Harry woke up with the warm conviction that all was right with the world. Winter sunlight was pouring through the windows, he wasn’t cold or tired any more, and best of all, Malfoy was there.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, get a move on,” Malfoy said.
Harry smiled and reached out without thinking to grab Malfoy’s wrist and hold him there. Malfoy, leaning against the bedpost, looked amused and let him have it, and for a moment Harry was tempted to close his eyes and go back to sleep, and pretend that things were exactly as he wanted them to be.
Malfoy poked him in the shoulder. “This constant slacking-off must cease, Potter. Get up.”
Harry opened his eyes reluctantly.
Under Veritaserum or extensive torture, Harry probably would’ve admitted that he found Malfoy attractive, but looking directly up into his nostrils was not really his most alluring angle.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Stopping you from sleeping your life away, apparently,” Malfoy said. “This is no time to succumb to despair. I have another plan.”
“Sounds like it’s time to succumb to despair to me,” said Harry.
“Release my wrist, please,” Malfoy said, saying ‘please’ in a tone of lofty command. “I need it for all sorts of things. Also I worry about the way you always grab when you wake up: it suggests to me a fundamental insecurity about the world. You should’ve absorbed after three years that you have a genius partner who will always make everything all right.”
“What have you done now?” Harry asked, as cold fear struck his heart.
“You’ll see,” Malfoy promised, beaming at him manically. “Get up, and for God’s sake get dressed, what if a cat burglar broke in and ravished you? The way things have been going lately, I wouldn’t put it past Shacklebolt to hire someone to break in and ravish you, and we can’t have that.”
“No,” Harry said with feeling.
“The man seems to have terrible and disturbing taste,” Malfoy said. “If it comes down to that, and I’m not ruling it out—”
“I am,” said Harry.
“Sinistra’s Sinnin’ Spot does a good brochure,” Malfoy said. “It comes with pictures. And coupons.”
“How do you know this?” Harry asked. “Do I not want to know?”
“I investigated,” Malfoy informed him. “I am a trained investigator, after all.”
Harry maintained a skeptical silence.
“I Owled Marcus Flint,” Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. “He owns some shares in the business. I require no thanks for my tireless efforts. I only ask for my wrist to be returned to me.”
That was probably a fair request. Harry let go and sat up, rubbing his eyes and trying to reconcile himself to waking up and dealing with things the way they were. Malfoy walked over to his wardrobe and after a determined rummage emerged ruffled and threw the dark purple Weasley jumper at Harry’s head.
“Wear that,” he said. “It’s perfect. It makes you look like a rotting grape that died of plague.”
“You have a very odd definition of the word ‘perfect,’” Harry muttered, and struggled into the jumper.
As he did so, Malfoy exited his bedroom, and Harry heard him starting to open and close cupboard doors. Malfoy seemed in a good mood, Harry thought: he seemed to be overlooking the terrible Katie incident, and he was smiling, and he was up early, and Harry had forgotten how enormously obvious it was when Malfoy got laid.
Three weeks, and he’d let himself forget—he’d wanted to forget—how, at least twice a week, Malfoy spent the mornings enveloped in a warm content glow, bestowing faintly smug smiles on everyone. He’d even smiled at Cuthbert once. Cuthbert had made a note of it.
Harry was used to it. There was no reason to be moody about it, none at all.
Harry scowled at his rotten-grape reflection and opened the door to find Malfoy putting away Harry’s groceries and humming to himself.
“I think you may be going overboard with your carefree bachelor lifestyle,” Malfoy said, in a distracted sort of way. “You left your groceries on the floor, and also, I think something crawled onto your sideboard and died.”
“That’s my jumper,” Harry said, looking doubtfully at the sodden orange heap.
“And also, I think your jumper crawled onto your sideboard and died,” Malfoy amended agreeably. “And also, you’ve run out of marmalade.”
“I don’t like marmalade,” said Harry.
“Don’t you? Huh,” said Malfoy. “But people could drop by. Requiring marmalade. And then where would you be, it’d be awfully embarrassing. I counsel you urgently to acquire emergency marmalade reserves.”
“If you want marmalade, Malfoy, it’s in the fridge.”
“You should keep it in the cupboard,” Malfoy said. “People usually require their marmalade to be room temperature. I’ve noticed this. Come on, are you ready? We’re going to that pastry place you like.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “I don’t like it all that much.”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows back. “Don’t you?” he said. “Huh. Get your coat.”
They were going down the stairs when they met some girl, coming upstairs and sorting through her mail.
“Hi, Draco,” she called out, and then she lifted her eyes from the envelopes and said in a considerably lower and more interested voice: “Hi, Harry.”
“Hi, Fiona,” Malfoy said, as Harry mumbled something inarticulate and kept walking. “So,” Malfoy said once they were in the street. “So, last night there was an outbreak of Owling. I was Owling Marcus Flint and a few other people necessary to Plan B, and—Hermione Owled me.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
He had a vivid and dreadful picture of Hermione leaning in towards him, and having to assault her with mints in self-defence.
Malfoy sort of elbowed him consolingly. “She’s really embarrassed,” he said. “She says sorry.”
“No, she—that’s all right,” said Harry.
“She says she’s never thought about you that way,” Malfoy went on helpfully. “She says she did her best for Ginny’s sake, but she’s suspected you were gay since fourth year.”
“Since fourth year?” Harry repeated incredulously. “She did not!”
“I bet she did,” Malfoy said. “She is all-knowing. It’s time to face that and move on. I wish she’d let something slip, though,” he added with a martyred sigh. “Rita Skeeter would’ve been very interested in how the Boy Who Lived entered the Triwizard Tournament to get closer to Cedric Diggory.”
“Cedric was dating Cho,” Harry exclaimed, outraged.
“Ah, classic transference,” Malfoy said. “I can read you like a book, Potter.”
“Can you?” said Harry.
“Attractive bloke, Diggory,” Malfoy added encouragingly. “Kind of Hufflepuff in the face, but you like that, don’t you, with Smith and everything.”
“No I don’t.”
“I bet Sinistra’s Sinnin’ Spot has Hufflepuffs,” Malfoy went on. “Caters to every perversion, Marcus assures me.”
“I think I hate Marcus Flint,” Harry said. “I thought you should know. Malfoy. Look. I don’t want to—it’s enough, having Shacklebolt go on about that. I’m not going to, and I need you to be on my side about it.”
“Then I am,” Malfoy said at once. “Only when Hermione told me, I thought you might want to—do something drastic. So I came to see you and say that, you know, nobody would think you had dishonoured the house of Gryffindor or anything. And,” he added, sounding very noble and sad, “Nobody would make fun of you. Or even mention it again. Even if they thought of a really brilliant and hilarious thing to say, they still wouldn’t.”
“Tell them thanks,” Harry said. “But no.” He hesitated. “And you and Katie. Did you, um, have words?”
Malfoy smiled reminiscently. “Sure. I got her a peppermint and said ‘welcome back’. And that was about it for words.”
“Right,” Harry said hollowly.
Other people had sex and didn’t make a big production about it. They didn’t go around with a glow about them for hours: their faces weren’t transparent as glass when they were happy, or shut and bolted like a prison door when they were upset.
Other people were really great, Harry thought with a distinct lack of conviction.
“And then I Owled Marcus and the others, and Hermione Owled me, and I went to see her, and look what I found,” Malfoy proceeded.
He rolled up his sleeve and showed Harry something that looked like a tiny fire, trapped under the glass of a watch instead of a clock face.
“I was talking to Nott and Millicent in Switzerland with it,” he said reverently. “It’s brilliant.”
“Wait,” Harry said. “So this is a top secret Unspeakable device, and you nicked it out of Hermione’s flat.”
“No!” Malfoy exclaimed, and looked shifty. “I mistook it for—my own watch.”
“Except you don’t wear a watch.”
“I mistook it for my own… watch-shaped thing,” Malfoy said.
“Hermione is going to come for you and kill you,” Harry said.
“I don’t care,” said Malfoy. “I am an Auror, I live for danger. And it won’t matter as long as I have Sparky with me.”
He looked at his little fire watch with love. Harry resigned himself to holding Hermione back while Malfoy fled the country, and then let Malfoy go in alone to get the pastries so Harry wouldn’t have to deal with amorous waitresses.
He hadn’t ever thought that being a Veela meant feeling like a child outside a shop window, staring in at the world.
Behind the glass, Malfoy beamed at a waitress. Harry could tell he was making a joke because he saw her throw her head back and laugh. Malfoy looked pleased as he collected their pastries and his inevitable coffee.
“What did you say to that waitress?” Harry asked when Malfoy came out.
Malfoy frowned briefly. “Don’t remember,” he said. “Nothing much. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Harry answered.
“Today I thought we’d go investigate the Dixon case, and get him and Halperin dead to rights,” Malfoy remarked conversationally.
“How can we do that?” Harry demanded. “If you’ll recall, I can’t leave our peppermint-lined office.”
He was sorry as soon as he’d said it. It wasn’t Malfoy’s fault, the Veela thing or anything else.
Malfoy just smiled and regarded him with a sort of anticipatory indulgence, as he did when he’d got someone a really good present. “Ah,” he said. “That’s where Plan B comes in.”
Harry’s cold dread was somewhat alleviated when he got into their peppermint-lined office and, aside from the dozens of co-workers diving for the peppermint buckets, the only thing to see was Vince and Greg.
“Hi, Harry,” said Greg. “Malfoy said you’d come over all Veela.”
“Um,” Harry said. “Hi, Greg. Yeah.”
He looked at them in alarm. Neither seemed about to make any sudden leaps.
“If it’s any consolation,” Vince offered, “I never believed that you were slipping Love Potion into the girls’ pumpkin juice during sixth year. But this one was set on the idea, and he squawks if you contradict him.”
“I don’t,” Malfoy squawked. Vince elbowed him affectionately and rather hard in the side, and Malfoy winced and grinned at once, leaning against the desk and settling instinctively between them, just like he had at school. “Anyway,” Malfoy added. “I still think it was a viable working hypothesis. How could I know all the gay Veela details?”
“Speaking of those,” Harry said. “What’s going on? I mean, I presume this is Plan B, but I don’t understand—”
“It is hard for many mortals to understand my shining brilliance,” Malfoy said. “It dazzles them, you see. Not their fault. Allow me to explain. Last night I sat down and made a diagram,” he explained. “Because the problem with you going outside is that massed hordes of people will fling themselves at you bodily, and this will impede you in the line of duty. And I can’t stop massed hordes, but I thought several people could! Like a seduction bodyguard.”
He smiled winningly up at Harry.
“And then I thought, well, I’m all right,” he proceeded. “So I started collecting people with the same immunities as me. Professor Snape is the head of Slytherin house, and he was called into every Blaise Zabini emergency, and he can do Occlumency, which can be a guard against magical influence. So I asked him first, but he sent a rather hurtful Owl in response.”
“You Owled Snape,” Harry said, and sat down and put his face in his hands. “And you told him that you needed him to come guard me from people’s sexual advances.”
“He did seem amused,” Malfoy put in. “I think we brightened up his day.”
“Yeah, that really helps, Malfoy, thanks.”
“And then I read in my book that if people’ve already had sex with you, it helps with the immunity,” Malfoy went on. “Like an inoculation. So I asked Smith, and he said he wouldn’t spit on you if your trousers were on fire. He’s doing fine, though. Went into his father’s business. We’re having a drink sometime next week.”
Harry did not lift his face from his hands. “I’m so glad my complete humiliation has brought you two back in touch.”
“And I asked Malcolm if he’d help, and he said he’d be delighted and he swore not to let you out of his sight, and, I, er, had a change of heart and put him on the reserves bodyguard team.”
“Thank you,” Harry said in a faint voice.
“So I asked Crabbe and Goyle, and here they are, because they are my favourites,” Malfoy said, looking around at Vince and Greg with a lordly, approving air. Vince and Greg looked simultaneously tolerantly amused and pleased. “Then I went and liberated Sparky—”
“He stole stuff from Hermione,” Harry said, turning Malfoy in without a moment’s guilt.
“She’s going to hit you again,” Greg said in a voice of deep foreboding.
“Sparky wanted to go with me, I could sense it,” Malfoy insisted. “And I used Sparky to get Nott and Millicent in Switzerland. Nott laughed at me, and he called Millicent over to laugh at me, and then he asked me to repeat myself so they could laugh at me some more. I didn’t ask Zabini, because I thought perhaps having two Veela in one room might cause a riot.”
“Plus you might faint again,” Vince said, and he and Greg both looked very amused.
Malfoy flushed.
“What?” Harry asked.
“Oh, well,” Vince said, with an easy smile at Malfoy and an air of preparing to tell an old favourite. “So it’s fourth year, and Fleur Delacour is spreading the charm around with a spoon, and Blaise hasn’t really got a handle on his powers yet, and he gets territorial, and our dormitories were a mess for weeks, and at one point Blaise came in all lit up from a fight with Fleur and Malfoy swoons on the floor and doesn’t wake up for hours.”
“I hit my head,” Malfoy said sulkily, hitting Vince on the shoulder. “Anyway, our hard-won immunity to the Veela can now be used in the cause of truth and justice. Where in God’s name is the rest of Plan B?”
“He’s in the loo,” Goyle said helpfully.
“He?” Harry said in a panic. “He? Who? You said you told Malcolm—”
He jumped and turned when the door of the bathroom opened, and was inexpressibly relieved to see Ron, standing framed in the doorway and looking rather puzzled.
“You look OK,” he said. “Malfoy said you were in desperate trouble and to come at once.” He turned to Malfoy and added accusingly: “I thought you’d been at the stuff out of the evidence locker. Again.”
“I have not and it was just that one time and I don’t see why everyone has to keep bringing it up,” Malfoy said. “I have a question for you, Weasley. Take a good long look at Potter. Take as long as you need.”
Ron tilted his head and looked Harry up and down. He also looked bemused.
“Pansy won’t let me wear Mum’s jumpers in public,” was his final verdict.
He kept looking at Harry, and Harry felt his mouth go dry with dread.
“Okay, that’s long enough,” Malfoy decided. “So, do you find Potter irresistibly sexually attractive?”
“Oh my God,” said Ron. “I knew you were high.”
Malfoy looked very pleased with himself. “Prolonged exposure to the Veela, and his sexual preferences go the other way, and I think he’s in love with someone else. And here we have your sexual bodyguards!”
“Hey, my personal feelings are—are none of your business, Malfoy,” Ron said, his ears going red.
Harry stared at Malfoy, shook his head slowly and ruefully, and burst out laughing.
“Told you,” Malfoy said. “I’m a genius. Now, I think it’s time to go to the Murimble house, and ask a few more questions.”
The Dixon case had started pretty well. They’d all been called in to Shacklebolt’s office for a general meeting where they could collect their next caseloads. The Dixon case had been the Snitch everyone was trying to catch.
Harry and Malfoy were owed it, of course. Their record was the best, but Malfoy’d also taken an illicit look at their files, and there was a note in them that warned Malfoy was crazy when it came to dead parents, and Harry was crazy when it came to dead children.
It was true, but there were no dead parents in this case, and besides, they did their best work when they were crazy. Harry’d seen the pictures of the dead goblin children, and he knew he wanted the case.
He and Malfoy weren’t allowed to sit next to each other since the incident during the Augusta Longbottom scandal, but they sat opposite each other across the table, and exchanged looks that promised trouble if Shacklebolt gave the case to anyone else.
He gave the case to them. Malfoy raised his eyes from whatever he was sketching, lifted his eyebrows, and they exchanged a small grin.
Shacklebolt told them, without much hope, to be discreet.
“Don’t hit anyone, Mr Potter,” he said in a tired way.
“He can’t help himself, he has rage,” Malfoy said, looking at his parchment and still smiling over getting the case. “He has Fists of Fury.”
“I’ll show you rage,” Harry said in an undertone, and Malfoy grinned and made a rude gesture that should technically have got him fired.
“Try not to talk too much, Mr Malfoy.”
“I shall conduct the entire investigation in mime,” Malfoy promised, and they pushed themselves to their feet at the same time. There was no point hanging around at a meeting when there was a case to be solved.
Their information was that the bereaved parents lived at Murimble Manor with a housekeeper called Mrs Gorringe.
Goblin manors, of course, were a little different from humans. It was an underground extension of Gringotts bank, with only gilt-edged chimneys sticking out from the earth, and a door at an angle.
It was such a traditional-looking goblin mansion that Harry was a bit surprised to find the housekeeper was human. It happened more these days, of course, with so many down-and-out relatives of Death Eaters. Wizards wouldn’t hire them.
He put down the severe-looking, black-clad Mrs Gorringe as the widow of a Death Eater. She looked very pale, and he wondered if she’d cared for the Murimble children at all.
“Mrs Gorringe, I presume,” said Malfoy, and after a moment’s hesitation she shook hands.
“Mr Shacklebolt said he would send his best,” she said in a cool voice, and for a moment Harry saw them as she must see them: two young men in their early twenties wearing jeans and t-shirts, one of them scruffy and one of them smirking.
Malfoy smirked some more. “And here we are.”
And they were. They’d got the man who killed the Murimble children, and now because of a technicality, because of an unfair twist of fate, he’d gotten away.
“Hermione did what?” Ron demanded, staring.
“I’m so glad you’re not attracted to me, Ron,” Harry said. “You have no idea.”
“Any time, mate,” Ron said. “Really, Dean Thomas?”
Harry was mercifully saved from having to answer by the arrival of Malfoy, flanked by Greg and Vince and looking like a blond thundercloud. In his wake trailed Cuthbert.
“‘If you’re recruiting civilians, Mr Malfoy,’” he mimicked in Shacklebolt’s deep tones, making himself sound like a very stern bullfrog. “‘You might at least take your assigned trainee with you.’ Goyle! We hate Cuthbert, and if he makes any sudden moves towards the Veela, you know what to do.”
“Yes, you wrote down instructions,” Greg said, and Cuthbert eyed the three new, taller additions to the team with a fearful eye. He wrote something on his notepad that might have been ‘Now I have seen the face of my death.’
“Let’s get going,” Malfoy said.
Then a voice rang out and said: “Ron Weasley! Where d’you think you’re going?”
Heads turned as Pansy Parkinson swept down through the desks towards, bearing down on them in a black robe in a way as reminiscent of Professor Snape as a young and attractive woman in vivid red lipstick could possibly be.
“You tell me you’re going to work, and you sneak off to work on the field with Aurors,” Pansy continued, her voice a low snarl. “D’you think Vincent and Gregory tell me nothing? Do you imagine I don’t have spies in your office?”
“She’s a Slytherin, Weasley, honestly,” Malfoy murmured.
“I’m sorry, Pansy,” Ron said promptly. “I didn’t want you to worry, or—or to—”
“Or to stop you doing it,” Pansy put in, tapping her foot. “I don’t know where you get these ideas from. You’re a grown man and you can make your own decisions. Why the hell would I want to lead you around by the nose?”
“Oh,” Ron said.
“But don’t lie to me,” Pansy snapped. “I’m your girlfriend. I deserve the truth.”
“Right,” Ron said. “Yes. I won’t lie. I—I didn’t want you to worry. That bit’s true.”
Pansy’s face softened a fraction. “I know that,” she said, and for a moment she looked up at Ron the way she used to look at Malfoy, as if he’d hung the moon. “You’re a silly idiot and you don’t need to protect me,” she added. Then she turned away from him, making an effort to look practical, in the same way she’d pretended not to like unicorns at school.
Malfoy stood and took her hand. “Oh Pansy,” he said. “Every time I see you, you are more beautiful.”
She gave him a grateful look, and settled into a familiar routine. “Draco,” she drawled. “I notice you’ve changed your hair product again. As ever, that makes me an animal.”
The tips of Ron’s ears went almost violet with rage.
Malfoy settled a hand in the small of Pansy’s back, and bent her backwards. “If I wasn’t otherwise committed, which tragically I am,” he murmured, lips close to her cheek, the edge of her mouth. “I would of course immediately take you. Right here. On this desk.”
“Hey!” Ron exclaimed.
“You’re mistaken, Draco,” said Pansy, at which point Ron’s shoulders relaxed. “If I were not otherwise committed, which sadly I am, and I believe he’s even around here somewhere, I’d take you. Right here. On this desk.”
Malfoy let her go, and leaned back smirking. “Sure,” he said. “I’m easy.”
“I remember,” said Pansy, and Malfoy slid a glance over to an ever more scarlet Ron. He fell for this every time. Harry could understand that he didn’t like it, but it couldn’t have been more obvious that they were playacting: Malfoy could flirt easily with anyone.
It was different with Katie. He got shy.
“See you later, boys,” said Pansy. Then she grasped Ron by the front of his robes and kissed him, not for long, but with feeling. She let go and whispered, with her lipstick blurred: “I love you, you lying twit. Come home safe or I swear I’ll kill you.”
Pansy stepped back, and then swept out. She ruined the Professor Snape effect by looking over her shoulder at Ron as she went.
“I’ll see you at dinner!” Ron called out.
When she was gone, he looked down at the desk vaguely, and smiled.
“What?” Harry asked.
“Nothing,” said Ron, and then grinned a bit more. “She loves me.”
Malfoy opened his mouth to say something about how a woman had never before lowered her standards so much, so Harry reached out and put a hand over his mouth. Malfoy raised an eyebrow, removed Harry’s hand and kept quiet.
“Okay,” Ron said. “Where’re we going, and what car should we take? We won’t all fit into yours, Harry. We can do better than that.” He shoved his sleeve up to show Sparky’s twin, and Malfoy gave an outraged squawk. “Like it?” Ron said. “Next year everyone will have one. Now, I’m thinking a limousine.”
Malfoy, who had looked appalled that his new toy was going to be common, cheered up. “A limousine,” he repeated with interest. “Is that a good kind of car?”
“It’s a conspicuous kind of car,” Harry said. “What if we need to follow someone?”
Ron, Vince and Greg all looked thrilled at the idea.
“Not a problem,” Ron said. “Follow me.”
They all did, and in a few moments a sleek black limousine materialised, flying from the clouds to land neatly in the street before them. A keen-looking young man leaped out of the car to place the keys reverently in Ron’s hand.
“Here you are, Mr Weasley.”
“Thanks, Dennis,” Ron said. “And call me Ron.” He clicked a button on the car keys, and the car instantly transformed into a shabby blue Ford. “Anti-theft precaution in case you have to land in a bad neighbourhood,” he explained proudly. “So, who’re we going to follow?”
“Well, nobody just yet,” Harry said.
Dennis Creevey turned at the sound of Harry’s voice, and that terrible glazed look came over his face.
Vince and Greg flew into action. Vince put his hands heavily down on Dennis’ shoulder, rendering him effectively immobile, and Greg sprayed the contents of a small metal canister into his face.
“Eat mint!” He looked inquiringly over at Malfoy. “Was that right?”
“You’re a credit to my teaching, Goyle,” said Malfoy. “Cuthbert, your job is to get into the front seat with Dennis and make sure he keeps driving and doesn’t try to crawl into the back seat and molest Mr Potter. Think you can handle it?”
Cuthbert nodded, sucking on a mint, but his woebegone expression indicated that holding back molesters was not how he had pictured the Auror Lifestyle.
Harry had very little pity. He and Malfoy had been assigned to four of the Wood stalking cases, and once Harry had almost been clubbed to death with a plastic replica of the original Wood broom. You did what you had to do.
Right now, what they apparently had to do was climb into Ron’s flying limousine and have champagne.
“We’re on duty,” Harry began, but Malfoy seized a glass and Harry gave up on the idea of remonstrating.
He didn’t take a glass, though. Someone had to be on full alert.
Greg and Vince were extremely admiring of the limousine, and Harry caught Malfoy glancing around with a speculative and acquisitive air when he thought Ron wasn’t looking.
“You can’t drive it,” he murmured.
“You could, though,” Malfoy murmured back.
“We can’t afford it,” Harry said.
“Sure we can,” Malfoy disagreed. “The way we’re going, Shacklebolt will be forced to retire in a couple of years. The way our record looks, one of us will be promoted to his place. Today the Aurors’ department, tomorrow the world! I’ve got the brains and you’ve got the looks: let’s make lots of money.”
“Your brains are deranged,” Harry told him as they pulled up outside the Murimble mansion.
“All right. We’re going to question the parents, nobody’s allowed to talk but me,” Malfoy announced, when he knew well enough that Harry would talk if he felt like it.
“This takes me back,” Greg said. “He always told us not to talk in front of Gryffindors. Because we were mortal enemies involved in a battle of wits, and I’m not very quippy.”
“Mortal enemies,” Harry repeated as Malfoy knocked on the Murimble door. “Involved in a battle of wits.”
“Obviously Hermione was my only real opponent there,” Malfoy said.
This time, the door was opened by Mrs Murimble herself, wearing an apron and looking rather flustered when they greeted her.
“I’ll just go fetch—won’t you come this way,” the goblin woman squeaked, not even questioning the sudden addition of three other people to an Auror pair.
She led them through the labyrinthine passages which most goblins favoured, and they all took care to walk where she walked. Goblins liked to keep their hand in with anti-theft booby traps.
She led them to a large dark parlour, where Mrs Gorringe, tall and grave and still all in black, was sitting by Mr Murimble.
“What have you come back for?” Mrs Gorringe demanded imperiously. “You let the murderer escape. Perhaps you’d care to explain that they were only goblin children, and you have more important crimes to solve?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Harry snapped.
“Shhh,” Malfoy said, looking from Mrs Murimble to Mrs Gorringe. “I’m starting to think we got the wrong end of the stick here.”
“What?” Harry asked.
Malfoy addressed Mrs Gorringe. “You’re not the housekeeper, are you?” he said softly.
She straightened, tall and proud. “No,” she said. “I am Mrs Murimble. This goblin is my husband. The victims of the crime you were meant to solve were my children. And you, a trained investigator, strolled into my house and assumed I was the housekeeper.”
“Oh, no,” Malfoy snapped. “Don’t even try that. Ninety-four per cent of goblins marry their own kind: it was natural enough to assume. If you’d corrected me at the time I would’ve apologised, but you let me believe something that wasn’t true out of sheer wrongheadedness, and that means we had to investigate your children’s deaths without knowing all the facts. You sabotaged our investigation because you were stupid. So don’t try to make me feel guilty.”
Mrs Murimble reached out a hand, and her husband took it in both of his.
“Some people—have views on unnatural halfbreeds,” she said. “The children could have passed for pure goblins. I thought lying was the best way to avenge them.”
“My partner’s part Veela,” Malfoy pointed out. “We don’t care about that sort of thing.”
“Yes, I read it in the paper,” Mr Murimble said, speaking for the first time. “If I’d known, I would have made Demeter tell the truth.”
“The paper?” Harry asked, and Malfoy elbowed him unobtrusively.
“The money was a pretext, then,” he said, thinking aloud. “Unless someone thought that a human mother might have been more willing to give up the money for her children—”
Demeter Murimble flung up her head. “Anyone who asked a few questions at the bank would know that wasn’t true. I have held to the Gringotts ways since I was married.”
“No man ever had a better wife,” said Mr Murimble, still holding her hand.
“They were your children, though,” Harry said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I would have thought that your life was a more than fair exchange for my children’s lives,” she said. “That doesn’t make it mine to give.”
“Very commendable sentiment, Mrs Murimble,” Malfoy said. “Now we have evidence suggesting that this crime was racially motivated, may we have another look at the children’s bedroom?”
“Yes,” Mrs Murimble answered slowly. “I suppose you may.”
The children’s bedroom was at the top of the house, the airiest room possible in that half-underground mansion. It was like being in a human house: Harry could see that there was a long drop outside, and he could see the roofs of other houses nearby. He wondered if they’d built an extra floor for the children: if possibly one of those half-human children had been claustrophobic.
“Well,” he said. “That was a little weird.”
“Why?” Malfoy asked, standing on a little chair and looking at the disturbed bookshelves on a top shelf.
“Well, you know,” Harry said uneasily. “That woman’s—married to a goblin—”
“So what?”
“Well, it’s a little—anatomically—weird,” Harry said.
“Ever consider how that idiot Hagrid’s parents had him?” Malfoy said.
A sort of deep hush settled over them, the quiet of people who could not possibly be brought to utter their thoughts.
“Well, now I am,” Ron said at last, and with a rather bitter edge to his voice. “Thanks for that.”
“Physically doesn’t have to matter that much for wizards,” Malfoy said. “There are always spells you can do to make that side of things work.”
“Look,” Harry said. “You were the one who was always so against Hagrid—”
“Naturally,” Malfoy said. “Giants don’t have magic, and they’re extremely stupid and violent. That’s worse than sleeping with Muggles.”
“There is nothing wrong with sleeping with Muggles!”
Malfoy shuddered a little, and didn’t seem to be faking. “I couldn’t do it,” he said. “Someone who can’t do any magic? Someone who can’t understand your whole world? That sort of thing can’t be cured with a spell, you know. I’d much rather have a nice goblin girl than a Muggle.”
Harry wanted to tell Malfoy that he was being appallingly racist, but had an idea that suddenly this could be turned around on him.
“Hagrid was stupid and had no proper idea of appropriate risk to children, which is why,” Malfoy’s voice went rich with glee, “he got fired. Enough children had been warned and everybody refused to take Care of Magical Creatures and he got fired!”
“It’s been two years, Malfoy,” Harry said. “Let it go. Hagrid mayn’t have been the—the best teacher, but he was a good guy.”
“That wasn’t my point,” Malfoy said, scowling disagreement. “Hagrid inherited some bad stuff from his mother. He was a danger. You never saw me cheeking Professor Flitwick, did you? He was part goblin.”
“Was he?” Harry said.
“He was a good teacher,” Malfoy said. “Goblins are magical and intelligent. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me at all. And let’s not forget, Potter, at some point one of your ancestors was willing to have children with something that grew wings and a beak.”
“Yes, but Veela are, well, they’re attract—”
“Not always, they’re not,” Malfoy said. “A human who stuck around would see a lot of the nonhuman in her. And it works both ways—she’d have to put up with a human, no wings or beak or defences against her magic. That sort of thing doesn’t have to matter. For God’s sake, one of our classmates married a centaur.”
“They did?” Harry said. “Who?”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “Lavender Brown. Lavender Firenze now, of course.”
“What?”
“I hear they’re very happy,” Malfoy said calmly. Then he smiled. “If you think about it, it’s a real compliment to Weasley.”
His eyebrows performed a terrible dance of innuendo, and practically written in the air in letters of fire Harry saw the words Hung like a-
He wrenched his mind away from the subject. Ron was bright red.
“So who do you think did this?”
“I think the Muggleborn did it,” Malfoy said. “There’re a few underground groups like that. Saying that at least they’re human, and it’s disgusting that the purebloods are readier to accept magical animals.”
“But the Muggleborn faced their own prejudice,” Harry said helplessly. “What about Voldemort, for God’s sake, don’t they remember him?”
“I imagine prejudice looks very different depending on whether it’s directed against you or not,” Malfoy said. “Just because someone’s a persecuted minority doesn’t mean they can’t be a thoroughly unpleasant person.”
There were times when his job really upset Harry. Things had seemed simple, once upon a time: even in the war there had been a neat division of sides, and now it seemed like there was no steady place to stand on.
“Besides, these books got knocked over in a struggle, and a goblin shoulder wouldn’t have struck this bookshelf,” Malfoy said. “So it isn’t goblins getting rid of the halfbreeds. So it’s humans. So we need to find out what group Halperin and Dixon were employed by, and if Dixon is Muggleborn.”
“He is,” Harry said. He’d noticed that.
Malfoy nodded and looked pleased with himself. Greg and Vince looked admiring.
Harry looked over at the roofs out the window. Years of Quidditch and then Auror training had made him trust his instincts about what he saw.
“Everybody get down,” he said quietly.
They all hit the floor, including Malfoy, while Harry walked slowly towards the window, trying to find the source of that gleam among the chimneypots he’d seen out of the corner of his eye.
To his horror, he heard a voice not coming from the floor.
“You’re going to let Harry stay in danger while you hide?” Ron demanded, climbing to his feet.
Harry said, “Ron, no,” but it was Malfoy who leaped up, grabbed Ron by one shoulder and ordered, “Get down, civilian.”
He threw Ron onto the floor, the second before the sound of a shot rang in their ears.
There was a small, circular hole in the window.
There was a small, circular hole in Malfoy’s shoulder, and blood spreading from it all over his shirt.
“Oh, my God,” said Ron.
Malfoy crumpled backwards but Vince caught him, broke his fall and put his hand over the wound. Harry looked at the roofs, and then questioningly at Malfoy, who was engaged in swearing and informing Ron that if both the Aurors were standing up being targets, it meant they might both go down.
“I’m fine,” Malfoy said between clenched teeth. “Go.”
Harry flung the windows open and threw himself out.
Falling, he could see the streets and look for movement in the windows of the house beyond. There was nothing, so they were not escaping in any Muggle way. Harry Apparated before he hit the ground, and hit the roof of the other house rolling. The rooftops were empty. He Apparated back to the room where Malfoy lay.
“They Apparated,” he said shortly.
“They can Apparate but they have guns,” Malfoy said in a low, laboured voice. “And they didn’t shoot at the Boy Who Lived, but they shot as soon as they saw the Death Eater. Told you it was the Muggleborn. Two points to me.”
Vince had his wand out and he was starting a healing spell when Harry knelt on the other side of Malfoy and caught his wrist in a grip that he hoped hurt.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice a low, reverberating snarl. “There’s a bullet in there. Do you want to heal the flesh around a bullet?”
“What’s a bullet?” said Greg, looking panicked.
“You stay back,” Harry growled. “And you let go,” he continued to Vince, snaking an arm under Malfoy’s back and glaring at them all. There was a small part of him that was panicking because he could hear weird harmonics in his own voice, hissing and snarling, and Vince, Greg and even Ron were backing away, but most of him was too angry to care. “Don’t you even think about coming near him,” he continued, seeing Ron only through slitted eyes and a haze of rage. “You got him shot.”
He drew Malfoy possessively towards himself, and Malfoy grabbed hold of his shirt and let him. Harry bowed his head, and saw only Malfoy’s white face and the spreading blood.
“Get the bullet out,” Malfoy said in a low voice, holding on tight. “It’s in my shoulder, you won’t be damaging anything important. Get it out and then you can heal me and I won’t have to go to St Mungo’s and be useless.”
“I could tear something,” Harry said. Malfoy’s body was tense with pain in his arms: he wanted to kill someone.
“Well, if you do I’ll have to go to St Mungo’s and be useless. Change my life,” Malfoy snapped. “Get it out.”
“All right,” Harry whispered. “All right.”
He murmured, “Accio bullet,” with as little force as he could, and caught the bullet against his palm when it came out, like a small bloody Snitch. Malfoy made a low involuntary sound as it came, and curled in towards him. “Shhh,” Harry said desperately, and used a spell to rip the ends of the hole in Malfoy’s shirt, so he could see the damage. He didn’t think he’d torn anything. Malfoy would have screamed, wouldn’t have been able to help it.
He whispered healing charms over the wound, and when he wiped at the slick blood flesh and muscle had knitted together. Beneath the blood the shoulder was whole.
Malfoy let go of Harry’s shirt. “I’m all right,” he announced. “I can get up.” His eyes narrowed after a moment, and he said: “Let me up,” in a tone that brooked no argument.
Harry helped him up. Malfoy stood and looked around the room, bristling like a cat. Then he used Sparky to call the Aurors and get people to take the Murimbles and their housekeeper to a safe house, since there were still people watching the Murimble mansion and they might have unfinished business.
He was standing and bossing people around, so he was probably more or less all right. Harry felt his hackles go down, and he moved across to Ron.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ron answered. “As long as you don’t do that voice again. I won’t lie to you, it sounded kind of horrible. Like Fleur when she really loses her temper with Bill, only—I think there were a few Parseltongue sounds in there, too.”
“Wow,” Greg said brightly. “You’re a bit like a patchwork quilt, really, aren’t you?”
Harry eyed him coldly. “No.”
Once the other Aurors arrived, they went to the limousine fairly sharpish so nobody would notice that Malfoy had obviously been wounded.
“Let’s all go to Potter’s,” Malfoy said. “I want my coffee, and Katie can’t see me like this. Anyway, I need to keep an eye on you three. I need to see how long you can be around Potter without being attracted to him. Then I can start to make real plans.”
Nobody was going to argue with Malfoy when he’d just been shot. Ron gave the orders to Dennis.
Malfoy looked around carefully as if there might be evil spies lurking, saw none and then collapsed artistically against Vince. “I’ve been shot,” he said piteously. “I’ve been grievously wounded.”
“You’re fine now,” Harry said, wretched and irritable at the reminder.
“I’ve lost a lot of blood,” Malfoy disagreed, as Vince patted him on the back. “I hate getting shot,” he added. “I’m always the one who gets shot. I hate this case. Will the next one be better?”
“Yes,” Harry said rashly.
“My favourite case was the one when we went to Italy and I got the full ten points,” Malfoy said. “Potter got zero.”
He put his head down on Vince’s shoulder and Vince patted him on the back some more.
“You’re cleverer than anyone,” he assured Malfoy. “Most of the time.”
“That is so true, Crabbe, you understand me so well,” Malfoy said, and yawned.
“You were doing a lot of stuff last night, oh brilliant one,” Harry remarked, suddenly suspicious. “Did you find time for any sleep?”
“I’ve decided sleep is a fallacy,” Malfoy declared.
“You always decide that, right before you fall over.”
“Could you not stop bullying me and go arrange another holiday case for us?” Malfoy asked. “Then the Veela problem would be solved as well.”
He yawned again, obviously under the impression that everyone knew what he was talking about, and was so pale Harry couldn’t be angry with him even while everyone was staring at Harry inquiringly.
“What?” Ron said. “What are you talking about, Malfoy? And what’s this points stuff you keep talking about?”
“I shall tell you,” Malfoy said with dignity. “But you cannot tell Cuthbert. He doesn’t get to play.”
The last time Malfoy had been shot, he’d almost died.
Some witch had come clean to her Muggle boyfriend with very bad results. He’d freaked out, she’d been too softhearted to Memory Charm him or report him to the Aurors so they could do it, and he’d come to her family home with a gun and caught them sleeping. The Aurors had approached the house with extreme caution because they didn’t know how many of the family were still alive.
Harry hated it when the children were killed. He always thought there was hope as long as the children were alive. Malfoy hated it when the parents were killed. He always looked so sorry for the children, as if he thought it would be better not to be left behind.
They usually knew what kind of situation they were getting into, but this time they didn’t, and they were both jumpy.
Harry took a risk, the kind of lone mission that Malfoy usually cut off or planned out for him. Harry rolled out through the shadows of some long grass, towards an open window.
Malfoy followed him. One person might have made it: two made too much noise.
The Muggle boyfriend leaned from an upper window and fired, four times in quick succession. Harry was on his feet, holding his wand, in an instant. He sent the boy flying through the air and didn’t much care if the other Aurors caught him before he fell.
Malfoy’s fair hair in the moonlight had been a target. All four of the bullets had hit him: he was lying on his face, his back a bloody tattered mess, in the dark grass.
There had been nothing a normal wizard could do, even trying to take the bullets out could have killed him, and Harry had knelt and shook and roared for a Mediwizard and not been able to do anything, not a thing, as he heard Malfoy’s breathing come ragged and wet with blood.
The mediwizards had come running. If they’d been on the other side of the house, it would have been too late, but they weren’t and it wasn’t, and after a few terrible bloody minutes they rolled Malfoy onto his back and Harry saw his face grey in the moonlight, but he was breathing properly again. He made a wild snatch for him, but the mediwizards had to Apparate with him to St Mungo’s, and then they would not let Harry in because he wasn’t a relative.
Katie Bell arrived in jeans and what looked like a pyjama top, saying: “I’m his partner,” and Harry had been hard put to it not to snarl No you’re not.
They’d let her in. Harry had waited in the stupid waiting room until Katie came back, looking scared and happy, and said: “He’s lost a lot of blood—they’re going to keep him in a private room for the night so you can’t see him, but he’s going to l—the mediwizards say he’ll be OK. He’s awake,” she added. “He says it’s the Christmas party tonight, and you should go to it.”
“What?” Harry laughed, and the sound was terrible in his own ears. “Oh, of course,” he said roughly. “You want to come as my date? What was he thinking?”
“He thought you might have fun,” Katie said, looking puzzled. “Of course he didn’t suggest that I go. He knew I’d be much too upset.”
“I,” Harry said, and found he had no words. She had no idea. Malfoy had no idea.
He went to the stupid Christmas party, because he was supposed to be able to go to a stupid party and have a good time, because he wasn’t supposed to care if he saw his partner shot in front of his eyes. Katie was the one with the privilege of being upset.
The noise and light of the party were a jangling nightmare. He shied away like a spooked horse when a few of his colleagues spoke to him, and eventually he went into the archives room and sat down in the dark, leaning his head in his hands and seeing it, again and again: Malfoy sprawled on his face in the grass, killed because he’d followed Harry. It hadn’t even mattered, at the time, that it was Harry’s fault, it had only mattered that Malfoy was dying and nothing mattered at all anymore.
He felt cold, and sick: the couple of drinks he’d taken because refusing them meant talking were curdling in his stomach. He wanted to go see Malfoy, and he couldn’t.
The door had opened, and the light had been switched on, and Harry had looked up, dazed and blinking and sick, to see the head of the Italian Aurors department, there to facilitate international Auror co-operation. He locked the door behind him.
“I saw you at the party,” the man said, his voice soft, accent strange and almost incomprehensible in Harry’s dulled ears. “You looked unhappy.”
Harry blinked and swallowed. Most of him still felt as if he was in that garden, watching Malfoy die.
“Someone as lovely as you shouldn’t go without comfort,” the man continued.
“What?” Harry asked, his voice thick in his own ears. “Go away.”
But he didn’t. He walked across the room towards Harry, and stood over him looking down at him with dark eyes that saw too much, and in the end Harry did it. That was his fault, too. He grabbed the man’s wrist too hard, grasped his black hair too hard later, and reached up blindly for some comfort.
Afterwards, he still felt cold.
That March, Shacklebolt called them in and gave them a case in Italy that apparently the Italian head of affairs felt Harry would be ideally suited for. There was an embezzler evading capture. His one weakness, Shacklebolt managed to indicate in a circuitous sort of way, was personable young men.
Harry had refused, but Malfoy had laughed and laughed and said he wanted to go to Italy.
They found the man in Florence, part of a wild, dancing group outside the palace of the Medicis, with one man fiddling and the whole crowd singing along.
“Go get him, tiger,” Malfoy said with a terrible look of glee, and leaned against a statue preparing to enjoy the fun.
Harry drew back. “I don’t dance.”
Malfoy looked impatient, looked over at their mark dancing in the middle of the crowd, and gave up. He joined the dance, twisting and laughing, making his way over to the mark, and when he got there he looked down at the man through his eyelashes and whispered something.
He emerged from the crowd two minutes later, his and the mark’s wrists joined with his charmed handcuffs.
“You are the worst gay man ever,” he declared to Harry. “Ten points to me. You owe me three dinners and a drink. Let’s Stun this one, put him in your hotel room, and go get that drink now.”
Over the drink, Malfoy paused in his crowing to say: “What I can’t work out is how the Italian guy knew you were that way inclined.”
There seemed no way around it, so Harry told him, and Malfoy tipped back his head and laughed, throat golden and exposed in the Italian sunlight.
“Well, well,” he said. “What was his name again?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said blankly.
Malfoy laughed some more. “I expect,” he said speculatively after a moment, “we don’t have to turn in that nefarious criminal just yet. We should probably have a few more days in Italy to, you know, tie up loose ends.” He looked around the piazza, sun-warmed and pleased with himself, and said: “This is all due to me: I sent you to that party.” He smiled and added, “I thought you’d have fun.”
“Wow, a points system,” Ron said. “You two may not have noticed, but we left school a while ago. I’m just saying, is all.” He stopped and added: “Harry, you usually win, right?”
Cuthbert looked badly upset.
“Being an Auror is supposed to be about helping the innocent,” he said as they got out of the limousine. “Not winning a game.”
“One wins the game by helping the innocent,” Malfoy said, yawning some more as he stumbled and Harry moved forward, but Vince and Greg were flanking Malfoy again. “Everybody wins! And you can go home now, Cuthbert. Shoo.”
“You’re dismissed, Cuthbert,” Harry said in a kindly and official way, which seemed to cheer Cuthbert up.
Malfoy watched Cuthbert go with a jaded air.
“Shacklebolt actually suggested to me I take on my trainee as an emergency partner,” he said. “He’s plotting to kill me. I always suspected as much.” They all began to climb the stairs towards Harry’s flat as Malfoy added moodily: “If they actually succeed in foisting Cuthbert on me, I shall quit. I never wanted to be an Auror anyway.”
Harry swallowed. “Didn’t you?”
He unlocked the door and Malfoy went in and lay down on the sofa. It was possible he should actually be in St Mungo’s, but forcing him to go would only make him worse.
“No,” Malfoy said, as Vince and Greg came to sit on either end of the sofa, still flanking him. “I wanted to be a professional Quidditch player in first and second year, and a politician in third year, and a journalist in fourth year, and an actor in fifth year, and a spy in sixth year. I never wanted to be an Auror.” He sighed tiredly, and then added in a slightly anxious voice: “It’s all right now, though.”
Harry brought him some coffee, and Malfoy smiled a wan smile and sat up to drink it.
“We’ve all done things we didn’t expect to do,” Ron said philosophically. “Anyway, Malfoy, it’s done you some good. You threw me: I had no idea you were that strong.”
“I had to work on that,” Malfoy said, too tired even to be smug. “Your best mate was beating me up in the practise rooms three times a week. I tried every trick I knew. I had to get stronger.”
“You could’ve said to go easy on you,” Harry said, stricken.
Malfoy sneered and looked twelve again, and full of competitive fury. “Hardly, Potter.” He brightened up as something occurred to him. “So, Weasley,” he said, face alight with mischief. “Since I was shot saving you, let’s talk about things you didn’t expect to do. Such as Lavender Brown. Did you or didn’t you?”
Apparently, since they were all going to be trapped here until Malfoy had measured everyone’s attraction to Harry, Malfoy felt this was time for a proper gossip. Maybe it was the blood loss talking.
“Er,” Ron said, and went red. “Er. Yeah.”
“You owe me four Galleons,” Malfoy told Vince, and looked smug.
Harry sat on the chair next to Ron’s. “You never said,” he said mildly.
“Well,” Ron said. “I was kind of—using her, and I felt pretty rotten about it. I didn’t need to gossip about her as well.” His eyes narrowed. “So, Malfoy, if we’re asking questions. Pansy. Did you or didn’t you?”
Malfoy, who ventured occasionally into fair play, grimaced and took another fortifying sip of coffee. “Actually,” he said. “I didn’t.”
“Oh,” Ron said, and looked very pleased.
“Came pretty close, though,” Malfoy said in a reminiscent tone.
“That’s enough, Malfoy,” Ron snapped, and then resumed looking very pleased. “So, is there any chance, d’you think, that Pansy—”
“That her scorecard reads only one, and that one ginger?” Malfoy asked, and shuddered theatrically. “I really doubt it. After all, you’re a Weasley, and even your scorecard reads three. I think.”
“Yeah,” Ron said. “So? What about yours, Malfoy, if it comes to that?”
“One,” Malfoy said, looking both slightly rueful and slightly amused.
“One?” Harry repeated.
“I don’t see the point in going after anything but what you really want,” Malfoy said. “You people wouldn’t understand, you’re Gryffindors. Nott and Millicent got married right after school finished. Crabbe and Goyle have been together for nine years. And we all keep in touch. I’d say we’re loyal, but that’s a dirty Hufflepuff word, so just—there was a bit about Slytherin in one of the Sorting House song. ‘Perhaps in Slytherin, you’ll find your real friends, These cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.’”
There was a long pause.
“You know, really,” Ron said. “Where did that Hat get off telling us all that we shouldn’t be prejudiced and should unite, when it said stuff like that.”
“Trust a Gryffindor to miss the important part,” said Malfoy.
“And what’s the important part?”
Malfoy smiled and said, “Real friends. All of us, not just the ones we picked for our favourites.”
“Except Voldemort,” Harry said. “Not a friendly bloke.”
Malfoy scowled. “He was insane. That doesn’t count.”
“And Blaise is kind of—well,” Greg said. “His scorecard kind of looks like Weasley’s bank account.”
“He’s a Veela, they can’t control themselves,” Malfoy argued.
“Hey,” Harry exclaimed.
“Well, you do sleep with people without knowing their names,” Malfoy pointed out. “Anyway, it was a general point. Slytherins are single-minded! It’s not about what you can get when you can get it. It’s about having a great ambition.”
He yawned and put his head down on Vince’s shoulder again, and once more Harry’s urge to shout and throw things at his head evaporated. He looked terribly tired.
“What is your scorecard, anyway?” Ron asked, sounding curious.
“Four,” Harry said shortly.
“One,” said Vince, at the same time Greg said: “Two.”
“What?” said Vince.
There was a distressing silence.
“Um,” Greg said. “We were on a break.”
Malfoy’s eyes snapped open. “What, you didn’t know about that, Crabbe?”
Vince looked even more enraged. “Are you saying that you did?”
“Nooo,” Malfoy said, with something less than Slytherin cunning. “I—I’m going to go—don’t break up,” he said, and Harry felt a pang of empathy: the same kind of panicked unease as he remembered when Hermione and Ron were together had crossed Malfoy’s face.
Malfoy got up, eyeing both of his friends as if they might explode, and went over to sit by Harry’s chair.
“You should lie down,” Harry said. “You lost a lot of blood, and you’re exhausted.”
“Sleep is a fallacy,” Malfoy murmured, and laid his cheek against Harry’s knee. He was asleep in about a minute.
Vince and Greg were having an urgent whispered conversation and Ron was eyeing them with extreme discomfort. Harry reached out and brushed Malfoy’s hair back, gently: he didn’t want to wake him, he only wanted him to be more comfortable.
“A Hufflepuff?” Vince shouted.
“Don’t wake him,” Harry snarled, and heard the weird harmonics back in his voice.
“I have to go, anyway, I can’t stay, I—I’m too attracted to Harry!” Greg announced.
“Really?” Ron asked incredulously.
Greg darted a desperate testing sort of glance at Harry, and then looked stunned. “Actually, yes.”
“Please go,” Harry said, and his voice was his own again, and rather small.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Greg told Vince, and fled.
He left a rather awkward silence behind him, which was broken by Malfoy cooing in his sleep.
Vince, who had been looking tense and unhappy, cast a reminiscent glance at Malfoy.
“I’d forgotten he does that,” he said. “And Greg snores like a bellows, and Blaise talks dirty in his sleep because you know how Veela are.”
“Harry never did that,” Ron said earnestly. “And for that, I am thankful.”
“Sometimes I had to go sleep in the common room,” Vince added, in the manner of a man brooding over his wrongs. “It was draughty in our common room.”
“Neville used to snore,” Ron said. “And Harry was always waking up yelling that his scar was hurting. Wasn’t any picnic in our dormitory either. And now Pansy elbows me in her sleep.”
“Greg still snores like a bellows,” Vince said gloomily.
“I sleep alone,” Harry said grimly. “Count your blessings.”
The other two instantly looked more cheerful, which really didn’t help Harry’s mood. Vince admitted that he and Greg had been on a break, and Ron talked about how delighted he was that Pansy had never slept with Malfoy, ‘not that there’s anything wrong with Malfoy, nothing at all’ he added hastily when Vince shifted his shoulders into a slightly more massive shape.
It was six o’clock when Vince abruptly winced, sprayed his mint container into his mouth, and left without looking at Harry again.
“Nice bloke, Vince,” Ron said. “Can’t imagine what he sees in the other two. Greg’s not the brightest, and Malfoy’s still kind of unbear—”
Harry stared at him icily.
“I get on fine with them all, really,” Ron said hurriedly. “I just like Vince best. Well, I like Pansy best, actually, but you’d probably guessed that.” He paused. “I really am sorry about getting him shot. I just—you were on your own. I wanted to have your back.”
“He had my back,” Harry said. “But it’s OK. I mean, I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. This whole Veela thing has me on edge, it’s a nightmare. I don’t know what to do.”
“Er. Harry,” Ron said, in a suddenly conspiratorial voice. “There is one thing.”
Harry leaned forward. “What?”
Ron went red. “Well, Seamus Finnigan told me once about this place called Sinistra’s Sinnin’—”
“I’ve heard of it,” Harry said flatly.
“Oh right,” said Ron. “Well, it was just a thought. Look, I swear I’m not attracted to you, but I told Pansy I’d be home for dinner, so—”
“Yeah, go,” Harry said.
“See you tomorrow,” Ron said, and clapped him on the shoulder before he left.
Darkness bled into the sky, as if ink was leaking into it and dyeing the blue darker blue, and then grey, and finally black. Malfoy stirred as the stars came out.
“Where did everyone else go?” he asked, and yawned.
“Home,” Harry said.
“I should go to that place too,” Malfoy said, his voice still a little rough with sleep. “Can I borrow a shirt? Katie won’t like seeing the blood.”
“Sure,” Harry said.
Malfoy scrubbed at his face with one hand, and pulled off his shirt and threw it in Harry’s dustbin. It lay there, shredded and bloody and looking a little abandoned.
Harry went and stood in the doorway as Malfoy rummaged in his wardrobe for the second time that day, this time casually shirtless and insulting Harry’s taste in clothes.
“You can’t dance and all your clothes are horrible. Maybe you’re not gay,” he said. “Maybe this is all a terrible misunderstanding and you only meant to tell people you were feeling cheerful in a rather old-fashioned way and then you were too embarrassed to correct them. If that’s it, you can tell me.”
He wrinkled his nose at another Weasley jumper, and finally stretched, long and lean, and pulled on a black and entirely nondescript shirt. It was pretty loose on Harry, and so on Malfoy the sleeves covered half his fingers.
“I’m fairly sure I’m gay,” Harry said dryly.
“I suppose Crabbe and Goyle aren’t exactly dancing devils either,” Malfoy said. He looked over at Harry, and normal teasing brimmed over into what seemed to be nervous excitement. “Want to know a secret?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and smiled back at him.
“I’m going to ask Katie tonight,” Malfoy told him. “Getting shot puts things in perspective. Life is fleeting. Delay is fatal. Wish me luck.”
Harry looked at Malfoy, too pale, still obviously tired, fair hair gleaming in the low light, and swallowed. His mouth was dry: when he spoke, his voice had all these strange sounds in it, like hissing snakes and hunting birds.
He said: “Good luck.”