“I’m laughing so hard I think I’m dribbling a little,” Malfoy said from under the table.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “Could you… could you maybe explain that again? This time so it makes sense?”
He looked with a mounting sense of despair at Kingsley Shacklebolt and the former Professor Slughorn. They were sitting at the top of the boardroom table, Slughorn looking softly pleased with himself and generally benevolent. Shacklebolt looked grim, but Shacklebolt always looked grim.
Five minutes ago Harry had thought they were maybe going to get a commendation for the Gringotts case, but Slughorn had been sitting with Shacklebolt when they came in, and then Malfoy had taken one look at the genealogy charts and slipped off his chair, laughing like a hyena.
Shacklebolt frowned. “We’ve been through this, Potter.”
“Just one more time,” Harry said desperately.
“Of course, my dear boy,” Slughorn told him, beaming. “I realise this may come as a shock to you, but our investigations have been going on for some time, and we’re quite sure. Your mother Lily Evans was not, as we had all previously believed, of pure Muggle stock. One of her ancestors was a Veela.”
Malfoy’s laughter came with renewed vigour from under the table. Harry kicked him in the ribs.
“Look,” he said. “Surely there’s some mistake—”
“Oh no,” Slughorn said genially. “Actually it explains a lot. A pureblood boy like James Potter, prejudiced or not, might well have been expected to steer clear of a Muggleborn girl. Yet for five years he pursued her, as the saying goes, as if he was a lad on his first trip to Hogsmeade and she was carrying Honeydukes around in her knickers.”
“Because he loved her!” Harry shouted. “And—and who says that, anyway? I don’t say that!”
“Oh yes,” Slughorn said, in a sleek, satisfied sort of way. “He loved her. And Peter Pettigrew loved her, and Sirius Black loved her, and Remus Lupin loved her. And Regulus Black loved her, and I myself yearned for her, and Severus Snape too was possessed by secret passion for the lovely Lily. Don’t you find this list of lovers a little odd? It’s practically a roll call.”
“Your passion wasn’t all that secret, sir,” Malfoy said from under the table.
“Shut up Malfoy, God, you are not helping,” Harry snapped. “Well, I—my mum was a bit of a catch, I suppose—I—Really, Professor Snape?”
“Even You-Know-Who himself, we suspect, no sooner set eyes on Lily than he knew he must have her as his own. That was why he offered her the chance to step aside, that night in Godric’s Hollow. His desire to carry your mother off to a sweet sugar palace of carnality was, it seems, his downfall.”
Slughorn nodded almost sadly to himself, as if Voldemort was more to be pitied than blamed.
“Sweet sugar—Urgh,” Harry said. “Urgh.”
“We have investigated this thoroughly, Harry,” Slughorn assured him. “I went to visit your relatives, who I understand you have not seen in six years—”
“Dudley is not part Veela,” Harry said flatly. That could not be, or surely the world would crumble.
“A most personable young man,” Slughorn said. “What a physique! But of course, the Veela blood was even more evident in your Aunt Petunia. She has the blond hair and swanlike neck of the Veela, I never saw a Muggle with such a strong strain of Veela blood in them. Your Uncle Vernon is a lucky man. The Veela, of course, can sometimes be a little rough in the marital bed, but with their wild ministrations comes unimaginable ecstasy—”
Malfoy howled laughing. “Stop it,” he said, and Harry heard him pounding the floor with his fists. “I can’t take it. It’s too funny. I may soil myself.”
“Yes, stop it,” Harry said feebly, trying to banish the mental pictures. “Um—okay—well, I don’t ever intend to see my family again, and I don’t plan on having children, so I can’t see that this matters. You’ve told me, and one day Malfoy may shut up about it—”
“Don’t count on it,” Malfoy warned.
“—And then I can proceed with—forgetting this entire conversation ever happened,” Harry said. “Thanks. Bye.”
“Sit down, Potter,” Shacklebolt barked. “There’s more. God help us all,” he added after a moment’s thought.
Malfoy made a quiet sound of glee into the carpet.
“Another thing, which by now you may have realised, is that You-Know-Who himself had a Veela strain,” Slughorn said. “His beauty and charisma had a great deal to do with the origins of his army, and of course his Veela wiles enslaved some loyal followers like Bellatrix Lestrange to the last.”
Harry thought back to Tom Riddle in the Pensieve. He supposed he’d been quite easy on the eyes. If you liked them tall, dark and mind-blowing.
“And I believe you know that when You-Know-Who’s spell on you backfired, he transferred some of his powers to you,” Slughorn went on, as if lecturing a classroom with a special twinkle for his favourite student. “Such as Parseltongue. And saucy, salacious Veela charms.”
“Beg pardon,” Harry said.
“I said, saucy—”
“I heard what you said!” Harry shouted. “I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life.”
“Consider, Harry,” Slughorn said. “I knew it myself the moment I saw you, though of course the fact you were a student in my care made it impossible for me to fully express the deep appreciation—well, well, perhaps later. Surely you see Harry, that with your own Veela powers added to You-Know-Who’s, you became a powerfully alluring creature.”
Harry was already a large table away from Slughorn, but he moved his chair anyway out of principle and sheer horror.
“There are hardly any male Veela,” Slughorn went on, eyeing Harry dreamily, “and of course your own strong magic unconsciously enhances the Veela lure. Why, even when you were young, we have reports of the very sensitive being badly affected—poor young Ginny Weasley, of course, and a little chap called Colin Creevey—”
“What?” said Harry. “What?”
“And when your sexuality—” Slughorn rolled the word on his tongue like a sweet—“became more fully developed, there was quite a sensation in the school, wasn’t there?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Harry said coldly.
“Women crowding the Quidditch pitch when you practised,” Slughorn reminded him. “Droves of women following you hypnotised through the corridors. Surely you didn’t think this was normal behaviour?”
“Uh,” said Harry.
“Have you ever felt a little clawing, growling thing in your chest when you were in a sexual situation?” inquired Slughorn, as if he was asking if Harry took milk in his tea.
“Er,” Harry said.
Slughorn nodded with satisfaction. “That would be your Veela powers trying to manifest.”
“Manifest,” Harry said, and began to panic a little. “Like, um, how the Veela did? With wings and—and beaks and things? I’m going to do that?”
He was never going to have sex again.
“Say he’s going to grow a beak,” Malfoy said prayerfully from under the table. “Say we’re all going to see him balance his glasses on a beak. Make my life complete.”
“No, no,” Slughorn said. “The little monster in your chest should remain just a feeling, I imagine. And quite enough too. No, that’s not the problem.”
Harry gripped the table. “What’s the problem?”
Slughorn smiled beneficently. “Tell me, my boy,” he said. “When was the last time you were sexually intimate with someone?”
Harry stared.
“I absolutely refuse to answer that question. I’m—I’m an adult, and I’m in my workplace, and—and that’s an entirely inappropriate thing to ask me—”
“Has it been that long?” murmured Shacklebolt.
Harry redirected his stare. “What?”
“Nothing,” Shacklebolt answered.
“It’s been eleven months,” Malfoy announced cheerfully. “Since the Christmas party.”
Harry felt himself go red under Slughorn’s interested eyes. “I told you that in confidence,” he muttered.
“Everybody knows,” Malfoy said. “It was the Christmas party.”
Shacklebolt nodded. “This is quite true. I know myself.”
“Oh my God,” said Harry, and resisted the urge to put his head in his hands.
Slughorn made a pyramid of his fingers and stared over them at Harry. “Well, that explains everything,” he declared. “Eleven months is a long time for any young man, particularly such a specimen as you are. Really, you should not let your dedication to your work interfere with your duty to indulge yourself—and, if I may say so, to give pleasure to others.”
Harry cringed. Slughorn’s gaze caressed his biceps.
“You’re twenty-three, are you not?” Shacklebolt asked briskly.
Harry gave a weak nod and Slughorn looked pleased. “A fine ripe legal age!” he said brightly. “At which most young people are regularly intimate, or at least take most opportunities offered. Of course, most young people are not part Veela, and their feelings of sexual frustration will have no consequences.”
“I am not sexually fr—What consequences?”
“Consider this,” Slughorn said. “At the age of sixteen, you wrought havoc in Hogwarts, and then got yourself a girlfriend. Which was lucky, since it probably prevented a riot. Why, my boy, people had taken leave of their senses! They were slipping you love potions!”
Now that Slughorn put things like that, all of it did start to sound a little weird.
“Fleur Delacour, while she has less Veela power than you and is trained besides, caused much the same havoc when she was visiting Hogwarts at the age of seventeen. However, Miss Delacour married when she was twenty.”
“I’m not getting married,” Harry said forcefully.
“No, no, my dear boy. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting you tie yourself down in that way. Feel free to explore the world and all its carnal delights!” said Slughorn. “But do find yourself a regular sex partner or partners, or there will be consequences. Your powers are already starting to manifest quite dramatically. I hear Lisa the receptionist fainted in your arms yesterday?”
“It was a hot day!”
“It’s November,” Malfoy pointed out.
“I just,” Harry said. “I can’t hear any more of this. Or my brain will explode. Um, and I don’t think you can order me to have—to be—I don’t care if you are my boss, you don’t get a say in my private life,” he said, avoiding Slughorn’s avid eyes and addressing Shacklebolt.
“Naturally not,” Slughorn crooned. “We just wanted to give you a warning, that’s all—”
“Consider me warned,” Harry snapped. “Come on, Malfoy.”
Malfoy crawled out from under the table. There was carpet fluff in his hair, his face was brilliant pink with laughing, and he still looked highly amused.
“I never get called to the office so people can tell me to have more sex,” he said. “Life is so unfair.”
Harry was not used to getting bad news from the boss’ office. Even when he’d thought he was getting bad news, once before, things had turned out pretty well.
That was when he was twenty, still on the wild violent edge he’d had to go over after killing Voldemort, still trying to cope with Ginny’s absence and the reason for it, and on top of all that worried about his job. He knew it wasn’t going well and he couldn’t work out why. He’d passed all the tests with flying colours, but in practise everything seemed to be falling to pieces.
It was the only thing he’d ever thought he might be able to do. Voldemort was gone, Ginny was gone, and this had to work out.
“Frankly,” Shacklebolt had said, “I won’t wish either of you on anyone else.”
“That’s not fair,” Harry argued. “I’m not—look, I know things aren’t, I know I’ve had a few problems, but I’m not like him. He doesn’t do the job.”
“I’m aware you two have some bad history between you,” Shacklebolt said.
“Yes!” Harry said. “Yes we do, and so I really don’t think we can—”
“You need to get over it,” Shacklebolt continued calmly.
Harry’d thought of himself as over it already. He’d learned his lesson, after the incident known as the Incident Where Harry Potter Almost Lost The War By Almost Killing Severus Snape Who Had Vital Information, A Horcrux And As It Turned Out Had Most Improbably Been Innocent All Along. It’d been a strange lesson for him to learn, that really unpleasant people who hated him could nevertheless be on the right side. He thought of the day he’d learned that as the day he’d grown up.
He hadn’t grown up the day he killed Voldemort. Killing was just killing. It hadn’t taught him anything, though it’d made him feel better at the time.
With Snape had come Malfoy. Harry’d had too much to do to think about that at first, and then the whole realisation that infinitely unlikeable did not mean evil had made him uneasy enough to keep away deliberately.
Malfoy had mostly been with the Death Eaters anyway, gathering information, though after a while Harry noticed that Malfoy was avoiding him just as deliberately. It was a while before Harry could really accept his uneasy epiphany, and it was an even longer while before Hermione told Malfoy that Harry had not, that time in the bathroom in sixth year, planned to murder him in cold blood.
By then they were used to avoiding each other. They worked better that way, and certainly if Harry’d ever been able to schedule his classes at school so he never saw a Slytherin again, he would’ve done it. Adult life was like that.
It had been a shock when Malfoy was in Auror training camp too, but Harry’d still been too busy—there were the screaming dreams about Voldemort’s death, and none of the Weasleys save Ron were talking to him because Ginny had moved to France to get away from him, and Ron was in the process of slowly, inexorably failing out of Auror training.
They weren’t in the same training group or the same dormitory. Malfoy remained what he’d always been: a face at a different table, doing an impression for a bunch of other people laughing their heads off. Malfoy, in many ways, was the greatest anticlimax of Harry’s life.
Until Kingsley Shacklebolt called Harry to his office and assigned him to be Malfoy’s partner.
“But he’s—” Harry began. “He’s not reliable, and he’s—”
Unreliable was the first word that sprang to mind. Malfoy was always in late to work unless he’d gone off on one and spent the night in the office, and he kept letting slip details about Dark magic that no decent wizard should know. That one time he’d been forced undercover in the Muggle world had left him with a tendency to hum Muggle songs that drove the whole office quietly mad and he often came into work in jeans, apparently totally undeterred by all the black slips for being improperly dressed. They were all trying to catch a sea monster terrorising the coast, and Malfoy’s attention could be distracted from the mass casualties by coffee running low in the office kitchen.
Harry did not feel that adding ‘basically horrible, and I hate his face’ was the argument that would win Shacklebolt over.
“Do you think you’re reliable, Harry?” Shacklebolt asked. “Your last four partners insisted on a transfer, or said they would leave the service altogether. One of them was convinced that after a month, you couldn’t remember her name.”
That Annabella or Arabella or whatever her name was had always given Harry nasty looks, he knew that.
“You have anger issues that seriously concern the board, and you always choose just one suspect and hang onto your idea like a bulldog and drive everyone else up the wall. Malfoy does the exact same thing, except that I note—” Shacklebolt riffled through some parchment—“that you two have never once suspected the same person. Yet most of the time, one of you has been absolutely right. It’s just that it’s impossible to know which one of you is right at any given time, and the rest of the department is sick of you both. From now on you two can argue it out, and if you come to me and tell me that both of you suspect the same person, I promise you you will receive my serious attention.”
“I thought I had your serious attention already,” Harry said.
“No, for the past six months I’ve dismissed your reports as the ravings of a crank,” Shacklebolt told him serenely.
Harry said: “Oh.”
“Please realise that this is your last chance, Mr Potter,” Shacklebolt said. “Your recklessness has endangered some of my best men. You lost the department a lot of funding after you punched the Minister for Magic. And if you keep shouting at meetings I think Miss Bell might have a nervous breakdown.”
Harry suppressed the uncharitable thought that Katie Bell, fine Chaser and all as she’d been, was a bit of a scared mouse.
“Sir,” he said, a bit desperately. “Do you really think I’m on the same level as Malfoy?”
Shacklebolt frowned. “Of course not. You’re the saviour of the wizarding world, and he’s the despicable spawn of a Death Eater.”
“Well, then—”
“What do morals have to do with the efficient working of a department?” Shacklebolt inquired. “Good day to you.”
Harry had left Shacklebolt’s office because there seemed to be no other choice, and approached Malfoy’s desk with enormous trepidation. Malfoy was at his desk, and looked at Harry’s approach as if Harry was the first wave of soldiers coming at him from the trenches.
“Look,” Harry said. “I can’t get fired.”
“Well, I don’t want to get fired, either,” Malfoy snapped.
“Oh really,” Harry said. “Got a vocation, have you?”
“Not really,” Malfoy drawled in a way that brought Harry right back to the good old school days and the good old constant desire to haul off and punch Malfoy in the face. “I’ve got two reasons for not wanting to be fired, though, and one of them is that I’m damned if I get fired before you do.”
“Malfoy, this is not Quidditch,” Harry snapped.
“I know, there’s all this paperwork,” Malfoy said. “Pull up a chair and show me your report on the sea monster. Mine’s over there.”
Malfoy’s was about four times the size of Harry’s, and Harry had forgotten how much Malfoy’s handwriting looked like the flailings of a drunk spider.
“I’d forgotten that your writing looks one step away from a tiny tot’s fingerpainting,” Malfoy said, frowning at the pages.
Harry began a partnership which required mutual respect and civility by saying: “Bite me.”
Some pages later, he found a tiny drawing in the margin of Malfoy’s report which showed the sea monster and a little speech bubble coming out of its mouth saying ‘Quail before me! I am the terror of the high seas!’
He sort of grinned, and then looked up in dread that Malfoy had seen it, but Malfoy seemed absorbed in the report.
“Play Quidditch at all?” Harry asked suddenly. “Anymore, I mean?”
“Sometimes,” Malfoy said, writing something doubtless mocking in Harry’s margin. “You?”
“When I can,” Harry said.
The next day Harry came in and found Malfoy had pulled one of his all-nighters, and his desk was spectacularly untidy and covered with what appeared to be a child’s project.
“What’s this?” Harry asked.
“Well, okay,” Malfoy said, gluing lollipop sticks together. “There are lots of sea monsters in the sea, as we know, right? And generally they’re shy and don’t, you know, eat whole villages. So—if you’re following me here—I think the sea monster is being controlled. We just have to find out who by, and I know how to do it. All we have to do is ask the sea monster!”
He looked up at Harry with a shining, triumphant face.
He truly was insane.
“Oh, ask the sea monster?” Harry said. “Speaks English, does it?”
“No,” Malfoy said, his eyes glittering madly. “But it’s the equivalent of an aquatic basilisk. And you speak Parseltongue.”
Harry looked at the broken rubber band he thought was meant to represent the sea monster, and said: “Huh.” Then he shook his head back into sanity, and said: “How’re we supposed to interrogate a sea monster as a witness for the defence, anyway? Leaving aside the fact that, oh, I don’t know, it’s a sea monster, how do we catch it?”
“Aha,” said Malfoy. “That’s what this is for.”
He made a brief gesture to the child’s project on the desk. Harry looked carefully from Malfoy’s face to the project, and then back.
“We’re going to defeat the sea monster with lollipop sticks?” he asked.
He tried to remember what to do with lunatics. All that came to mind was humouring them, and not making any sudden movements.
Malfoy looked at him as if he was insane. “No,” he said. “This is a model.”
Harry looked at the mess of lollipop sticks and then drew out a chair to sit in. He said: “Explain.”
An hour later they were in Shacklebolt’s office. Malfoy wasn’t being all that intelligible, since he’d apparently eaten all the lollipops that had come with his lollipop sticks and was on the sugar high of a lifetime.
Harry said: “Look, I know it sounds like he’s insane, and possibly he is insane, but sometimes, trust me on this, insane stuff can really work, and it’s possible he’s come out the other side of insanity and come up with something good, and all we really have to do is use this fishing village for bait—I mean, I understand things could go a bit wrong—”
Shacklebolt looked at them, his face its usual grim blank.
“I know I did this to myself,” he said musingly. “But it still hurts.”
“I’m not doing it. Shut up,” Harry said.
“They gave you orders, though,” Malfoy argued, frowning at the bathroom mirror and picking the carpet fluff out of his hair as he spoke. “I think you can totally put a prostitute on expenses.”
A couple of other people left the bathroom with great speed, casting horrified looks at Harry and Malfoy as they went. Harry raised a hand to protest that he had nothing to do with this madness, but nobody ever believed that.
“I don’t need to hire a—Jesus, Malfoy, shut up,” Harry said, seeing himself go red in the mirror and scowling.
“Oh, of course not, I forgot,” Malfoy said, beaming at himself manically in the glass. “You’re Harry Potter, Veela Extraordinaire. Watch out world, this one can’t be tamed!”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
“You know, I think Slughorn was giving you the eye a bit,” Malfoy continued with perfectly feigned innocence. “You could be in there. Unless you’re afraid he’s too much man for you.”
“I can’t believe that you won’t shut up,” said Harry.
“Is it all gone?” Malfoy asked, making an inquiring face at his reflection.
“No,” Harry said. “Here, let me.”
Malfoy turned towards him, his left eyebrow and the left side of his mouth both flying upwards in that lopsided quizzical look he got sometimes. Harry ran his fingers through his hair twice, and only twice.
“All gone,” he said. “Now let’s get down to some real work. We’re interrogating Dixon today.”
Malfoy glowed. “I’d forgotten.”
Dixon was the culprit in the Gringotts case. He’d held some goblin kids hostage and asked for millions in gold for their ransom: when the goblins had refused to betray their trust, he’d slaughtered them all. Harry and Malfoy had been following his trail for weeks.
It wasn’t often they got to do an interrogation. Shacklebolt only let them do it if everyone was sure the man was guilty, and they needed a confession quickly.
Dixon was in one of the Auror holding cells. Harry and Malfoy entered quietly.
“Shh, you idiot!” Malfoy hissed. “What if someone hears? Nobody can know we were here.”
Dixon lifted his head from the table and looked extremely alarmed. Malfoy smiled at him brilliantly.
“Hi there,” he said.
“Don’t talk to him,” Harry barked. “He doesn’t deserve it. Do you, you piece of slime?”
He looked at Dixon the same way he’d looked at Death Eaters, in the days when they needed information, and got it whatever way they could. Dixon trembled.
“I see you’re not very brave when you’re not faced by children,” Harry snarled. He started to prowl after Dixon, who knocked over his chair and started edging towards one corner of the room, then another, while Harry followed him.
“It’s not like they were human,” he pleaded, and Malfoy had to catch Harry’s elbow to stop him actually punching Dixon in the face.
Malfoy did it so Dixon wouldn’t see, though. All he saw was the expression on Harry’s face.
“You can’t—” he said.
“There wasn’t much left of Voldemort but a red mist,” Harry said truthfully. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You have no idea.”
Dixon looked around to Malfoy for help, but actually Malfoy and Harry had sort of a unique take on the good Auror/bad Auror trick.
Malfoy had righted Dixon’s chair and was lounging in it. When he caught Dixon’s eye he smiled in a truly horrible way he’d perfected, rolled down his sleeve and showed him the Dark Mark.
Dixon’s breath hissed out through his teeth.
“I know,” Malfoy said. “Those Aurors will just hire anybody who walks in off the street, won’t they? I call it shocking.”
He looked brightly from Harry to Dixon, and then said encouragingly: “Don’t mind me.” His voice went utterly cold. “I like to watch.”
Dixon made a break for the door. Malfoy got there before him, sliding easily between the door and the desperate man, flashing him another smile.
“You can’t do this,” Dixon almost sobbed.
Harry looked over Dixon’s shoulder at Malfoy, and they grinned at each other.
“Trust me,” Harry said softly. “We do this a lot.”
“Of course,” Malfoy drawled, “there is another option.”
It was after the sea monster as witness business that they had first used what became their interrogation technique. They’d swallowed several pints of sea water that day, and Harry’s throat was raw from bellowing Parseltongue up at the creature, and Malfoy kept complaining that he’d caught a chill. When they caught Dolohov, neither of them were in the mood to be merciful.
“Not that you ever are,” Malfoy remarked the next day.
They were in the sparring room, and Harry’d just been feeling fairly good about getting Dolohov, and the fact that he could beat Malfoy hollow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re a bully,” Malfoy said, breathing hard with his fists still up.
“No I’m not,” Harry said frostily.
“Sure, you are,” Malfoy answered. “Random unjustified bursts of aggression. Not letting anyone have a word in—”
“Just because I don’t let you talk your fool head off,” Harry began.
“And Finnigan,” Malfoy said. “Back in fifth year? Listened to his differing point of view with patience and respect, did you? Don’t make me laugh. I saw how you were with the troops. I see how you are now. I bet I know how you were with the DA. A leader’s just a bully who has himself under control.”
He feinted and Harry dodged easily. Harry was just better.
“Look, Malfoy,” Harry began angrily.
“Shh,” Malfoy said out of the corner of his mouth. “Here comes Shacklebolt. Try to look like we’re getting along.”
Harry turned and said “Where—” just before Malfoy sucker-punched him.
Harry’s head snapped back and he saw stars, but braced his body and refused to let himself fall. The stars cleared and he saw Malfoy’s intent face, sweat shining above the curved shape of his upper lip.
“If I’m a bully,” Harry said indistinctly, “It takes one to know one.”
Malfoy looked away then, cracking his neck, and answered: “I know.”
“Victory,” Malfoy said. “Success. Triumph. So perish all our enemies! Let’s go have a drink.”
“It’s four in the afternoon, Malfoy,” Harry said, swinging the roll of parchment which was Dixon’s signed confession. “I think you have a problem.”
“I work a very high-stress job, it’s natural,” Malfoy said dismissively. “Anyway, we have our perpetrator. Besides which, today we found out that you are, according to genetics and Slughorn, a love god.” He looked deeply amused once more. “I think we deserve a drink.”
Harry considered. “I’ll go drop this on Shacklebolt’s desk.”
“I’ll get my cloak,” Malfoy said.
Harry had long ago given up pointing out that wearing a cloak with jeans looked weird, so he just nodded in Malfoy’s direction.
“Oh, hey,” Malfoy said, obviously struck by a thought. “We should go to a gay bar.”
Harry blinked. “What?”
“We just got told half an hour ago that it was our duty as Aurors to get you some loving,” Malfoy said. “I know you remember, and the whole conversation is written on the tablets of my memory in words of glorious golden fire. I bet if we go to a gay bar we can expense our drinks.”
“Stop talking about expensing stuff,” Harry said. “Stop talking at all.”
He was starting a migraine, he could feel it.
“Oh come on,” Malfoy coaxed. “It’ll be good for you. You know I don’t mind.”
“It’s four in the afternoon,” Harry pointed out again.
“Love knows no schedule!” Malfoy declared. “Time and unbridled carnality wait for no man. Or Veela,” he added, smirking. “Let’s get going.”
It was the first time Harry actually saw Malfoy outside of work that he told him.
He’d realised, after four cases, that embarrassingly enough Malfoy had lasted longer than any other partner Harry had ever had. And he’d remembered that one of the former and never-regretted partners had accidentally found out and been a bastard about it, which had prompted Harry to punch the bastard in the face four times.
Since this actually seemed to be working out, Harry had felt that Malfoy should be told. Malfoy could be a bastard about breakfast cereal, after all, and it was better to know now.
He didn’t go into the whole thing, didn’t discuss war and confusion and then the terrible added confusion of Zacharias Smith tackling him at random intervals. That had been another thing he had learned and never wanted to learn, another of those grown-up things, that you could be attracted to someone you didn’t particularly like, that there was a reason it had been easy to dismiss Cho and the reason wasn’t that Harry had morality so strong it could turn off his sex drive.
He especially didn’t discuss the way Ginny had moved to France after she found out. The whole miserable thing was behind him, and it wasn’t Malfoy’s business. He just took Malfoy out for a coffee at lunchtime and told him.
“Oh,” Malfoy said. “Okay. I don’t care.”
Frankly, Harry had expected a bit more by way of a response.
Malfoy seemed to realise this, and he stirred more sugar into his coffee and added vaguely: “I have friends who are.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, snorting. “Everybody says that.”
Malfoy reached across the table and smacked Harry over the head, which Harry did not feel was very supportive of Harry’s alternative lifestyle.
“My God you’re an idiot,” Malfoy informed him. “I mean it. I have friends who are. Did you ever meet Crabbe and Goyle?”
“What?” Harry said. “What?”
Malfoy rolled his eyes and made a sweeping gesture to the rest of the coffee shop, as if to display to the world the imbecility he had to deal with on a daily basis. The rest of the coffee shop stared at Malfoy as if he was insane.
That happened a lot.
“You’re about as quick as an arthritic donkey,” Malfoy drawled. “They did go to the Yule Ball together. What did you need, a very special announcement from the teachers?”
Harry was still absorbing this when Malfoy nicked Harry’s biscuit and went on thoughtfully: “I used to worry about it. That once they were going out, they wouldn’t want to spend time with me any more.”
“Yeah?” Harry said. “I used to worry about that with Ron and Hermione.”
The left corner of Malfoy’s mouth went up, and then curled when he said: “Wait, you took me out to lunch just to tell me that? We have perfectly good coffee in the office, you know. You could’ve just written me a very special memo.”
“It’s kind of personal, Malfoy.”
Malfoy eyed him coldly. “You’re paying.”
“Fine,” said Harry. “Speaking of personal things, since we are here, you said once that you had two reasons for not wanting to get fired.”
He raised his eyebrows. Malfoy raised his eyebrows back at him.
Harry gave up. “I was just wondering what the other one was.”
Malfoy turned his empty cup around in his hands, and said after a moment: “I’m trying to impress someone.”
“Oh,” said Harry. “Is it working?”
The corner of Malfoy’s mouth went into a curve that was almost a smile again. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Aren’t you a bit freaked out by this stuff?” Harry asked when they were on their way to the bar. “Urgh. You would be if you’d ever seen my Aunt Petunia. Urgh.”
“I don’t know, Slughorn seemed to like her, maybe I would too,” Malfoy said, winking.
“Don’t ever talk to me again,” said Harry.
They walked in silence along the quays by Blackfriars Bridge for approximately four seconds.
“‘Course I’m not bothered,” Malfoy said. “It’s not all that unusual, you know. Veela do a lot of breeding.” He paused. “Probably that has something to do with their insatiable—”
Harry recoiled. “Please skip ahead.”
“Have it your way,” Malfoy said. “Blaise Zabini was part Veela, you know. That’s why he spent so much time in the hospital wing in the first few years of school.”
Come to think of it, Harry didn’t really remember seeing Zabini around much.
“His mother’s side, too,” Malfoy went on blithely. “That was where Mrs Zabini got her fatal allure from. People don’t generally keep marrying women whose last rich husbands died mysteriously. Of course, come to think of it, maybe they died as a result of the well-known Veela propensity for rough—”
“I will drop you in the Thames,” Harry warned.
“You’re no fun,” said Malfoy. “Anyway, we all got used to it. Which should come as a relief, since Pansy’s not likely to jump you next time you go round to Weasley’s for tea.”
“So, um,” Harry said. “All people have to do is get used to it?”
Malfoy frowned. “Well, that helps. So does—let me see, being in love with someone else helps, and so does the Veela descendant not being someone’s type—colouring, gender preferences, whatever. Also the smell of peppermint. I don’t know why.”
“I still think it’s weird,” Harry said. “Come on, don’t you think it’s weird? Snape fancied my mum.”
“Hey, can I tell everyone?” Malfoy asked suddenly. “I mean, they all have to know, and you don’t want to tell them, do you? Oh, let me. Oh please, please let me. It would bring a ray of light into my lonely and desolate life.”
Harry pictured telling the office about his saucy, salacious Veela charms.
“You can tell whoever you want.”
Malfoy beamed, which drew Harry’s attention to the fact that he hadn’t been smiling much this week. Aside from today, naturally.
“Hey,” he said. “Um. She’ll be back soon.”
Malfoy smiled again, this time a secret smile for himself, and put his hand in his jeans pocket, where he thought Harry didn’t know he kept the box with the engagement ring inside it.
“I know she will,” he said.
The night six months after Malfoy became Harry’s partner there was an award night for Aurors of the Year.
They’d won. One day Kingsley Shacklebolt would get over the shock.
Shacklebolt had already given them a lecture on proper dress robes, which had been mainly directed at Malfoy. Malfoy’s gaze had been directed towards a window at the time, Harry recalled, and grinned.
An award. Everything going well, for a change. And.
Well, it was nothing, really. It was Malfoy, and that was weird. They worked together. He was kind of a complete bastard. He wasn’t even that attractive. It was nothing, and if it was something, it was something that didn’t matter.
“Ready?” asked Hermione, who he’d borrowed off Ron for the evening. She’d straightened her hair for the occasion, and was wearing red robes. She looked beautiful as she took his arm, and squeezed it slightly. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
“You know you’d be Unspeakable of the Year if it wasn’t, um, a super secret organisation.”
“You know that I’m not allowed to talk about work, Harry,” Hermione said, and then allowed herself a small smile. “Except that this is true.”
Hermione’d been forbidden to ever go near a live patient again after two weeks as a practising mediwitch, and then she’d joined the Unspeakables. She seemed to be doing pretty well and she got involved in Auror work sometimes. She’d told Harry that if they were in the Muggle world, her work would be called ‘forensic.’
Ron had thought the word sounded kind of dirty.
When they entered the ballroom, the array of candles blinded Harry for a moment. They were approached by Penelope Weasley, and the flash of her diamond ring left him seeing yellow shadows behind his eyelids for five minutes.
“So I hear that thing of which we cannot speak at this time went well,” Penelope said to Hermione.
“Yes,” said Hermione, “but it’s nothing like as important as that affair of which of course we can never speak, since the files are closed. You did very well in that, I thought. Not that I can even recall what you did, and if I could I certainly would never speak of it.”
“Understood,” said Penelope.
Harry left them to their Unspeakable shop talk, and went for the drinks table. He looked around for people he knew, and hid from the bureaucrats crowding the place.
It wasn’t until he had a drink in hand that he saw Malfoy. He was indeed wearing jeans, and he was dancing with Tonks. It was quite a feat to dip a heavily pregnant woman until her pink head touched the floor, Harry thought.
When Malfoy returned Tonks to Lupin, Tonks reached up and ruffled his hair. Harry heard Malfoy laugh from across the room, and he moved towards them.
“Hey there, Potter,” Malfoy said, stealing Harry’s drink. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
He was a little out of breath, fair hair tumbling into his face and catching the candlelight, but he looked well-pleased with himself and the whole universe. Harry seriously wondered how it had taken him years to notice that Malfoy was a praise junkie.
“I heard they were for you too,” Harry said, and offered his hand. “Congratulations, Malfoy.”
For one reason and another, Harry had never offered him his hand before. He didn’t realise the significance of this until he saw Malfoy hesitate.
Then Malfoy smiled and took his hand. “Thanks, Potter.”
Harry let go after a minute, and looked at the floor. It was weird, he told himself. And unprofessional. Very, very unprofessional. Worlds of unprofessional. His breath kept snagging in his throat.
When he looked at Malfoy again, Malfoy’s face had lit up, brighter than the candles. Harry blinked, stared at his eyes, and then looked around in the direction Malfoy was looking.
He saw nothing but that shy mouse, Katie Bell, coming towards them in demure blue robes. She was smiling a little awkwardly.
“Hi, Harry,” she said. “Draco. Congratulations.”
“Hi,” said Harry, and thought: Draco?
“Hello,” Malfoy responded, his voice warm and somehow tender, as if he was talking to a kitten who could by some miracle understand him. Harry had never dreamed Malfoy could sound like that. “I didn’t,” said Malfoy, and actually blushed. “I didn’t know if you were coming.”
“Well, I work here,” said Katie, and looked at her hands. “And you invited me. So you could say I was invited twice.”
“Clearly, you are in demand,” Malfoy observed.
He was smiling at her and smiling at her. Look up, you stupid woman, Harry thought almost dispassionately. You should see the look on his face.
“Well, I came over here,” Katie said, and took a breath. “When you invited me to the ceremony,” she went on. “You also invited me to dinner. Well—I’ll come.”
“You will,” Malfoy said, and sounded so happy. “Well,” he said, and his voice went playful. “I invited you to dinner on Friday or Saturday. Which can I have?”
Katie did look up then, and did see the look on Malfoy’s face. She went scarlet.
“Both,” she answered. “If you want.”
Malfoy took her hand and pulled her in towards him, as if they were going to dance. “I want,” he said.
When Katie made no objection, Malfoy gathered her in properly, an arm around her waist, looking down at her brown head with that incredulous joy still written all over his face. He glanced up and Harry quickly looked away.
“You may well stare, Potter,” Malfoy said loftily, and then delight burst out and made his voice all soft and funny again. “I don’t think anyone in the room believes how lucky I just got.”
“Draco,” Katie exclaimed.
“Come dance with me,” Malfoy said to the top of Katie’s head. “Come on. You have to dance with me, you’re going out to dinner with me. In fact, you’re coming to dinner with me twice, so you have to dance with me twice.”
“Do I,” Katie said.
“At least,” said Malfoy.
He led Katie out onto the dance floor, candlelight sweeping over the curve of his head as he bowed it down towards her, sharp nose brushing the side of her face. Somewhere behind Harry, Tonks was talking about how romantic it was.
“Would you look at that,” Hermione said, rejoining Harry’s side and speaking in a voice of mild surprise. “Seems like Malfoy got Katie Bell at last.”
“At last?” Harry asked in a wooden sort of way.
“Oh yes,” said Hermione. “He’s been chasing her since he was sixteen. Of course, there was a bit of a gap in there while he was, you know, expelled from school for the Death Eater stuff, and then he was a little busy working for Professor Snape, but—since he was eighteen, anyway. I think he only joined the Aurors because she worked in archives.”
“It wasn’t just that,” Malfoy said the next day, in response to a question Harry tried to word tactfully. “Katie works here because she thinks it’s worthwhile. She thinks the Aurors are doing the most important job in the world.”
He was writing a report in the most desultory way possible. Occasionally he yawned or smiled at the parchment for no reason.
“So it was meant to be—a knight killing dragons for his lady, that sort of thing,” Harry said because he had to say something.
“More like a dragon killing dragons for his lady,” Malfoy said. “But it—well, it seems to have worked.” He smiled at the parchment some more. “By the way,” he added sternly. “That wasn’t a joke about my name. I don’t make jokes about my name.”
“Isn’t it a little awkward,” Harry began, and then stopped.
They never talked about those times, by silent agreement. They never talked about Dumbledore’s death or the white, raised scar on Malfoy’s chest Harry had seen a few times in the locker room after sparring. So Harry didn’t see how he could say, isn’t it a little awkward that your new girlfriend once spent months in the hospital because of you?
Malfoy’s voice was cold. “Isn’t what a little awkward?”
“Um,” Harry said. “Nothing.” He fought not to seem ungracious. “She’s nice,” he said. “Katie.”
Malfoy was instantly smiling again. “I think so.”
Harry went up to the bar while Malfoy found them a table and ordered two beers. He was looking around in his wallet for Muggle money when a man at the bar said: “I’ve got it.”
Harry glanced up just as another man said: “No, I’ve got it.”
“Um,” Harry said, looking between the two men, who were glaring at each other. “No,” he said doubtfully. “I’ve got it. Thanks, though.”
He gave the bartender the money.
“That’s two beers,” the guy said, sliding them over to Harry. “And my phone number.”
Harry looked up from the drinks to the bartender, and saw him wink.
“Thank you,” he said carefully. “Er. Bye.”
He gathered up drinks and change, and was heading towards Malfoy when he was brought up short by the sudden advent of a chest vaguely reminiscent of a wall, and covered in black leather.
Harry looked up at a glinting nose ring, and noted that either the leather scene was starting up early this Wednesday, or someone had walked into a bar intent on picking a fight. If he wanted one, he could have one. Harry glanced around for a place to put his drinks.
“I have something to say,” growled the guy.
Harry saw some people coming towards them. Obviously, this was a regular troublemaker. Well, if he had to spill the drinks he had to spill the drinks.
The man put a hand on his shoulder. Harry steeled himself.
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and jet,” breathed the massive biker. “The curve of your lips rewrote history.”
Harry clutched the beers like a chastity belt.
“Right,” he said. “Well. I have to go… over there. Now.”
He went as fast as he could, and did not look back to see if anybody, massive bikers or otherwise, was checking him out. When he approached the table, he saw that Malfoy was tilted back in his chair, smiling winningly up into the face of some strange guy, who was murmuring something at him.
Harry thought this was the outside of enough.
Malfoy beamed charmingly up at the total stranger. “No I’m not his boyfriend,” he answered. “Yes actually he is available. I’d be delighted to take your number and give it to him. Got a pen? Thank you.”
He started to scribble and Harry flattened himself against the wall so the man would not turn around and see him, but the man seemed more interested in murmuring to Malfoy.
“Um, what does he like?” Malfoy said. “Er. Sports, for choice, and cups of tea, and really horrible jumpers. I don’t really know about whips—but, well, actually—” Malfoy made an expansive gesture. “Why not? I’m sure he’ll come to love them. Nice talking to you.”
Harry slipped into his chair once the man was safely off. “What is the matter with you?” he hissed. “Also don’t flirt in gay bars, Malfoy, God.”
“Oh, I was not,” Malfoy said easily. “So this man was called Frederick.” He reached over and tucked a coaster into Harry’s shirt pocket. “He seemed nice,” he added absently, breath against Harry’s cheek. “He likes long walks in the rain, and dogs. You like dogs, right? It’s a perfect match.”
He leaned back in his chair and looked expectant. Harry covered his face with his hand.
“I hate you,” he mumbled.
“While you were at the bar chatting up bikers,” Malfoy said.
“I was not!”
“Whatever,” Malfoy said. “I have come up with not one, not two, but, wait for it, three brilliant schemes to take advantage of this whole Veela business.”
“You,” Harry said earnestly, “are just basically not a good person.”
Malfoy waved this away. “One,” he said. “You could be the next Mrs Zabini. Marry lots of rich men and then, um. Well, you could marry lots of rich criminals, and then killing them would be all right, now wouldn’t it?”
“No,” Harry said. “Shacklebolt already had that talk with us. Besides, I won’t do it.”
“But we are living in a material world,” Malfoy said, his eyes wide. “And you are a material—well, boy.”
“Stop learning Muggle songs by heart,” Harry commanded him hopelessly.
“All right, two,” Malfoy said. “You use your powers to fight crime. In a hostage situation, you could just stroll into the building, perhaps twirling a piece of hair around your finger, and all the criminals will simply give up and pursue a life of virtue in hopes of winning your heart. Hey, you could be a sex vigilante!”
“I could have gone my whole life without hearing the words ‘sex vigilante’,” Harry said pathetically. “I would’ve been happy.”
“Fine, three,” Malfoy said, narrowing his eyes as if Harry was spoiling all his fun. “I realise you may not want to commit to any wealthy criminals, or to the dangerous life of a vigilante, which anyway would involve a costume. Which might be a little embarrassing. So I have another scheme, which involves no commitment at all, and coincidentally solves your current problem, and puts us both in a position to retire before we are twenty-four.”
Harry waited in dread.
“I will use my considerable inheritance to build a—how did Slughorn put it—a sweet sugar palace of carnality,” Malfoy proceeded. “And then you can choose—it’ll be totally up to you—a select number of wealthy men, who will then be asked to start the bidding at—”
“Stop, in the name of all things holy,” said Harry. “I beg you.”
“I think we could retire off the proceeds from Slughorn alone,” Malfoy proposed. He caught Harry’s eye, torn between amusement and horror, and smiled wickedly. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got the money. You’ve got the honey. Let’s cut a deal. Let’s make a plan.”
Harry gave up and smiled back. “You listen to some horrifying songs.”
“Um,” said the bartender, and Harry looked up.
The man was carrying a tray loaded with drinks. There were at least seventeen of them. Harry wondered if this was some kind of joke.
The bartender started laying out the drinks before Harry.
“This one’s from the guy in the green jumper to the left of the bar,” he said, as one reciting a lesson he had been forced to learn by heart. “This one’s from the biker. This one’s from the girl in the corner booth with, she wants you to know, a tongue piercing.”
Harry looked over at the corner booth, and saw a woman with a shaved head and wearing a flannel shirt and Doc Martens. When she saw him looking, she waved and blushed.
“My God,” Harry said faintly.
Malfoy threw back his head and laughed and laughed.
By the time he was done laughing, the bartender had departed. Malfoy began to gather some of the drinks towards himself, still smiling, as Harry looked around and felt like a hunted man.
“I love you being a Veela,” Malfoy informed him, starting on his second drink. “I see no possible way in which this can go wrong.”