the Aurors and Crabbe and Goyle being happy in their stupid house.
Draco found his voice and let go of the door, and said almost steadily: “I’m doing the best I know how.”
The day of his father’s execution Shacklebolt sent Potter to Draco’s flat and Draco decided he was an evil robot after all.
He could do this on his own, he could, he knew he could, but Potter was there and it was safe to—Draco thought about sparring when it was an explosion of rage and misery and violence, and didn’t hit Potter because he didn’t know if he could’ve stopped.
He tore apart his flat instead. He tore down every one of those dead, staring pictures and stamped them into glass and splinters as his father died, and all the time he felt grounded, anchored, by Potter’s utter lack of shock, his calm understanding of blind rage and then the methodical way he put everything back together again.
Then his father was dead, and Draco had to sit down. He felt his legs go out from under him and he hit the sofa and he couldn’t think, he couldn’t do anything, he just put his face in his hands and thought Dad.
Which was stupid. He’d never called him that.
Potter’s hand on his shoulder came as a shock. Draco’s head jerked up and he found himself staring at Potter, who was too close, and Draco felt as if the balance was tipping and he was going to cry or tell Potter about the sheer screaming misery of the past or do something that would let Potter know he couldn’t, couldn’t do it on his own.
Then Katie came home and put her arms around him, and told him she wanted to move in. Draco put his face down into the curve of her neck and felt rescued.
Four days later after fighting a house full of what had once been a family and were now Inferi, Draco was spelling a bloody gash in his own shoulder closed and Potter said: “You OK?”
Draco stopped with his wand resting against new skin, and answered: “I think so.”
He felt less okay at the next Slytherin poker night, when cruel fate turned the conversation towards the sexual prowess of Gryffindor males.
“I’m just going to keep him for a little while longer,” Pansy said. “It means nothing.” She was scribbling very bad lyrics to the new song ‘Weasley Is My Fling’ onto her napkin with lip pencil. Draco had refused to help her compose them. Her lips curled as she wrote, as if at a pleasant memory. “And he is extremely—”
Draco recoiled. “I beg you,” he said in a shaken voice. “No.”
Pansy shrugged and started whispering to Millicent Bulstrode, and Draco turned around to hear Malcolm Baddock say: “Potter? He’s like a panther. A sex panther.”
“Let’s talk about women!”
Baddock stared at him blankly. “Why?”
Zabini looked amused, which always filled those around him with an arcane dread.
“What if I don’t want to talk about women?” he asked in a husky voice, and leaned over towards Draco.
“Nobody thinks the Veela stuff is funny, Zabini,” Draco said. “Don’t—”
Zabini leaned in closer, dark, heavy-lidded eyes hypnotic, voice taking on a weird undercurrent that twanged every nerve ending in Draco’s body.
“You’re a good kisser, Malfoy,” he whispered, closer and closer, his mouth almost touching Draco’s ear. “I want to do it again.”
Draco had a sudden vivid, tangible memory of tumbling onto his back with Zabini stretched out on top of him, blood rushing and mouths touching, his hands pulling down Zabini’s shoulders in a mad effort to get him closer. He could feel the carpet burn at the small of his back.
He slammed up the image of Katie like a wall between himself and the memory.
“No,” he said. “Quit it.”
Zabini leaned back, grinning engagingly. “You’re really getting good at this Occlumency thing,” he said. “I gave that one all I had.”
Everyone tossed napkins and crisps at Zabini for using Veela wiles on poker night, and Draco sidled over to Nott and said pathetically: “Can we talk about women?”
“Absolutely,” Nott said in a placid voice. “Millie is Viking in the sack.”
Draco blinked. “Are—are women Viking—?”
“There are women in Viking mythology,” Nott said. “Valkyries. They wear horned helmets and bear warriors off to their deaths.”
“I see,” Draco said, staring with morbid fascination.
“Millie has a horned helmet at home, I don’t mind telling you,” Nott continued in his usual neutral voice. “Sometimes she pretends she’s bearing me off to my death. What a way to go, eh?”
“I have to go… over here now,” said Draco.
Draco thought that even if he couldn’t change the balance he wanted could be achieved by Potter being happier, perhaps, so he took him to Rick’s and then watched in dismay as everyone totally failed to hit on him.
Perhaps they could sense the madness, Draco thought, and inspected Potter closely to see if he had crazy eyes.
Potter leaned over the table towards him, pitching his voice low. “Uh, Malfoy,” he said. “I think this might be a gay bar.”
“You shock me,” Draco said flatly, and stabbed the olive in his drink.
This obviously required a better plan.
Draco acquired a valuable piece of information that summer when they were staking out a beach to see if this particular cove was the meeting point for another band of merpirates.
It was late June and the sun was a burning pit of fire in the sky, the sand absorbing the fire and the car was turning into a sad little oven with music playing to soothe them as they roasted to death.
Draco lasted for about five minutes after the iced coffee ran out and then announced: “I’m going swimming.”
“We’re watching for merpirates,” Potter reminded him. Draco was pleased about how that word had caught on.
“You can do that,” Draco said. “I realise you have defective eyesight, but even you can spot nefarious befinned pirates if they happen to appear. And you can go swimming next,” he added graciously, and then kicked off his shoes and undid the button on his right sleeve with his teeth.
Potter took a quick breath and did not speak, which Draco took as capitulation.
Draco climbed out of the car, bare feet sinking into baked sand, leaving his shirt and shoes behind him. The water was sheer sweet relief, like Katie’s mouth after one of those dreams. He submerged in it, swam a few strokes and circled back, trying to tire himself out so he could work off his energy here and not go crazy in the car. He came out of the sea and took a detour before he slid back into his jeans and into the car.
“I feel much better,” he sighed, closing his eyes and leaning his damp head against the car seat, arching his back from the static-hot material.
Potter said: “Freckles.”
“Oh hi, you’re insane,” Draco observed, and opened his eyes. Potter looked back at him, eyes all pupil, and Draco blinked at him and leaned over to him. “You’ve clearly become overheated,” he noted. “Here, let me get the window—”
“No, I can do it,” Potter snarled. His body language could not have screamed ‘Get away!’ any louder, so Draco shrugged and leaned back.
He frowned. “You—did you just say ‘freckles’?”
“Yes,” Potter said sullenly, glaring at nothing.
“What about them?”
“I like them,” Potter said between his teeth.
“Oh,” Draco said blankly. He scanned the horizon and saw a guy who he thought might have freckles, and then said: “Ah.” He paused, and ventured: “I really haven’t had one of these conversations before.”
The line of Potter’s jaw was tight as he snapped: “What?”
“Well, you know, manly bonding about—attractiveness,” Draco said, waving his free hand to emphasise his point. “I mean, I tried to have this talk once with Goyle in fourth year and he talked wistfully about how much he liked strong muscular creatures and I spent a distressing amount of time trying to set him up with Millicent Bulstrode. And then Nott almost assassinated me. I’m not sure I’ll be very good at it, but—Freckles, you say?”
Potter looked torn between amusement and murder. “I don’t want to talk about it!”
“You could go talk to that guy,” Draco suggested.
“What guy?”
“The—freckled one?” Draco said, searching the horizon and not spotting him again. “Then we’d both be happy,” he continued placidly. “You could have the freckles, and I could have two ice-creams.”
He passed one over philosophically, and began to eat his own.
Nevertheless, he took this information into account. Freckles, apparently. Also, he reflected, thinking about Cho Chang, Ginny Everyone Said So Even If Draco Couldn’t See the Appeal Himself Weasley and Zacharias For A Hufflepuff Smith, very attractive. Someone who liked Quidditch. Given Malcolm Baddock’s lack of success, any house but Slytherin would probably do.
Draco was in rather a bad mood one particularly fierce day in July, since Oliver Wood had another crazy fan swearing that she’d kill first him and then herself, and he and Potter had to track Wood across the pitch all day long. The combination of Wood and Potter in such close proximity had all the women looking twitchy and crazed, so their chances of finding the perpetrator were not looking good.
That was the point at which Draco saw the answer to keeping Potter happy walking across the Quidditch pitch. He was freckled, carrying a Quick-Quotes quill that meant sports journalist, dazzlingly handsome in a the-boy-next-door-does-modelling-part-time way, Draco didn’t remember his name but he was pretty damn sure he’d been on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and he was staring at Potter as if Potter had just descended from Sports Journalist Heaven.
“Oh look, the press,” Draco drawled, making his voice go right through innocence and out the other side. “What larks. I must go over to him and tell him this new story I just thought up!”
“No you won’t,” Potter said firmly.
“It’s a very funny story,” Draco assured him.
“I will talk to what’s his face, stay there,” Potter ordered, and stalked off.
“Oh, if you insist,” Draco murmured, and cackled to himself until he noted that the Freckled Beauty was not making much headway, and was starting to look discouraged. So he went over and arranged matters so they all went to Rick’s.
“Oh look, alcohol,” he said as soon as they’d all sat down. “I must go commune with it, excuse me.”
Potter looked bewildered. Freckles looked at Potter with barely concealed yearning. Draco waved a little and sauntered off to the bar.
“Tell me about your cocktail menu, Rick,” Draco invited the bartender. “What inspired it? Did you always want to write a cocktail menu, was it your dream when you were a little boy?”
“There’s no time for that,” Rick told him crisply. “Go back to your table, Draco, someone’s trying to steal your beautiful boyfriend.”
“My who?” Draco said. “My what?”
He glanced over his shoulder at Freckles and Potter, caught Potter’s eye briefly and had a sudden stunning answer to the eternal question of why nobody ever hit on Potter at Rick’s.
Draco laughed, partly at his own stupidity and partly out of embarrassment. “Uh, he’s not my,” he said, and found himself entirely unable to pronounce the word. “We just work together,” he explained, and thought of Potter leaving and added viciously: “We’re not even friends. And I would like a drink.”
The important thing was that Potter, for the first time in known history, got himself a date. To Draco’s slight surprise, the date apparently worked out and Potter took to coming into work a little calmer about his cases, movements lazier, sex-languid, through that summer.
Draco couldn’t say Are you happier? but he decided that Potter must be.
Katie liked Ritchie Coote, which was apparently Freckles’ name. She’d had to mentor the little ones on the Quidditch team, since God knew Potter was not the most nurturing captain in the world. She suggested a double date.
So they went to the zoo. Katie liked the zoo on Sundays, often with little Mary, and Draco was familiar with the whole place by now, the twisting paths by the pelicans where he could kiss Katie in the shade.
Things were so much better with Katie now the difficult balance had been struck, now that she lived with him and loved him. Draco was trying to work out when would be the correct time to propose.
Potter and Coote were waiting for them. Coote looked happy and excited, and Draco made a mental note to smack Potter around for not bringing his boyfriend anywhere.
On the path to the pelicans Katie detached herself from Draco and went to make kind small talk with Coote, since he and Potter didn’t appear to be talking.
“She mothered him in school, apparently,” Draco said when Potter fell in step with him. “This is what comes of me having a Glamorous Older Woman and you having a Toyboy.”
Potter’s mouth twisted upwards slightly. “You like him, then,” he said in a hesitant voice.
Draco didn’t. “Well—”
At this point Katie rescued him by coming back and taking his arm again. “Stop this outrageous flirting with deviants,” Draco told her, pushing her hair out of her eyes and stooping to kiss her. “Remember you’re my sweetheart.”
Coote had his hand hanging freely, fingers fanned in a quiet hopeful appeal. Potter didn’t seem to have noticed: his hands were in his pockets and he was staring grimly straight ahead.
Draco wondered how to tell Coote that Potter was incapable of normal social interaction and that Coote should just grab him, and then they passed the fountain near the tigers’ cage and the picnic area. It was large and deep, the bottom clear green, and Draco stared at it thoughtfully and started to have an idea.
“Potter,” he said slowly, and when Potter looked around he smiled.
Potter smiled back, gradual and bright.
Draco let Katie’s fingers slip out of his hand, and stepped easily over the rim of the fountain, into water up to his knees. A jet of water hit his head and streamed down his face as he walked a few steps backward, feeling his smile spread, and he crooked his finger and said: “Come.”
Potter laughed, sounding shaky and relieved, and came. He stepped into the water with a small grimace, looking like a big animal unused to swimming and not overly comfortable with it, but willing to tolerate it since he had a definite goal in mind.
Draco knew he wasn’t comfortable with it, of course. You took your advantages where you could get them.
“They’re sparring,” he heard Katie tell Coote beyond the circle of water, as they set out a picnic. “Something they have to do for training.”
The falling water was a sparkling veil in the sunlight before Draco’s eyes: he shook his head to send the drops flying and Potter lunged at him. Draco caught at the statue in the centre of the fountain on the way down and twisted, moving more smoothly in the water than Potter could, and brought an elbow crashing gleefully down on the back of Potter’s head. He was just about to hit him when someone shoved him into the statue.
“Hey!” Coote said, fist clenched in Draco’s shirt. “You can’t—”
Potter’s hand shot out and grabbed Coote’s wrist, throwing him off none too gently. “Leave him,” Potter snarled, surfacing from the water with his hair dripping. “Stay out of this.”
Draco slanted a sneer Coote’s way. “You heard the man.”
He was dimly aware this was no way to win over Potter’s boyfriend, but Coote shouldn’t be interfering, anyway. This gleaming circle of water was their space: this was for Draco.
Potter tackled him into the water once he looked away and Draco went under the surface struggling and trying to wrestle his way out of Potter’s grip. He got to the surface gasping and almost managed to win by banging Potter’s head against the statue, but Potter’s wet hair slid out of his grasp and then he was underwater again, laughing and choking on it, Potter’s eyes and teeth gleaming above him.
“I surrender,” Draco managed breathlessly, breaking to the surface with an elbow to Potter’s throat. He healed the bleeding wound on the back of Potter’s head as soon as he’d stopped coughing up water.
Once he’d climbed out of the fountain, he collapsed by Katie’s side and stretched out on the grass.
“That was a—bit violent, Draco,” she said.
“Was it?” Draco asked, blinking water out of his eyes. “Sorry. Come kiss me.”
Katie smiled and shook her head. “You’re all wet.”
From across the picnic blanket, Coote was staring at Potter with eyes that said he personally wouldn’t mind getting a little wet. Potter sat dripping and glaring at his own hands.
“I know that,” Draco said softly, coaxingly. “Come kiss me anyway.” He tugged at Katie’s sleeve and she smiled, surrendered, leaned towards him and he reached up, clasped the back of her neck and drew her down into a long, soft, slow kiss. Sun shimmered in the drops caught in Draco’s eyelashes: he made a small sound.
“Get a room,” Potter snapped.
Draco forbore to mention that obviously Potter’s problem was that he was panicking that Coote might expect similar public demonstrations of affection.
“Sorry,” he said easily instead. “Someone pass the lemonade.”
It looked like being a nice day after all, until the Owl came from Shacklebolt calling them back to duty.
“Man’s an evil robot,” Draco said, scrambling to his feet and dropping a kiss on Katie’s upturned face.
“Bye,” Potter said tersely to Coote, and got up as well.
Draco stared his hardest, raised his eyebrows and tried to generally convey to Potter the idea that Potter was the worst boyfriend in the world and was going to get dumped, possibly off a tall building without his broom. Potter scowled, stooped down and kissed the man, properly, brown fingers held against Coote’s jaw to keep him still, mouth opening with a slide of teeth to it.
He came out of it red-mouthed and breathing a little fast, and started walking away fast. Coote stared after him as if he’d seen the light of God, and Draco had to hurry to catch up.
When he did, Potter was wiping his mouth savagely with the back of his hand, as if Coote had been wearing lipstick.
“You happy?” he snarled at Draco.
That’s not the point, Draco wanted to say. The point was for you to be happy, you stupid, stupid git.
What he actually said was: “If I was your boyfriend, I think I would kill you in approximately three days.”
“Yeah?” Potter said, mouth twisting. “Well, you’re not.”
Draco thought it was past time to have a little chat with Coote.
“How dare you?” Coote demanded.
The talk was not going well.
“Harry is not a twerp,” Coote continued, eyes blazing. “The only thing wrong with Harry is you.”
Draco blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“You work him too hard and make him irritable,” Coote proclaimed. “And the ways you deal with investigations, I’ve heard stories, you’re blackening Harry’s good name! I wouldn’t expect anything else from a Slytherin, but let me tell you, as soon as Harry and I—understand each other better, the first thing I’ll do is get him to ditch you as his partner!”
“Is that so,” Draco said, perfectly cold.
Coote got up and threw money down on the bar for his drink. “I pity Katie, having to deal with you.”
Draco stared at his drink after Coote was gone. Typical Gryffindor, letting Draco know everything in advance: he’d given Draco a perfect opportunity to go lie to Potter until all this new-boyfriend business was soured. Only Draco couldn’t do that: this was the first human connection Potter had reached out for in years. Draco thought of the way Potter always reached out and grabbed when he woke up, and felt mistily and generally miserable.
Coote was young, that was all, he told himself. He was fresh out of school and the air in school was all choked with competitiveness, it made you crazy.
Except for the air in Slytherin, of course. Slytherin ruled!
When Shacklebolt asked him to infiltrate the last pocket of Death Eaters, who were set on kidnapping the Boy Who Lived, it was finally an order that Draco wanted to obey, because he had the sudden thought that if Potter was presented with evidence that Draco was a Death Eater, if he was and he still didn’t believe it, then it would be proof he wasn’t—going anywhere. Draco could feel safer. Draco wanted to know what Potter would do.
Infiltrating the Death Eaters was easy. Using Occlumency so they knew only what he wanted them to know was a snap. Directing the Death Eaters in the kidnap mission was a breeze.
Walking into Potter’s cell the first day was hard, but only for the first few moments. Potter stared at him but didn’t try to kill him, which meant he knew what was going on.
It was such a relief.
Then the Death Eaters started to get restive about the small matter of the ransom, and Draco still didn’t have all the names and he was starting to get edgy every time one of them approached Potter’s door. It was such a near thing that Draco had one of them tied up and Stunned in the cellar while he was getting the last names.
He was tired enough to collapse when Shacklebolt and the others sent word that the Death Eaters were being rounded up, and then he let Potter out and it seemed that Potter hadn’t known after all, and Potter was so tired that Draco couldn’t even bawl him out for it.
He dropped Potter off at his flat and Owled Coote to come be with him, sitting on the table beside Potter’s sofa with his face in his hands. Every time he came up with a plot to dispatch Coote, Potter (in his sleep, Jesus) made a loose grabbing movement towards Draco and Draco felt instantly and hideously guilty. He couldn’t do it.
“Shhh,” he said to Potter’s worn, sleeping face. “I didn’t mean it. I won’t.”
Coote appeared and glared at him, and Draco stood up and let Coote take his place at once. Coote hovered protectively over Potter and glared.
“I know this is somehow your fault,” he said accusingly, and what could Draco say? He was right.
“Take care of him,” Draco said, and left.
The next day he came in and found Potter and coffee at his desk, and steeled himself for—something, he didn’t know what, and asked how Coote was doing.
“We broke up,” Potter said, looking at his report.
“Oh,” Draco said, and quickly, before he could think about what he was saying, he said: “Is it my fault? Was it about the case? I can explain to him, I’m sure you can work it out—”
“I broke up with him,” Potter said curtly. “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want you to explain anything, and I don’t want him, so just—leave it, all right, Malfoy?”
“All right,” Draco said, on an exhale.
That was that hex dodged, anyway, even though he didn’t know how or why. Draco felt pretty good about that, until he was going out the door that evening and happened to look around and see Potter still at his desk, head down, and the line of his shoulders reminded Draco of his father, and he wanted to go over to him and say, Tell me, whatever it is, whatever’s making you so unhappy, and we can make a plan to kill it.
He didn’t, though. He had to preserve the balance: he walked out the door.
On the anniversary of their third year of partnership the vampire incident occurred.
He and Potter were leaning over the mission report, plotting a way to get into a nest of vampires. Well, Draco was plotting, Draco was fairly sure Potter was mostly thinking about the enormous beheading swords they got to carry.
“Aha,” Draco said, with gentle triumph. “I have a plan. It involves using you as bait.”
Potter frowned. “No, it doesn’t. Why can’t you be bait?”
“Because the bait will be in the line of the sword,” Draco pointed out reasonably. “I could be killed!”
Potter gave him a look over his glasses.
“I use my head more than you do,” Draco said. “I need it more.”
“I use a sword better than you do,” Potter said. “So I’ll be using the sword, and you’ll be bait, and we can both keep our heads.”
“Fine,” Draco said sulkily. “But if you behead me, I will come back as a ghost and a member of the Headless Hunt, and I will haunt you and throw my head at you a lot. You’ll be really scared.”
“Not now you’ve told me, I won’t.”
“You will. My ghostly severed head will be ghastly,” Draco informed him with sepulchral satisfaction. “It will drip ectoplasm. That’ll show you.”
Potter hit him lightly over the head with his report. “Go running in Ashvale Street tonight,” he said. “Dress like a victim.”
Draco cursed Potter and went out that night to court lurking fanged death.
Lurking fanged death appeared in the shape of a heavyset vampire who leaped out at him from the bushes with his eyes and eyeteeth glittering.
“Oh gosh, you’re sinister,” Draco said in the voice of an Innocent Victim. “I do hope you mean me no harm!”
Apparently vampires were not only immortal, but immune to sarcasm. Draco mused on how utterly at a loss Professor Snape would be with a vampire student and waited for Potter to spring out, swing his enormous beheading sword and kill the vampire.
The vampire grabbed Draco in a bear hug, gave his neck a big sloppy lick and bit down hard.
Potter sprang out, swung his enormous beheading sword and killed the vampire.
Draco shoved the headless corpse away and fixed him with an accusing glare. “Eurgh,” he said with decision. “That vampire licked me.”
Potter gave his bleeding neck a speaking look.
“And it bit me, yes, how horrible, I have been marked by the undead, I stare into the abyss,” Draco said in an unconvinced tone. “You should feel very guilty. But at least I was psychologically prepared for a vampire to bite me. That is their vampire way. I did not know they licked you first. I wonder if it’s to tenderise the meat or clean it or something.”
“Tell you what,” Potter said indulgently, stooping and picking up the severed head. “I’ll keep one of the vampires alive so you can ask it.”
Potter tossed Draco his own sword, which Draco caught a little awkwardly by the hilt. Then Potter paused and gave Draco a once-over.
“Er,” he said. “What are you wearing?”
Draco looked down at his red shirt bearing the legend ‘HUFFLEPUFF ‘98.’
“You said dress like a victim.”
Potter went up the stairs to the vampire hideout, and gained entrance by the expedient of holding the severed head up close to the eyehole.
Draco congratulated himself on the brilliant effectiveness of his plan as the door opened and Potter beheaded the doorvampire. Then he counted up the number of cloaks piled on the coat rack and realised that the vampires must be having some kind of party.
“I think we could take them all,” Potter said.
“I think I would like to declare today National Not Getting Our Throats Ripped Out Day,” Draco said. “Let’s come back another time, when they don’t have guests. It’s only polite.”
At that point a step sounded outside one door, and Draco and Potter darted through another. They found themselves in a small dark room.
“Potter, there really are about forty vampires out there,” he said. “If we try to Apparate they’ll sense us, and if they find us, we are in trouble.” He thought for a moment. “Right, if anyone comes in, pretend to bite me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pretend to be a vampire,” Draco said impatiently. “I’m bleeding already: clearly somebody bit me, and the scent of blood will cover a lot. If there are forty vampires here chances they won’t all know each other. It’ll buy a second so we can kill whoever comes in.”
Potter looked extremely doubtful, which was outrageous because by now he should know Draco’s plans were all gold. He was still looking doubtful when a step sounded near the door, Draco stepped back against the wall, and Potter made up his mind and lunged.
He tilted up Draco’s chin with strong fingers, turning it to the side so that the bite on Draco’s neck was exposed, and closed in. His wild hair tickled Draco’s face and made him want to laugh until he realised that Potter was shaking a little, he must be upset about having to do this, and Draco curved a hand around his shoulder reassuringly, meaning It’s okay, I know you won’t hurt me and Potter sort of nuzzled at his neck blindly, and Draco was holding him and Draco—didn’t want to laugh anymore.
The small shadowed room seemed to lose a lot of air suddenly. Draco almost pushed him away, but then a floorboard that sounded like it was directly outside the door creaked and Draco didn’t know exactly how to tell Potter that they had to die bloodily because Draco had a neck thing.
Potter’s breath was erratic against Draco’s skin, his mouth warm: he leaned in an inch and licked lightly, above the bite mark, along the curve of Draco’s throat, and then when every nerve in Draco’s body came to screaming attention and his shoulderblades tried to dig through the wall and out of this situation because how embarrassing, and he resisted the urge to bitch-slap Potter for taking the stupid role too far…
Well then, thankfully, a vampire leaped across the room and grabbed Potter by the hair as a voice cried: “Die, evildoer!”
It turned out to be Edred Worple and his friend Sanguini, the writing duo who after the success of Blood Brothers had begun a career of vampire hunting so that the really undesirable element could be removed before they wrote Blood Lovers, the tell-all sequel about vampire society. Draco conceded that since it was now four against forty, he would permit the kill-them-all plan to go ahead.
The battle won, they made their way back to headquarters to report the cleaning of the vampire nest. Worple was tottering a little from the fight, but he clung to Potter’s arm and talked to him earnestly about how the world was waiting for his story.
“So you’re a vampire vampire hunter,” Draco said brightly to Sanguini. “What’s that like?”
Sanguini, greatly to his alarm, was looking rather fixedly at his neck. Draco was about to reach for his sword when Potter made one of his strange sounds, a growl with odd harmonics in it, and Sanguini took this as his cue to look away.
It was actually all Potter’s fault when Draco tried stuff out of the evidence locker.
He was sitting outside on the Bells’ front porch with little Mary, feeling banished. He’d just let it slip that he didn’t want kids.
He had a dangerous job, he’d pointed out, and he’d already told her that he couldn’t quit—there was a balance to be preserved, she’d told him what she wanted him to be, it wasn’t fair that she seemed to have changed her mind—and even if he hadn’t he wouldn’t want kids.
What if a child came and he couldn’t love it, he didn’t say. What if the kid tried and tried to make him and he just couldn’t love it and he had to see what it was doing to the kid.
Another thing he hadn’t said was that he didn’t want children who weren’t purebloods.
It was a relief when Potter’s car materialised out of the air and pulled up outside the gate. He leaned across the passenger seat and swung open the door under Mary’s incredulous eyes.
“C’mon, Malfoy, drugs bust. Shacklebolt thinks some of them will resist arrest.”
Draco got up and Mary decided on a course of action.
She said: “Potter” and collapsed on her face in what appeared to be ecstasy.
“She does that with everyone,” Draco said. He stooped down to check that Mary had not actually expired of joy, and then climbed into the car.
The bust was pretty quick. Nobody resisted arrest all that hard. Possibly they’d spotted Potter’s crazy eyes. Draco was still feeling a little low as they examined the glittering packages, and he had the sudden thought that he was pretty sure they had the day off.
Potter saw him speculatively eyeing a particular package.
“Go on,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I dare you.”
He said later that he hadn’t meant it, but why would people say things they didn’t mean?
“I don’t feel any different,” Draco said after a moment.
“Mr Malfoy, Mr Potter,” Shacklebolt said, striding up to them. “—What’s wrong with your pupils, Mr Malfoy?”
“Sometimes I think you’re an evil robot,” Draco told him dreamily. “But sometimes not.”
“Malfoy’s feeling a little—peaky,” Potter said, and seized Draco’s arm and dragged him back to the car forthwith. He told Draco off all the way there, but Draco was listening intently and he didn’t think he was really cross. That was good. “Just go lie down in the back seat. Idiot,” Potter said, and steadied Draco when that didn’t quite work out.
Once Draco was lying down he found he was looking up at Potter upside down, which was most amusing. “Hello,” he said, and laughed.
“Hi,” Potter murmured, and touched his hair, which was odd but seemed to mean Potter was feeling fond of him.
The car starting was nice too, the sound of Maurice the radio mingling with the steady purr of the engine, and when the car launched itself up into the sky sunlight filled the whole small purring space. Draco thought about Katie and realised that everything was all right there too: she loved him, she’d said so, and this talking about kids meant that she might consider marrying him.
“I’m happy,” Draco announced, and saw the edge of Potter’s smile as he glanced back at him.
“Yeah?” Potter said. “That’s good.”
The car was rising higher and higher, filling with golden light. Draco meant to ask Potter if he was happy too, since that was just as important, but then music, warmth and contentment overwhelmed him.
The car climbed higher and higher, as if they were going to fly into the sun, and Draco fell asleep.