The next day, Harry found himself coming into work at the same time as Dean Thomas. He looked at him in panic, because it was hard to talk to Thomas at the best of times since Thomas hated him, and today was even worse since the only conversational opener Harry could think of was ‘Molested anyone else in the showers lately?’
After Dean Thomas gave him a look of enormous embarrassment which seemed thankfully not tempered with crazed lust, Harry opened the door and a gust of warm peppermint scent wafted out to them. It smelled as if the Aurors’ headquarters had been busily brushing its teeth all night.
“Malfoy’s done something mad again, hasn’t he,” Thomas said in calm, fatalistic tones that brought to mind Kingsley Shacklebolt.
“Amazing investigative skills you have there,” Harry said, and took the steps two at a time. “Are you trained at all?”
At Lisa the receptionist’s desk sat Malfoy, calmly talking to Lisa’s installed fire. “Aurors’ head office, how may I help you?”
“What are you doing?” Harry asked.
“Hold please,” Malfoy purred pleasantly into the fire, and looked up. “Good morning, sir!” he said to Harry, with a bright professional smile.
“What are you doing,” Harry repeated, though ‘what are you taking’ also occurred to him as a reasonable question.
Malfoy propped his chin on his linked hands. “Well,” he said. “Lisa needed to go for some odd Muggle thing called CAT scans, on account of falling down and sustaining all that repeated head trauma. So I offered to fill in for her, in order to make the transition to the new state of Veela emergency more smooth.”
“Veela em—”
“Emergency,” Malfoy supplied helpfully, and pointed to the enormous bucket on his desk. “Take a few peppermints, please. The peppermint buckets are positioned all over the building, no more than three yards apart. In case of immediate and pressing sexual urges, please get to your nearest peppermint bucket as quickly as possible.”
Malfoy looked tired. He’d pulled another of his all-nighters, and here was the lunatic scheme to prove it.
Dean Thomas had caught up with Harry, and he was currently looking around, taking in the peppermint bucket and Malfoy dealing with a customer’s complaints.
“I am so sorry about Mr Malfoy,” Malfoy said. “Sometimes his professional manner can be inappropriate, I agree. But then he’s so dashing. I assure you he’ll be suitably disciplined.”
“Making a note of that for Shacklebolt, are you?” Harry inquired.
“Shacklebolt’s a busy man,” Malfoy said. “I can’t bore him with every little triviality that comes up. Good morning, Mr Thomas. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
Dean was starting to look highly amused. He and Malfoy got on very well, even though insulting Harry seemed to be their only common interest.
“Lovely,” he said, grinning. “I always like to see pretty blond receptionists about the place.”
If it wasn’t for the fact Harry was fully aware that Dean, a man who played a long game, was in regular correspondence with and sometimes visited Ginny in France, he might’ve put this and the shower incident together and come up with some dark suspicions.
Malfoy batted his eyelashes. “Oh sir, don’t. It’s as much as my job’s worth to flirt with the Aurors.”
Dean grinned again, and took some peppermints. Then he opened the door to the headquarters proper.
Peppermint buckets gleamed at regular intervals along the carpet. There was an enormous peppermint, hung up on a hook on the wall, and a sign above it reading ‘IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES, THROW TO VICTIM OF VEELA. DO NOT APPROACH THE VEELA.’
Hanging on the ceiling were peppermints in bunches of little bags, swaying in the air conditioner.
Harry said weakly, “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Malfoy looked very pleased with himself. “Think of the peppermint as the anti mistletoe,” he suggested.
Dean Thomas looked a little scared as he ventured into the palace of peppermint, and once he was gone Malfoy turned sternly on Harry.
“Let me see what you’re wearing,” he said. “Oh good, the orange Weasley jumper. Oh my God, you look like you ate a ginger cat and then vomited on yourself, it’s wonderful. I can’t imagine anyone but a necrophiliac into bestiality would find you attractive.”
“Thank you, Malfoy,” Harry said. “That means a lot.”
“Put this on just in case,” said Malfoy, and slipped something over his head that seemed to be another bag of peppermint on a string. Harry bowed his head and let him, like a horse going into harness.
“Of course,” Shacklebolt said later, crunching a peppermint, “while Mr Malfoy’s sterling efforts are appreciated, this can only be a stopgap. Sooner or later we will have to think about putting you on compassionate leave, and perhaps finding Mr Malfoy a different partner.”
Malfoy, sitting in the chair beside Harry even though he hadn’t technically been invited into the office, let his eyes narrow in their boss’ direction.
“I don’t want another partner,” he said in his coldest voice. “This isn’t up for debate. I will not have another partner.”
He kissed Malfoy once, but since Malfoy doesn’t know about it, it probably doesn’t count.
Harry used to get angry at Malfoy. Well, he still does get angry at Malfoy, for a lot of reasons, like all that perjury and slacking off and making racist comments to the press and cuffing Harry to his desk that one time.
It was just that—Malfoy wasn’t even all that good-looking. He knew that. Malfoy had a long nose and he was too skinny half the time and, what with the pale hair and the pale eyes and the pale skin, he looked washed-out. He was snotty and immoral and Harry felt infiltrated, Harry felt invaded: it wasn’t fair.
Nothing ever beat Harry, not in the end, and certainly not Draco Malfoy. Malfoy hadn’t ever managed it at school, and he wasn’t even trying now.
It was stupid, and it had to stop, and a year after Shacklebolt paired them together, he let Harry know he was no longer on probation and he could choose a different partner if he so wished.
“Though I’m assuming—” Shacklebolt said, when Harry interrupted him.
“I do,” he said. “I want another partner.”
Shacklebolt laid down his quill. “May I ask who?”
“Anyone,” Harry said. “Anyone but him.”
Shacklebolt looked impassive and masklike as ever, but in the depths of his eyes was a man sinking into madness. Harry’s new partner, Clementine or Clarabell or whatever, was enormously in awe of Harry and flinched a bit if he moved too quickly. Malfoy’s new partner Theophilus was urgently moving to have Malfoy put through the psychology tests again.
It was worth it, not to have to see Malfoy every day, all day.
By the third day Harry missed him brutally enough that he approached him during the first coffee break of the day, when everyone knew that interrupting Malfoy meant taking your life in your hands.
“Look,” he said. “I mean, even though we’re not—I didn’t think we should go on working together, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be—”
Malfoy turned around and looked at him with cold fury.
“Let me make one thing very clear,” he said, white-lipped. “We were never friends. I had to put up with you in order to keep my job but now, to my enormous relief, that is no longer the case. Thanks very much for that. And now never talk to me again.”
He wrenched his arm out of Harry’s grasp, stormed away and slammed the door behind him so hard that the sugar bowl fell off the sideboard and shattered into a dozen pieces.
That Friday night at the pub was bleak and horrible. Only Hermione was there, because Malfoy was at home with Katie Bell and hating him, and Vince and Greg were at home hating him, and Pansy was at home hating him, and Ron was at home because if he came out Pansy would follow him and murder Harry on his barstool.
“You hurt Malfoy’s feelings,” Hermione said, spearing the olive in her drink.
“No I didn’t,” Harry said flatly.
“Oh honestly, Harry, you obviously have,” Hermione told him. “You didn’t want to be friends with him in school. For which I do not blame you, since he was an extremely nasty little boy, but you didn’t want to be friends for years and years, and—looking at it from Malfoy’s point of view—you got all the glory and all the attention, you were the special one, and you went out of your way to show that you would rather be friends with anyone than be friends with him. And then you changed your mind.”
“I didn’t,” Harry muttered. “It was all Shacklebolt’s fault. He forced us to be partners.”
It was true, as well. Kingsley Shacklebolt had ruined his life, and he hoped that his boss got fired for unusual cruelty to his subordinates and ended up driving the Knight Bus.
“Did he force you to go to each other’s birthday parties and drag your friends down to the pub together on Friday nights and for us all to go watch things on Malfoy’s TV?” Hermione asked. “Harsh taskmaster, that Shacklebolt.”
It hadn’t exactly been that way. Harry had been forced to invite Malfoy to his birthday party, since Malfoy had invited Harry to his, but Harry only had so many friends and he’d never really got used to birthday parties and he’d thought Malfoy would feel awkward so he’d told Malfoy to invite anyone he liked.
Then Hermione had found out that Vince was dyslexic and made him her special project, and both Vince and Greg seemed to like her bossing them around because Malfoy had broken their spirits when they were six, or something. And Pansy and Ron were going out, which wasn’t Harry’s fault either.
Malfoy wanted them all around because Katie liked them, liked not being surrounded by Slytherins, and Malfoy liked not being stuck with Fred and Angelina as Katie’s particular friends. Fred hassled Malfoy whenever he got the chance, and Malfoy put up with it because Katie loved and looked up to Angelina. They’d all been at a dinner party one day, and Malfoy had been getting more and more close-mouthed and furious, until Harry caught one of those dinner rolls tossed so playfully at Malfoy’s head and took Fred outside and reminded Fred about how Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes had got their start and told Fred not to ever even look funny at his partner again. Or else.
Well, it was all because Shacklebolt had forced him to be Malfoy’s partner anyway. It was his duty to look out for him.
Only it wasn’t. Not anymore.
“Everything was going so well,” Hermione said. “And then you said you’d rather have anyone for a partner but him.”
“I wasn’t—that’s not what I—Hermione,” Harry said. “How did you know that?”
“I am an Unspeakable,” Hermione told him calmly. “We have ways of making you people talk. Malfoy knows you said it, too.”
It was about then that Harry realised, no matter how frustrated and furious he got at Malfoy, no matter how much he resented him for never noticing and not caring and ruining Harry’s life, the thought of hurting Malfoy made him feel sick and miserable.
“Ron is seeing Pansy Parkinson,” Hermione said quietly, and then added from what seemed to be sheer force of habit: “Not that it will last, of course. I tutor Vincent every Tuesday and Gregory makes us pie. Malfoy is the only one of us who has a television. You are the one who wished a parcel of Slytherins on us, and now we’re all attached!”
Harry sat staring mutely at his beer, and then Hermione reached out and closed her fingers over Harry’s hand: the people around them probably thought they were a happy couple, out for a drink.
“You weren’t—all right after the war,” she went on, her voice still quiet. “I was worried about you. But being partners with Malfoy seemed to really work. You were doing so well, Harry. What were you were thinking? Why did you do this?”
Harry could not tell her it was self-preservation, pure and simple. He’d never told anyone about Malfoy. What would he have said?
It wasn’t love. Harry had thought about that, in a vague unspecific way, once Zacharias and Ginny were both gone and the war was over and the hopelessness had sort of faded a bit. He’d thought about someone who liked sports and was good-looking and thought about things in the same way Harry did. Someone sensible and uncomplicated and good in bed, who had his head screwed on right and who let Harry get on with things.
That was the kind of person Harry should be with: that was the kind of person who would make him happy.
He was saving himself from a lot of misery, he told himself. It was for the best. He and Hermione had one desultory drink, and then a man in black drew Hermione away and Harry felt relieved because he could go back home and lie on the couch and think grimly about Clementine or Clarabell or whoever, the aching strained shoulder he’d got in his first case with her, the look on Malfoy’s face in the break room, and he could congratulate himself on being saved from a lot of misery.
He had only just laid back on the couch when an owl tapped at his window. It was one of the Unspeakables’ black-hooded birds. It was an Owl from Hermione.
It said: My sources have just informed me that Malfoy was badly hurt in a banshee fire a couple of hours ago. He’s at St Mungo’s and he will be all right. Don’t do anything-
Harry did not read the rest, because he had dropped the Owl and Disapparated. He Apparated with a crack into the Aurors’ office. Shacklebolt would question any Auror about letting their partner go down.
Sure enough, Theophilus was in Shacklebolt’s office, looking totally unharmed and saying: “Sir, I’m sorry, but I really do think Malfoy’s mentally unstable. I think possibly he’s schizophrenic. The first thing he did was turn on me and tell me—in highly insulting terms, I might add—that I wasn’t to go into the building. Of course I told him I had no intention of running into a banshee fire, and then he looked around—I think he hears voices—and then he swore, and then he went running into the fire himself. I couldn’t stop him. He’s completely unhinged—”
“I’ll show you unhinged,” Harry said. Then he spun Theophilus around with a hand on his shoulder, and punched him in the face.
Theophilus fell back so hard that his head cracked against the wall. He twitched and then made a visible decision to stay on the floor. Harry wheeled on Shacklebolt.
“Excellent practical demonstration, Mr Potter,” Shacklebolt said in a level voice. “You are suspended from your duties for a week. And may I remind you that, saviour of the wizarding world or not, if you hit me you are fired.”
Harry swore.
“You are driving me to early retirement,” Shacklebolt proceeded. “Do not drive me to an early grave. Go to St Mungo’s and leave me in peace, I have a weak heart.”
“No you don’t, sir,” Harry said. “The Aurors require complete physical fitness—”
“I can feel it growing feebler by the instant,” Shacklebolt assured him. “Now go.”
He had gone, not because of Shacklebolt’s order but because of the sudden thought of Malfoy, who he’d hurt and who had got hurt because he wasn’t there, who he’d let down and who he could have lost. Harry Apparated without taking out his wand.
The crack of Apparition and pull at his stomach almost made him stumble into a wall: he couldn’t think. He grabbed a scared-looking nurse and he demanded directions, and maybe he Apparated and maybe he ran, but he was suddenly in a darkened hospital room, and Malfoy was sleeping in a narrow hospital bed, and Harry leaned over the white hospital pillow and kissed his worn, pale face.
He was still leaning over the bed looking at Malfoy when the door opened, the light came on and he straightened up and stepped back. Katie Bell had her arms full of flowers.
“Harry, how good to see you,” she said. “He didn’t think so, but I was sure you’d come.”
He looked at Katie, obviously worried and tired, her brown hair coming out of her plait in wisps. He hadn’t always disliked her. He didn’t dislike her now: he distantly knew she was a nice person, a good person, but all he could think when he saw her was Get out of my way.
He stopped looking at Katie when Malfoy moved, eyes scrunching up in the sudden light.
“Is that my Katherine Bell?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m here,” Katie said, coming over to him and taking his hand. “Open your eyes: here’s a nice surprise for you.”
“I do hope you’re wearing a nurse’s uniform,” Malfoy said, and opened his eyes. His face went even whiter, turning the dark shadows under his eyes black by contrast. “I really would have preferred the nurse’s uniform,” he said. “Get out, Potter.”
Harry didn’t move, but he didn’t speak. He couldn’t figure out what to say.
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed, cold and hateful like his voice when he spoke. “Have you become lost and confused while kind people were committing you to the psychiatric ward, Potter? Or let me see, have you come here to crawl and beg me to take you back, in which case my answer is—”
In a moment of great clarity, Harry recognised the curl of Malfoy’s mouth. He’d seen Malfoy look like that all the time in school. He looked like he was expecting to be interrupted, expecting to have scorn thrown at him and preparing to hurl back not only scorn but any malicious, horrible thing he could think of.
Harry fulfilled his expectations, and interrupted.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”
Malfoy scowled up at him, looking as if he was in pain and now confused as well. “What’s it?”
Harry didn’t want to humble himself. He never did it and didn’t want to start now, but he had to remind himself that as far as Malfoy knew Harry had hurt him, deliberately and for no reason at all.
“I’ve come here to crawl,” he said, looking at the wall and not Malfoy’s face, which made his chest hurt. “And beg you to take me back.”
“Oh,” Malfoy said, his voice small and uncertain.
Harry looked down at him and he actually looked uncertain as well, face lifted to Harry’s, and Harry’s chest hurt some more. It was wretched.
“Only I can’t work for a week,” he said, remembering. “I punched Theophilus.”
“Harry, you did what?” Katie exclaimed.
“My darling, he is obviously a lunatic, do not be afraid, I will protect you,” Malfoy said, using the hand he held to draw her close to his bedside. “I only ask in return for your eternal devotion, and perhaps for you to get a nurse’s uniform. As for you, you crazy git, get out of my sickroom. You are clearly a danger to yourself and others, and I am obviously forced to accept the terrible post of your nursemaid only because I fear for Chrysanthemum’s safety.”
“Chrysanthemum, is that it,” Harry said. “I keep forgetting.”
“Harry,” Katie Bell said. “Chrysanthemum was in Gryffindor.”
“Right,” Harry said.
“Harry,” Katie continued, looking a little taken aback. “She was in your year.”
“Do us all a favour and drop by the psychiatric ward on your way out,” Malfoy said, smiling at him. “You’re a very sick man. I’ll see you in a week.”
That day at the office was distinctly horrible. People kept looking at him and then blushing and running in the opposite direction, or towards the peppermint buckets. Harry was not sure which was the most horrifying.
He took to writing his reports leaning against the receptionist desk. Malfoy let him do it if Harry brought him coffee.
“People are embarrassed,” Malfoy said easily. “I mean, people like Thomas or Dawlish, straight guys, they’re kind of horrified that their bodies have betrayed them. Dawlish is married, for God’s sake. They’re embarrassed and they’re scared, but—”
“Oh great,” Harry said.
“But they know it’s not your fault,” Malfoy continued. “It will be all right. Calm yourself, you’re probably communicating your feelings to Horace and upsetting him. He must feel unwanted. Anyway,” Malfoy said speculatively. “Maybe some of those people aren’t attracted to you. Maybe some of them took one look at your jumper and knew they were going to be sick, and they went to the buckets so they could be sure of minty fresh breath afterwards.”
“If all this drives me mad,” Harry said solemnly, “it will be a comfort to know I will always have you by my side. In the next cell, possibly.”
Malfoy made a rude gesture and went off to the bathroom. Harry went to make him more coffee as a bribe so he would not force Harry back to that huge terrible room where nobody would speak to or look at him.
He was stirring in the fourth sugar when the door opened, and he glanced over his shoulder and saw Katie Bell.
His heart sank. She was back, then, and Malfoy would be a complete fool about it because he was so glad to see her, and God, Malfoy was going to ask her to marry him. They were going to get married.
“Hi,” said Harry, woodenly. “Just back?”
“I got back last night,” Katie said. “Draco wasn’t there, so I thought I’d come in today and surprise him.”
She was looking a little dazed. Harry wondered if she’d got in late, if she was maybe still tired from the flight. He hadn’t really let himself think about what a luxury it was, having her gone, because if he did then he would have started to think about planes crashing and German counts who might elope with Katie and anything, anything at all, if only she would stay gone. But here she was.
“He’ll be really pleased to see you,” Harry said flatly.
“What’s going on outside?” Katie asked, moving forward, her voice dazed and almost dreamy. “It looks so different—I’m sorry, Harry, I feel a little—”
Harry looked up, startled, and saw the dazed, dreamy blue of her eyes close up. He stepped away and his back slammed into the wall.
Katie looked at him uncomprehendingly, and whispered: “Were you always this beautiful?”
Harry stared at her in blank horror, and then Malfoy came up behind her, scooped her up and held her cradled safe against his chest.
“Welcome back, my Katherine Bell,” he said, his voice soothing. “Have a peppermint. I beg you.”
“But,” said Katie.
“Have a peppermint and come with me,” Malfoy continued, his voice still soothing. “This way. Perhaps to a nice cold shower.”
Katie looked yearningly over Malfoy’s shoulder as they went. Malfoy looked over his shoulder, too.
With a cool stare, he said: “This just stopped being funny.”
He left Harry standing there, the cup of coffee that was meant for Malfoy growing cold in his hand.
Christmas came not long after Harry’s disastrous attempt not to be partners anymore. He’d spent the last two Christmases with Lupin and Tonks, which was always kind of terrible.
Andromeda Tonks was always there, and always looked like she remembered Harry had killed her sister Bellatrix, and looked like she blamed Harry for Sirius’ death as well, and avoided speaking to him much at all.
“I wish we could just work right through Christmas,” he said gloomily, staring at his latest report on the Romantic Rogue who’d put Love Potion into the waters of Bath.
To his surprise, Malfoy frowned and said: “Yeah, I’m with you there.”
“Aren’t you,” Harry said uncertainly. “With Katie’s—”
“Katie’s family hate me,” Malfoy informed him. “They’re all Muggles, and her brothers think I’m a freak and her mother once saw me hit the floor because of an electric mixer—”
“Constant vigilance,” Harry said sagely, and Malfoy laughed and made a rude gesture.
“And her father’s a little deaf, and he asked me what my father did, and I said: he’s incarcerated, sir, and he thought I said in Chancery, and then I had to shout and say: no, incarcerated, in the clink, for trying to kill schoolchildren. And I have never been back since. Katie’s trying to win them around, but it’ll take more than three days. I plan to spend Christmas drunk because my family is dead, like any reasonable person would.”
Harry wondered why Malfoy didn’t ask Professor Snape, who was bound to be free, and who Malfoy had followed around like a scared puppy during the war, and then he realised that Malfoy would never dream of asking directly for something he wanted.
He put his quill down and said: “Can I join you?”
And Malfoy smiled.
Malfoy hadn’t been joking about getting drunk. He was already a bit drunk when Harry arrived, and by the time they realised they were hungry and nobody was going to deliver at Christmas they were both too drunk to cook properly and made something that was a weird collection of toast and eggs and lasagne, and it tasted quite good. Malfoy insisted on watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast because he thought it was deep and moving. Then he fell asleep on Harry’s shoulder, which was the same as most nights on stakeout, only different because there were no gear sticks in the way and Harry was drunk and the couch was soft, and Harry settled in the back of the couch and put his arm around Malfoy, a bit.
It wasn’t a bad Christmas. For New Year’s Harry forged Malfoy’s handwriting—it wasn’t hard, just a million loops and a joke in bad taste—and Owled Professor Snape. He spent New Year’s at Lupin and Tonks, and he never knew exactly what Malfoy did but Andromeda was gracious and talked to him at length about her nephew and her daughter and the noble profession of the Aurors. And at about eleven, the Weasleys all poured into the house, Ron in the lead holding Pansy’s hand.
“Well—Ginny’s staying in France and Charlie flew over to keep her company, and we thought we’d come spend New Year’s with—with you, Harry dear,” said Mrs Weasley, and then kissed Harry’s cheek as if the past three years had never happened.
She spent the rest of the night fussing over Harry and telling him she’d kept all his clippings. When midnight arrived, though, Mr Weasley took her hand, and Bill grabbed Fleur and Fred grabbed Angelina and Percy politely grabbed Penelope and Ron and Pansy grabbed each other.
George tried to grab Harry for a joke, and it took all Harry’s elite Auror training to fend him off.
It looked like being a pretty good year since the Weasleys had forgiven him, but that showed how much Harry knew, because he came into work on the first day of the new year and Malfoy didn’t show up at ten as he usually did, and Shacklebolt told him that Malfoy had compassionate leave because Lucius Malfoy had just been sentenced to death.
“We all knew it was coming, Mr Potter,” said Shacklebolt. “The Ministry’s determined to wipe out all of the Death Eaters this time. Mr Malfoy had to fight long and hard to make sure it was not the Kiss.”
“I’ll be out of the office today,” Harry said.
“You surprise me,” Shacklebolt told him, his voice entirely flat.
Harry remembered when they were all seventeen and trying to fight a war from the Black house, which he had shut up afterwards and never looked at again. He’d been—well, he and Zacharias had, a few times, Harry had been resolutely trying not to keep count, and as well as being constantly tired and hungry and going without sleep, Harry kept trying to deny a lot of things to himself and was in a state of almost perpetual fury.
He couldn’t be, he kept telling himself. He would have known, and he pushed away all thought of thoughts he might’ve had. He would have known, and he looked at Ron a few times and the idea was bizarre and disgusting, and so there it was, he wasn’t, it wasn’t true, and he didn’t have to think about it.
And still when he caught a glimpse of blond hair by firelight, he went straight into the room.
It hadn’t occurred to him that it might be Malfoy. Malfoy wasn’t around that much, and when he was he was usually in a group, that had started out as the Slytherins and come to be people from all the houses, and he was gesturing or talking and they were laughing, and sometimes Harry felt a tired impulse to join in because there was little enough to laugh about these days and he really would have liked to, but he couldn’t and didn’t want to really because he and Malfoy hated each other and they always would.
Zacharias was usually alone. Harry was sure it was Zacharias. He was thinking—Zacharias-related thoughts when he went in, and closed the door carefully behind him.
It was Malfoy, and he didn’t look up because he was tipping a jar of eyeballs carefully into a bubbling Potion. The fire was warm on his pale skin and hair, glinting light making it clear that his pale lowered eyelashes were long, his cheekbones sharp, his mouth a mobile thoughtful shape that could resolve into a sneer or a smile at any moment.
Harry’s back hit the door. It was just because he’d been thinking—it wasn’t—
“I can’t talk right now,” Malfoy said, his voice clear and pleasant since he wasn’t talking to Harry, and then he did look up and ice immediately formed over the warm current of his voice. “Oh,” he said. “Let me rephrase. I can’t talk ever.”
“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” Harry snapped.
“Making. A. Potion. It’s for Professor—”
“This is my house, you know,” Harry went on, blindly furious. “I don’t recall inviting you. Oh wait, you have to be here, don’t you, because you don’t have a home of your own. Your daddy’s in jail and your mummy’s on the run, and—”
At that point Malfoy threw his jar of eyeballs with extreme force. They hit the wall directly beside Harry’s head and shattered, the glass cutting Harry’s face, eyeballs rolling down Harry’s shoulder in a soft sickening fall. Malfoy stared at him, chest rising and falling sharply, face alight with the same blind bloody fury that Harry kept feeling, and then Harry saw on Malfoy’s face, about the same time as he recalled himself, the realisation that they were on the same side now, that this was a waste of time and energy and resources, that last time Malfoy had almost died and this time someone really might.
A sharp voice in Harry’s mind, the one that was good at rationalising everything to do with Zacharias, told Harry that anyway he shouldn’t touch Malfoy right now.
Harry swore and slammed out of the room, and then leaned against the door in the dark corridor with his eyes shut, telling himself there was nothing wrong even while he thought, that was Malfoy, and that he was disgusting, and was it going to be just anybody from now on, any boy, God, what was he going to do, and Hermione came down the corridor and asked him, in that terminally anxious voice she’d kept using during the war, what was wrong.
“Fight with Malfoy,” he said tersely.
She looked even more worried. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “I hope you didn’t say anything awful to him.”
He stared at her blankly, stunned into silence because it was just Malfoy, since when did Hermione care.
Hermione, her dark eyes unusually soft, explained in a hushed tone: “His mother just died.”
Harry was older now, and not at war and not in denial, and he and Malfoy were different. He could do better this time.
He Apparated into Malfoy’s flat and found Malfoy lying on the couch with his arm over his eyes.
Without looking, Malfoy said: “Potter. Fetch me a drink, and then leave.”
“I can’t leave,” Harry told him. “My partner’s out today, and I’ve got nothing to do. I’m at a loose end and I told Shacklebolt I’d be out of the office all day.”
Malfoy was silent for a heartbeat, and then he said: “Yes, but what about my drink?” and Harry went and got him one.
Malfoy drank the drink. Harry sat on the coffee table and looked at Malfoy and Malfoy lay there with his arm over his eyes. Eventually Harry went to get him another drink. Malfoy drank the drink.
Malfoy removed his arm from his eyes, looked at the ceiling, and said: “It doesn’t seem fair. He wasn’t even in the war. He was in Azkaban all the way through it. The last time I saw him was at Christmastime, when I was fifteen years old. The courts say he tried to kill Ginevra Weasley when I was twelve, but I don’t know anything about that and I still had him for three years after that and it doesn’t seem real, that he’s being punished for that and for being in the Ministry for Magic when Bellatrix Lestrange killed Sirius Black. He didn’t kill anyone. If he did, he killed them more than twenty years ago. I miss him. It doesn’t seem fair. It makes me hate everybody.”
He removed his eyes from the ceiling, and looked at Harry. His gaze was empty and bleak.
“I know it is fair,” he said. “But I still hate everybody.”
“That’s OK,” Harry said. “You can hate everybody if you like.”
Malfoy laughed, a little bit, but he didn’t sound happy about it. He was silent, they were both silent, as they waited for the clock to strike noon. The executions at Azkaban had been going on for years. They both knew what time the executions happened.
The chimes for twelve struck, and then stopped striking. The memory of the sound held them in silence.
Then Malfoy jumped up and began, methodically, with quiet blind rage, to destroy every picture in his flat.
“I hate these,” he said conversationally, breaking a frame apart in his hands. His voice was calm except for the slight tremble which edged into violence, like the small tremble in his hands as he tore the canvas. “I hate them,” he repeated. “They never move. They look dead!”
He threw another picture against the opposite wall. He did not stop until they were all thoroughly wrecked, and then he sat on the couch and put his head in his hands.
“I can’t believe I did that,” he said. “I’ll have to fix them all. Katie can’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Harry told him, and he got up and started to cast Reparo on them all, picking up the broken wood and torn canvas, arranging the shattered glass. He could help Malfoy this way, and this way he’d have seen this, and Katie wouldn’t have: Katie didn’t get to know.
It took a while. When he looked over at Malfoy, Malfoy still had his face in his hands.
“Thank you,” Malfoy said, in a tired, muffled way.
“That’s all right,” Harry told him awkwardly, and he went over and sat on the coffee table again. He wasn’t sure what to do. Malfoy kept sitting there: his shoulders looked too thin, hunched like that.
After a bit, Harry reached out and put his hand on Malfoy’s shoulder. Malfoy looked up at the touch, looking startled, but Harry was never sure if it was the right thing or the wrong thing to do, because just then the door opened, Harry snatched his hand back and Katie Bell came into the room.
“They let me off work early,” she said, and came over and put her arms around Malfoy.
Malfoy laid his face in the curve of her neck, and said: “Hello, my Katherine Bell.”
“Hi,” Katie whispered. “Draco, I’ve been thinking. I will move in, if you still want me to.”
“I have to go,” said Harry.
Malfoy did not appear for the rest of the day. Harry sat alone by his desk while everybody made enormous circles around him lest they fall prey to his siren song, and he ate peppermints until his jaw ached and he wrote reports until his hand ached, and as soon as five o’clock came he went to Hermione’s house.
Hermione always knew what to do.
Unspeakables often worked from home, and Harry was unspeakably relieved when Hermione opened the door, ink-stained and looking intelligent and poised even in an enormous fluffy cardigan.
“Harry!” she said. “Come in.”
Of course she’d heard about the Veela charms, since Unspeakables knew everything. She’d also heard about the mass attack in the shower, and about the headquarters being decorated along a more peppermint scheme than usual. She’d even heard about Katie Bell.
“How do you know all this?” Harry asked tiredly, nursing a third cup of tea. “Do you have tiny invisible fairies in your employ who report everything everybody ever does and says?”
Hermione laughed, a bit too loudly. “No, Harry!” she exclaimed. “That’s just silly!” Her voice went cold and frightening for a moment when she asked: “Who told you that?”
Harry stared. “Nobody,” he answered. “It was a joke.”
“Ha ha,” Hermione said. “Obviously. I mean, how ridiculous! You won’t be repeating your silly joke to anyone, will you?”
Harry stared some more. “No, you’re all right.”
“Good!” Hermione said. “Good! Now, what were we talking about? Oh yes, your irresistible sexual wiles.”
“Katie Bell,” Harry said. “Of all people, the irony alone may kill me, and Malfoy’s going to be upset, maybe he’ll be jealous, God, I really can’t deal with that. I can’t deal with any of this. I don’t want it. What am I going to do, Hermione? How am I going to get rid of it?”
“Well,” Hermione said. “Let me think. They say that regular sexual intimacy should diminish the effect of the Veela charms, didn’t they?”
Harry wondered miserably if Hermione too was going to recommend Sinistra’s Sinnin’ Spot. He supposed she was a bit busy for a boyfriend these days, and then he had a mental image about Hermione and house elves and cursed the day he was born.
“If you think about it,” Hermione said, in her practical knowledgeable way, “Ron was always just the sidekick, wasn’t he?”
Harry blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“He was always just following in our lead,” Hermione said, her breath warm against Harry’s cheek.
Harry wondered when she had got out of her chair. He hadn’t thought he needed to be on his guard here, of all places. His shoulder blades tried to dig his way out of the back of his armchair, towards freedom.
“Oh God, Hermione, please,” he said, despair threatening to swallow him in a cold wave. “Not you.”
“You and I were the hero and heroine of the story, really,” Hermione whispered, her voice less practical now, her dark eyes alight. “We were meant for each other. It’s inevitable. It’s fate.”
“But Hermione, we have nothing in common,” Harry pointed out helplessly. “Also, I am gay.”
“You can’t fight destiny,” murmured Hermione, curls soft against his face as she leaned in to kiss him.
Harry wrenched off his peppermint necklace and shoved it in her mouth, and then held her shoulders and kept her back as he escaped. He was trained for extreme physical exertion: he was pretty sure he could outrun her.
Then he remembered that she knew where he lived, and he could not go home.
He went to a late-night shop with only one clerk, keeping his face averted, and took his time doing his grocery shopping. He felt lonely and wretched, and thought that Malfoy’s book had been grossly exaggerating when it described the life of a Veela as full of glamour.
Harry met Ritchie Coote again on his twenty-second birthday. He thought about it as meeting him again, even though Ritchie’d had to remind him that Ritchie had been in third year when Harry was in sixth.
“You were Quidditch captain and you picked me to be a Beater because I aimed well,” Ritchie reminded him, beaming.
“Oh, sure,” Harry said vaguely. He didn’t remember much about Quidditch in sixth year: Malfoy had lost interest because he was evil, and Harry had lost interest because he’d had to prove Malfoy was evil, and Quidditch had more or less lost its savour. Besides, at try-outs Harry had been somewhat alarmed by the volume of shrieking girls on the pitch, and thus too occupied to really notice a new Beater.
He talked to Ritchie, though, because Ritchie was a sports journalist and thus assigned to write about the case of Oliver Wood’s latest stalker. Harry usually tried to talk to the press, since otherwise Malfoy told them terrible lies because he thought it was really hilarious.
Malfoy, after extensive and absolutely unnecessary interviewing of the dancing girl mascots, joined them and mentioned in passing that it was Harry’s birthday.
“Oh, let me buy you both a drink, then,” Ritchie said instantly. “After all, this is more or less my first scoop, thanks to you guys.”
“Well,” Harry said.
“We’d love to,” Malfoy interrupted. “Thank the kind gentleman, Potter.”
Then, out of sheer absent-mindedness, they went into the gay bar near the Auror headquarters. Harry realised where they were when he sat down, the surroundings comforting and familiar, and looked at Ritchie with great apprehension.
Malfoy excused himself at once to go talk to the bartender, and Harry damned him to hell.
“So, um,” Ritchie said. “Is it you, or Malfoy? Or both of you?”
“Not both of us,” Harry said, since if he was clear on nothing else in the world, he was clear on that. “Me.”
“Oh,” said Ritchie, and then smiled. “Cool.” He paused, and then added, going a bit red: “I had a terrible crush on you. When you were Quidditch captain.”
“Oh,” Harry said, somewhat bewildered.
He looked for Malfoy, who was leaning easily against the bar, laughing at something the bartender had said and looking like he had no intention of coming back any time soon. Harry began darkly to suspect that Malfoy had known exactly what he was doing when he steered them into this bar. Slytherins were untrustworthy and treacherous. He’d always known it.
Malfoy laughed again, looking sun-warmed and tired from a long July day spent trailing Oliver Wood around the Quidditch pitch, hand on the back of his neck and mouth crooked around a smile.
Harry transferred his gaze back to Ritchie, who, it occurred to him, had a good smile too. A better smile, he hastily amended to himself. It wasn’t all shifty and crooked and he didn’t look like he smirked often, either.
Harry had a misty recollection that Ritchie used to be a bit weedy, but being a Beater for the last few years of school had obviously done him some good. He was still thin but he looked muscled, which was what Harry liked. He had light-brown hair streaked with gold, probably because of the summer sun, and freckles—Harry had always liked freckles, and Malfoy didn’t have any—and he seemed nice and sensible and interested. He was good-looking, too, Harry thought, and with a certain vicious satisfaction: he was much better-looking than Malfoy.
He went through all the things he’d thought about love, the same way Hermione, since Ron, had a checklist to run through for her men. Malfoy had helped her write it in the bar one Friday.
He focused more intently on Ritchie, who obviously liked Quidditch, too. He’d do, Harry thought.
“Do you want to go out with me on Saturday?” Harry demanded.
“Yeah,” Ritchie said, and smiled that better-than-Malfoy’s smile again. “That’d be great.”
Ritchie was very nice. Everybody agreed on that. Hermione said he was really perfect for Harry, and the sex was good, and Malfoy came with Harry to pick out a present for Ritchie’s twentieth birthday party, and at the party Ritchie introduced Harry to his parents as his boyfriend. Ritchie was a pureblood, so his parents knew exactly who Harry was. They seemed pleased about it.
It wasn’t quite—Harry knew he should touch him more, out of bed. Malfoy and Katie did, and Pansy and Ron did, even Vince and Greg did, but it was weird and awkward. Harry didn’t touch people all that often, and Ritchie was a bit overawed by the whole Boy Who Lived thing and Harry didn’t know what to do.
“It’s because your stupid family never hugged you as a child, and you’re very disturbed,” Malfoy told him in a matter-of-fact way. “Don’t worry about it. Ritchie just needs to get to know you better. It’ll become more clear to him that you’re a complete maniac.” He flicked Harry a sly smile over his coffee cup, and Harry had to remind himself that Ritchie’s smile was better. “I’ll tell him, if you like.”
Malfoy’s attempt to talk with Ritchie made Ritchie take a dislike to Malfoy.
“Do you know your partner insults you behind your back?” he asked Harry indignantly.
“He needs to keep in practise for insulting me to my face,” Harry said.
“Well, I think it’s outrageous,” Ritchie declared. “Maybe there’s something wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with you!”
That was Harry’s opinion as well, actually, so that was all right. Harry and Ritchie agreed on most things, which was great.
Ritchie did not like to dance, which was a great relief to Harry, much better than Malfoy who always made a complete exhibition of himself on the dance floor. Ritchie was unfailingly kind, unlike Malfoy, would never have dreamed of making racist comments, unlike Malfoy, he was law-abiding and considerate and better than Malfoy in every way possible, and one day Harry would be able to stop himself making those constant comparisons.
After they had been going out six months, Ritchie told Harry that he loved him.
Harry said: “Right.” Then he said: “Thank you.”
He thought about it the next day, and he was working himself up to a “Me too” on the way home, when somewhat to his relief he was kidnapped by rogue Death Eaters.
He sat in a dark cellar somewhere recovering from being Stunned, and worked out a plan to escape that involved killing the guard who came in to feed him. Possibly he’d have to lure the guard in, but that shouldn’t be too hard. They’d taken away his wand, but he didn’t think much of this operation’s intelligence. They hadn’t incapacitated him. He was an Auror, and he could break a man’s neck with one hand free.
Then the guard came in to feed him, and it was Malfoy.
Harry stared at him, and Malfoy smirked. “Don’t look so betrayed,” he drawled. “You people betrayed me first. You killed my father.”
He put down the food, and slammed the door. Harry sat numb for a while in the darkness, thinking of Malfoy breaking Muggle pictures and saying that he hated everybody.
It wasn’t impossible. Malfoy wore the Dark Mark. They had killed Lucius Malfoy, and they had done it with very little evidence against him, because the Ministry was under pressure to wipe out the Death Eaters. Harry had never really got a handle on how Malfoy felt about Muggles and the Muggleborn. He wore the Dark Mark, and he didn’t have much regard for the law or the way things worked, and he had loved his father: Malfoy’s love and rage had led him to do crazy things before now.
It wasn’t impossible.
It was possible that it was a trick, though. Not Polyjuice. Harry knew Malfoy, and that had been Malfoy.
Malfoy wore the Dark Mark, and so he alone of all the Aurors would be able to infiltrate. It would be worth it, to capture the last remaining Death Eaters. They might be using Harry as a way to test him, as part of a plan. That was possible, too.
It might be a trick, but it might not be. It might all be real.
Harry decided to wait and see. Either it was a trick, and all he had to do was wait it out, or it would become clear that it wasn’t a trick and then he would break Malfoy’s neck and escape and nothing would matter very much.
He didn’t feel hungry, but he ate as much as he had to in order to keep strong and be able to break Malfoy’s neck. He didn’t sleep much. He couldn’t tell if it was day or night, except when Malfoy opened the door and light either was or was not limned around his fair hair.
He occupied himself thinking about Malfoy. Not about whether Malfoy might or might not have betrayed him, that made his head hurt, that didn’t help at all, but just small disconnected thoughts to follow, moment after moment, in the darkness. Just the way Malfoy smiled, the crooked sweet shape of his mouth, the way he sounded and felt when he was asleep, loose and relaxed with that low cooing sound rising from his parted lips. The constant restlessness of his thin hands, the way he doodled on paper and made little nonsense things out of pens and lollipop sticks. His shoulders and his scars and the way he threw his head back to laugh, surrendering to it completely, always doing everything with all he had.
He was thinking of the turn of Malfoy’s head, his long neck, when the door burst open and there was Malfoy, kneeling beside him, and a lot of Aurors very far away in the background, and it had been a trick after all and Harry was so relieved he wanted to cry.
He didn’t, of course. He hadn’t cried in years.
Malfoy took one look at his face and said: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought you knew. I came in with the food on purpose and you didn’t try to kill me, so I thought you’d worked it out.”
“What do you mean, try?” Harry said. “I could’ve done it. I would have done it, too—but I wasn’t—you should have known I wouldn’t do it unless I was sure. I thought you might have done it. I’m sorry.”
“No, I understand,” Malfoy said. “It was meant to be plausible. That’s why Shacklebolt chose me. I was ordered not to tell you, of course, so it’d look more real, but I think—I didn’t want to tell you. I thought—maybe you’d be sure even if I didn’t. I had no right. I’m sorry.”
“No,” Harry said. “I understand.”
It was dark and cold in that cellar, he realised properly for the first time in days. He was chilled: his bones were aching. Malfoy reached around, perhaps to help him up, his hand sure and supporting against Harry’s back, and Harry just leaned forward and put his head against Malfoy’s shoulder, laid his face in the curve of Malfoy’s shoulder and neck. It was very simple.
“I’m so tired,” Harry said, in a low voice.
After an instant’s surprised stillness, Malfoy put his arm around him properly, stroked his back and his hair a bit. It was so nice: it was so simple.
“I’m sorry,” Malfoy whispered, fingers light against Harry’s hair. “I’m sorry. You can go home right now. Can you stand up?”
“Yes,” Harry said, and grabbed Malfoy’s shirt, held him firmly so he wouldn’t move. He’d seemed far away, for days now, but now he was here and everything was all right. He burrowed his face against Malfoy’s neck and did not move.
“I should have thought about how much you hate not being able to do things,” Malfoy said, almost to himself, his voice calm and lovely, soothing in Harry’s ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything.”
“Why do you keep apologising,” Harry said. “I could have killed you: you gave me the chance. You’re an idiot.”
“You couldn’t have killed me,” Malfoy said, sounding offended. “I am an Auror. I have received special training in the arts of war.”
“You always hesitate,” Harry told him wearily, and closed his eyes, warm and safe. “I could have done it. It would’ve been easy.”
He went to sleep right there, leaning his head on Malfoy’s shoulder. He woke up on his sofa at home to the sound of Malfoy’s voice, still low but no longer sweet and suddenly retreating into the distance.
Malfoy said: “Take care of him,” and Harry opened his eyes and lifted himself on one elbow, reached out to have Malfoy back, and saw the door closing behind Malfoy and Ritchie’s face, close and looking concerned.
He realised with a sinking sort of feeling that he had not thought of Ritchie once, not remembered Ritchie’s existence, since he had been taken.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
It was dark and raining when Harry came out of the grocery shop, holding a couple of plastic bags. He walked along the rain-slick streets, following the wet orange light shimmering down the pavement, reflected from the streetlights.
Things hadn’t been so bad, since he gave up on the idea of escaping via Ritchie or anyone else. He was a bit lonely sometimes, it hurt sometimes, but he was getting on with it, he was helping a lot of people, he always had so much to do he couldn’t think much, and Malfoy was almost always there. Before this madness started, things hadn’t been so bad.
He looked up, stopping his long aimless walk, and realised that his tired treacherous steps had of course led him to the building where Malfoy lived.
Malfoy’s flat was three floors up on the left, and Harry looked at a shadow in a lighted window there, felt stupid about looking, it was stupid and pointless and hopeless, and kept looking. He reminded himself that he was a Veela and could have anyone he wanted, but it didn’t mean much. It made him think of some god or goddess who was the moon, or something, and how they had looked at some mortal when he was sleeping. As he recalled, they could not have him, not ever.
The rain pounded on, until even Harry’s hair was plastered flat against his head, dripping into his eyes. It was fairly cold outside.
A taller shadow moved in the yellow square of the window. Harry realised he had been standing in the rain staring up at Katie Bell’s shadow, and felt a complete tit.
Malfoy stooped over her, perhaps to kiss her or give her a cup of tea or something, Harry didn’t know, and then he was gone. Harry shook his head at himself, and then trudged off along the wet streets towards home.
On his way, a Muggle woman in a raincoat took one look at him and then threw herself in his arms. He almost dropped his grocery shopping.
“Oh, you’re beautiful,” she whispered, her wet lips close to his wet cheek. “I love you.”
Harry pushed her back, perhaps with too much force. “No, you don’t,” he said, his voice echoing through the dark streets. “Trust me.”
He found his key with numb cold hands, and came into his dark silent flat, dumping his shopping bags on the floor of the hall. The smell of wet wool was in his nose, and his jumper was dragging on his shoulders, so he pulled it off and left it in a wet, sad pile on the kitchen counter.
He didn’t bother turning on lights. He felt tired, bone weary with this day and everything it had brought, weary of himself. He went into his bedroom and fell sideways on the bed, and shut his eyes.
His curtains weren’t closed. After a moment an insistent dart of light made him open his eyes, moonlight striking off his mirror. He blinked, and looked.
A stranger looked back at him with hooded eyes, making sleepiness look like sex. Harry tried to open his eyes properly, and the stranger’s lids lifted, showing clear dark green like the depths of a hidden pool. His winter tan hadn’t faded this year, and his body gleamed pale gold in the moonlight, still wet from the rain. His hair was damp, too, falling black as a crow’s wing into his eyes. He stared, and the stranger’s full mouth formed a brutally perfect sneer.
Harry turned his face away.
“Go away,” he whispered to the mirror, and heard his voice rough and scraping in his throat, like sex dragged over broken glass. “You’re ruining my life.”