“Courting?” Malfoy repeated.
Harry leaned forward in his chair, pressing his forehead against his clenched hands. “That’s what Fleur said. She said that it’d be all right, though, all I need to do is practise to achieve control and clarity of mind, and—”
“Oh my God, we are so doomed.”
Harry lifted his head to glare.
Malfoy saluted the glare with his glass of Scotch. “How’s that Occlumency coming along?”
“It’s—I’ll get the hang of it one day,” Harry muttered.
“I cannot believe how doomed we are,” said Malfoy. He was lying stretched out on the sofa, his head pillowed on his arm. He rested the glass on a spot just above his belt buckle. “D’you recall the slight hostility I may have shown towards you in school?”
“Oh, vaguely,” said Harry.
“Clearly, I foresaw from the first that my end would come trampled under a mob of your admirers. Somehow I always knew you would be my death.” Malfoy took another sip, making a slight face which smoothed out like cotton under an iron as he relaxed. “Who are you even supposed to be courting? Just turning on the charm full blast at the world until your true love arrives on your doorstep?” He raised an eyebrow. “Actually, that does sound like you.”
Harry concentrated on trying to smooth out his own forehead with his hands, trying to pummel the tension out through his temples. He wasn’t planning to relax with a drink like Malfoy: he thought Malfoy was doing that too much.
Not that Malfoy was getting drunk every night or at all. He was just making a continuous effort to distance himself from pain, smooth away his own sharp edges, and Harry didn’t like it and wasn’t going to encourage it by drinking too.
Malfoy seemed to have distanced himself from pain right into an oasis of eerie calm. He was staring up at the ceiling.
“Shacklebolt has called for a review by Unspeakables of the Veela situation in the office,” he said slowly. “I know this whole thing is ridiculous, I know that you feel backed into a corner and you’ve come over all stubborn about it, but fairly soon we won’t be able to do our jobs. We won’t be allowed.”
Harry said nothing. After a moment he saw Malfoy’s mouth twist into a smile.
“So our boss tried to feel you up at a staff meeting and your sexual allure is on the verge of creating a national crisis, I only go to the office when I’m bored and we’re still getting Aurors of the Year. Makes you wonder what the rest of them can be up to. I’m obviously not getting all the gossip here. Maybe Dawlish is carrying on an inappropriate liaison with the office house plant and Thomas is stealing the tea money.”
“I’m sure Dean wouldn’t steal the tea money,” said Harry. “…I’d rather not speculate about Dawlish, thanks.”
Malfoy was silent for another moment. His fair hair was feathered out against the dark green of the sofa, the black cloth of his arm.
“If this is a question of nerves or something,” he said eventually, “I could go with you to Sinistra’s Sinning Spot.”
“What?”
Malfoy shifted uncomfortably. “I could bring a book and stay in the waiting room. I mean, I imagine they have their own reading materials, but I was strictly brought up and I don’t think I should take any chances. Or if it’s about pride rather than nerves, you don’t have to go to Sinistra’s, you can just go to the Lengthy Wand in Hogsmeade.”
He smirked a bit when he said the name. Harry was appalled.
“I will not!”
“Don’t be judgemental,” Malfoy said primly. “It is a refuge for lonely men whose honesty about what they want I for one find touching. Little Baddock tells me—did you just snarl?”
“No,” Harry lied through his teeth.
Out of the corner of his eye, Malfoy gave him a considering look. Harry was overwhelmed by the sheer horror of this conversation, of what Malfoy was asking and what Fleur had told him. He wanted to hit things: he thought from something about the line of Malfoy’s mouth that he might want to hit things as well.
He thought it mightn’t be safe, just now, to hit each other.
Malfoy turned his glass around and around, held in long fingers. “There’s always Baddock,” he said. “Nothing you haven’t done before.”
“Malfoy, will you leave it!”
Malfoy sat up fast, as if he was uncoiling to lunge: Harry could almost taste the promise of violence, of blood and some release of tension, at the back of his throat. It was sweet.
“But I don’t understand,” Malfoy said instead, his voice tight.
“Would you do it?”
“No, of course I wouldn’t!” Malfoy almost shouted. “But it’s clear our views on that sort of thing are rather different, now isn’t it? You don’t like Baddock, you never even knew that Italian bloke’s name, and frankly you never seemed all that pushed about Coote either.”
Harry stood up and realised as he did that his fists were already clenched. “Listen to me—”
“No, you listen!”
Malfoy’s face was flushed, his eyes alight with delighted malice, and Harry knew that this was another of those things that Crabbe had warned about, that Malfoy tried to stave off with alcohol, that when Malfoy was hurt he got savage, he just wanted to lash out and see other people hurting too. Harry knew that and he didn’t care, he wanted it too, as long as he could lash out in return.
“Last year I was shot and almost died,” Malfoy drawled, drawing out each word with a certain chilly pleasure. “It was really… very unpleasant. There was the pain and then there was the shock, I was so cold. I didn’t care that you went to the Christmas party—I told you to go, we’ve already established that you don’t stay and I don’t care that you don’t, but I was pretty surprised when Thomas told me the far from seeming even slightly bothered you had a marvellous time at the party with a mystery man.”
“Oh, you must be mad,” Harry yelled, but Malfoy shouted him down.
“I don’t care,” he repeated sharply, “but if you could do that then I really don’t see why, when our jobs are on the line, you can’t bloody well sort it out and stop being pigheaded just because someone gave you an order and you don’t feel like obeying. It didn’t matter then. Why should it matter now?”
“Because it should matter,” Harry said.
His voice sounded flat in his own ears. The desire to hurt Malfoy had drained out of him abruptly when Malfoy’d recalled the memory of that night, of Malfoy bleeding on the ground. He wanted to hit him, but he didn’t want him hurt. He was hurt enough already.
This was all such a mess.
He took a deep breath, his throat feeling raw, and looked away from Malfoy’s cruel furious face. “I was trying to care about Ritchie,” he said. “But I didn’t. And I’m sick and tired of sleeping with people I don’t care about. It always—I feel rotten afterwards and it doesn’t help. And, you blind stupid git, that thing at the Christmas party wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been—” He swallowed. “Upset. And acting like an idiot. Though not as much of an idiot as you, so why don’t you belt up? You said you were on my side. Is it too much to ask for me to just sleep with people I actually like?”
He stopped there, and reached out for the mantelpiece. He looked at that, at the chipped white paint and the bad carving of leaves and fruit, and the grey hollow where in almost three years he’d never once burned a fire. He held onto it until his knuckles were white as the paint and the urge to punch something had passed.
He heard Malfoy let out a shaky breath and then Malfoy reached out and touched Harry’s hair as he had the night before: fingers at the nape of his neck saying the nightmare was over.
Harry wished it wasn’t so easy to make everything right again, wished that he could hate Malfoy for a bit longer instead of immediately feeling comforted and just wanting the comfort to continue.
“Sorry,” Malfoy said in a subdued voice. “It’s not too much to ask. I was—Sorry.”
His hand dropped away almost at once. Harry subsided into the armchair and was tiredly pleased that Malfoy came and leaned against the chair, half-sitting on one of the arms instead of immediately resuming his usual lounge on the sofa. It was like he might want to be close.
He had another flash of memory, this one distinctly more pleasant, of the first time he’d consciously felt this way. It was early on, before Katie. He’d been at some stupid Ministry party and he’d escaped Scrimgeour’s pestering and seen the Minister present his card to Malfoy, watching him with a calculating look in his eye.
Malfoy had laughed and burned the card, grinned like a devil and blown the ashes in Scrimgeour’s face. It had been truly excellent, and when Malfoy’d headed for the bar like a homing pigeon and ordered a double and Harry was almost done laughing, the urge had struck. He’d looked at Malfoy, leaning carelessly against the bar, and thought very specifically of taking Malfoy’s smirking face in his hands and kissing him.
He’d almost done it.
Malfoy could be close. He wasn’t close now. All Harry had to do was reach up and grab Malfoy’s shirt and pull him down. Malfoy wouldn’t even have time to speak.
“So you were in shock from a scene of frightful carnage,” Malfoy said, sounding faintly but distinctly pleased about this, “and of course, you quite understandably got drunk and then a dreadful man took advantage of you. Those Italians are shameless. It’s a scandal.”
Harry held his hands in fists, one clenched around the other.
“You do make life difficult,” Malfoy continued. “Someone you actually like? So we’re pretty much down to Granger and Weasley, then. Not that I didn’t hear rumours about your little trio in school.”
“No you didn’t,” Harry said. “Or if you did, you started them.”
“I saw chemistry there,” Malfoy said loftily.
When Harry looked up he caught the edge of Malfoy’s smile, and then Malfoy got up and went back to the sofa, snagging his drink and stretching out easily.
“Anyway, I don’t see why you were talking about Baddock for me. I wasn’t the one he seemed interested in.”
Malfoy took a drink and looked amused. “He was just messing around,” he said lightly. “He always does it. It’s a joke of his.”
“Didn’t look like he was joking.”
“He’s got a boyfriend,” Malfoy said. “Besides which, like I would. Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a boy. What is he, twelve years old?”
“Hey!” Harry exclaimed.
“That’s different,” Malfoy said, making a gesture of appeasement with his empty glass. “You were never a prefect. Being a prefect is a high and noble calling, don’t you see, it instils responsibility, wisdom and maturity beyond our years in its chosen ones.”
“Yes, those are the first words that come to mind when I think about you.”
Malfoy smirked. “It’s nice of you to be concerned, Potter, but I don’t believe I shall be indulging in any weird sparkly rebounds. So I haven’t gone insane, which is one bright point in all of this—”
“Which is a matter of opinion—”
“And the Unspeakables team will be coming to review the office, too,” Malfoy said, brightening. “I like it when they do that.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I know you do.”
“You know what else would be a bright spot in all this darkness,” Malfoy continued, his voice becoming insinuating. “I was watching a film about a secret Muggle Auror.”
“A spy. I know you know this word, you used it yesterday. A spy.”
“He had a special fancy Auror suit thing. We should get some for the Auror of the Year ceremony.”
“D’you mean a tuxedo?” Harry asked.
“Sounds about right,” Malfoy said. “Sure. One of those. Two of those! That’s what I want. Then we can be like James Blond.”
He closed his eyes and stretched some more. Everything was a mess, there was going to be an investigation at work, and Harry didn’t know what he was going to do, but for a moment there was peace.
“Wait,” Harry said, and smiled. “What?”
“James Blond,” Malfoy repeated, smiling back with his eyes shut. “He is extremely famous. You really should learn more about the ways of your people, Potter, and stop being a cultural illiterate. Where would you be without me?”
“Not that it’s not good to have you around,” Harry said to Ron, “but what is the business doing without you?”
“Beauty of delegation, mate,” Ron said, reading Harry’s confidential paperwork. “Besides, Malfoy said that if I didn’t drop by whenever I could he’d tell Pansy that I copped off with Millicent Bulstrode at his twenty-first.”
“I don’t know where he gets this stuff from,” Harry said. “I think his brain is warped.”
Ron coughed. “Well, actually I did. It was a bit of a misunderstanding, and it was twenty minutes before I saw Pansy, and, um. I was young!”
“Isn’t Millicent married?”
“It’s a friend’s part to be supportive, Harry,” Ron said reproachfully. “I’m not feeling supported here.”
Harry flicked a quill in Ron’s direction. Ron batted it away with his wand. The whole office was in a bustle of activity preparing for the Unspeakables, his best mate was here and Ron was offering a dish of peppermints to people who came too close, and it was almost ten and time for Malfoy to come in.
Almost on cue, there was Malfoy. He walked in beside Dean, who was hovering somewhat anxiously by the door for some reason: Malfoy was talking and Dean was laughing as Malfoy looked around, saw Harry and smiled. This is for you, the smile said, and then he hung up his cloak.
There was a terrible sound from Ron, stunned and hurt at once, as if he’d leaned against the desk and burned himself. Harry swung around and stared at him.
He wasn’t looking at Harry. “Quick,” he ground out. “Mints!”
Harry gaped. “What? Oh my God, really? Are you sure?”
“Less talk, more mints!”
“Right, right,” Harry gabbled, fumbling for the dish and almost dropping it in his haste. “Sorry. Oh my God. Here.”
Ron took a huge handful of mints and shoved them in his mouth. He shut his eyes and chewed them. The sound of him crunching the mints was like ice breaking underfoot.
When Ron opened his eyes, Harry winced and returned the look. Ron’s eyes were clear.
“Oh, yuck,” Ron said. “No offence.”
“None taken,” Harry replied, massively relieved.
Ron frowned. “What happened just there? I mean, you just—” His eyes moved from Harry, very slowly, to Malfoy. “Malfoy walked in,” he said in a testing, incredulous sort of way, as if he was begging Harry to correct him. “And you just…”
“Shut up,” Harry said, very low.
Ron looked stunned. “You—and Malfoy—you’re—”
Harry leaped to his feet, seized Ron’s arm and pulled him into the supplies cupboard. Ron banged his head on a box of the good letterhead parchment, cursed and then resumed his blank staring at Harry. Harry clenched a fist and looked down at the floor.
“You,” Ron said, his voice more certain this time. “And Malfoy. But he only just—with Katie—you’re not—?”
“No.”
Ron calmed fractionally. His eyes still looked wide and a bit crazed. “But you’d like to be?”
Harry was silent.
“Since when?” Ron demanded.
“A while,” Harry said shortly.
“Who else knows?”
“Me. You,” Harry said. “He doesn’t know. Don’t you dare tell him. Don’t tell Pansy!”
“No, no, ‘course not,” Ron said, his best friend, solid as a rock, and then his eyes widened even further. “Oh my God, Hermione doesn’t know? Do you realise that me knowing something when Hermione doesn’t is probably one of the signs of the apocalypse?”
Harry started to laugh, sounding a little wild even to himself, and by the time he could stop Ron was still.
“Jesus, mate,” he said. “I’m sorry. What a mess.”
Harry leaned his head back against the cupboard door. “Yeah.”
Ron cleared his throat and looked like he was going to say something else, when the door opened and Harry almost fell out. He grabbed at the door to catch himself and found himself glaring at Malfoy, who looked somewhat amused.
“And here you two are in a cupboard,” he remarked. “Weasley? D’you need a mint?”
Ron looked indignant, looked at Harry, and then looked resigned to a dark fate. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “Er. Couldn’t help myself. Sorry, Harry.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said with enormous gratitude.
Malfoy cackled. “You Gryffindors are so weak-willed. I’ve always said it. All that bravado, so little strength of mind. A Veela just has to bat his eyes and you people buckle like cheap belts. I can’t say I didn’t have my suspicions, Weasley, there were so many rumours at school…”
Ron glared. “You started those rumours, Malfoy!”
“I’ve always been very observant,” Malfoy told him smugly. “Well, I need my coffee. Do try to keep your hands off Potter while I’m gone, won’t you?”
Ron made a comprehensive gesture.
“I simply cannot wait,” Malfoy said, ignoring him and smiling a bright smile, “to get back to my desk and write my dear friend Pansy, to whom I am so close, a detailed account of my day so far. It’s the kind of thing pals do.”
“What a git,” Ron said fervently in his wake, and then glanced at Harry.
“You’re not wrong,” Harry said. “It just—it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh my God,” said Ron. “We are so doomed. He is living with you! Okay, okay. No. Don’t worry about it, I, let’s see. He can come stay with me and Pansy.” Ron shut his eyes with horror at the thought, and then continued to make his noble sacrifice. “For as long as he—needs to. We’ll be—there for him.”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
From Ron’s startled and appalled look, Harry saw that he’d noted the hissing and bird notes in Harry’s voice as well.
“What, he’s going to sleep on your sofa forever?” Ron said. “He’s not a pet: you can’t keep him because he followed you home.”
Harry bit his lip. “No. Of course not. It’s just—it’s fine, he can stay as long as he needs to, that’s all. He wouldn’t want to be with you, you two don’t get on and—it’ll be fine. He can go once he’s over it and until then things will be fine. I’ll think of some way to sort all this out.”
“Right,” said Ron, and leaned back against Harry’s desk a bit weakly. “Okay. Look, d’you mind if I—I think I might like to go to work and have my secretaries bring me cool drinks.”
“Go ahead,” Harry said, and dropped his eyes.
Ron reached out and gripped his shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. “This is—a hell of a shock and I can’t think of a single bloody thing to say, but you can count on me.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Harry. “Always have.”
Ron clapped him on the back and departed. When Malfoy came back armed with coffee and pushed Harry’s tea towards him, he looked inquiring.
“Fled from your fatal allure, did he? Oh, those Weasleys. Must be a family weakness.”
“Um,” Harry said, and then saw a foolproof way to distract Malfoy from harping on about Ron or the Weasleys in general, and pointed. “Oh look, Unspeakables.”
Malfoy subsided into the chair behind Harry’s, stretched out and made a contented sound. “I like Unspeakables.”
The double doors to the Ministry both swung wide to admit the entrance of three witches walking in step, expensive robes rustling as they went, hair flaring behind them. Hermione was wearing her hair sleek today and as she walked in the middle her hair mingled on one side with Padma Patil’s jet-black sheet of hair and Penelope Weasley’s gleaming curls. They were all wearing red lipstick but not one hint of jewellery: they looked stern, official, and only incidentally very attractive.
Since so much Unspeakable work was done under cover of darkness, Harry thought they might be enjoying this chance to be on display.
Malfoy was certainly enjoying it. He almost cooed as they approached. “I love Unspeakable days.”
“Hermione is a friend, Malfoy.”
“Usually she is,” Malfoy agreed, “but today, she is a fantasy.”
“Malfoy, what a totally inappropriate thing to say when I am at work,” said Hermione, but she looked a little pleased and touched her hair in that slightly self-conscious way she always had when it was all straightened out.
“Good morning, ladies,” said Malfoy. “We are honoured to have you here and graced by your presence. Would you care for tea or coffee? Can I offer you a seat? When will you be mine? Don’t answer all of my questions at once, take all the time you need.”
Padma and Penelope did not look at all self-conscious or pleased. Malfoy seemed to like them stern.
“I’m married,” Penelope remarked dryly.
“I am utterly single and completely uninterested,” Padma said. “I like extremely handsome men.” She cast Harry an unimpressed look. “Ones who take care of and pride in their appearance.”
Harry smiled at her and she looked contemptuous, then very quickly took a mint.
Malfoy just smiled besottedly at them all. Women who were strong-minded and swept around being disdainful at people always completely floored Malfoy: Harry tried not to think about Malfoy’s mum and any complexes Malfoy might have because of her. He also tried never to consider Pansy or the fact that Hermione might’ve slapped Malfoy into a crush in third year.
He was pretty all right with the fact he couldn’t see how Katie fitted into any of it.
“We are here to evaluate the impact that uncontrolled Veela allure is having on your working environment,” Penelope said in a careful voice, “and see what measures we have to take to alleviate this impact.” She gave Harry a small, apologetic smile.
“He’s not doing anything wrong,” Malfoy said combatively. “It’s not illegal to be attractive. Otherwise you three would be in serious trouble.”
“I’m taking a note about the fact that you are trying to impede the investigation by being flirtatious,” Padma informed him. “Again. You do realise that when the Auror headquarters were levelled during the war, it was Unspeakable money that funded the rebuilding. Do you want to work in an underground den again? Keep pushing me, Mr. Malfoy.”
Malfoy smiled an inappropriately flirtatious smile. “Will you push me back?”
Padma sniffed and she swept Penelope away with her to interview Dawlish. Hermione stayed behind.
“So that unauthorised exhumation and autopsy of goblin children you wanted,” she said in a calculatedly indifferent tone, playing with the quill lying on Harry’s desk that Ron had thrown an hour ago. “Obviously I couldn’t possibly countenance such a thing. And your attempt at blackmail had no effect on me.”
“Clearly,” said Malfoy. “Well, it was worth a shot.” He paused and added: “Was my guess right?”
“Absolutely right,” Hermione said. “And the next time I need investigators or muscle with no questions asked, you two have to be on hand.”
Harry nodded. Hermione and Malfoy seemed to enjoy blackmailing each other and talking in riddles, when they could’ve just done each other favours and thought no more about it. He supposed whatever made them happy was all right.
Hermione gave them a small, official-looking nod back and went off to join the other Unspeakables.
“What was all that about?”
“I had the Murimble children dug up and examined without their parents’ consent,” Malfoy said cheerfully, and if someone else had heard him it would’ve been five years in Azkaban. “And guess what, Potter—they weren’t the Murimble children.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The merman kid I was investigating was never found. We usually find bodies in the end, and that made me think: the children’s bodies weren’t identifiable, but we were working on one assumption that turned out to be wrong. The Murimble children weren’t pure goblins. The bodies we found were.” Malfoy leaned across the desk toward Harry. “Someone is taking halfbloods and either selling them off as curiosities or as potions ingredients. This isn’t just a hate crime. Someone’s running a halfblood racket.”
“The Murimble children might still be alive,” Harry said.
“Oh yes,” Malfoy agreed, sounding as if that was rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things. “And there’s that. They’ve mostly targeted children so far, so I’m looking at the next possible victims.”
“And who’re they?”
Malfoy tipped his chair back and looked extremely pleased with himself.
“Firenze and Lavender Brown’s two half-centaur children, of course. Fancy a trip back to Hogwarts?”
Harry realised why Dean had been lurking around the door a few minutes after he was called into Shacklebolt’s office. Malfoy had been specifically forbidden to come with him, and Harry kept looking over his left shoulder and feeling vaguely uneasy about the absence there as he came in and shut the door.
Shacklebolt was sitting at his desk rather than pacing on the worn area of carpet, and there was someone in the chair across from him. Harry saw the sunset-red cloud of hair and felt his heart stutter in his chest.
She turned and he saw a freckled, heart-shaped face and worried hazel eyes.
“Hello, Harry.”
“Ginny,” Harry said, and swallowed. “Hi.”
Shacklebolt looked determinedly indifferent to any emotional moments that might be going on in his vicinity. “Ms Weasley has come all the way from France to offer her expertise in building resistance to Veela charms.”
Ginny offered a small smile. “They offered to pay my fare for the flying carriage, and it’s been a while since I saw Dean.”
“You and Dean,” Harry said, and coughed.
She shrugged. “Sort of.”
“That’s great,” Harry said. “I mean—he’s a great guy. That’s great.”
“Excuse me,” Shacklebolt said. “I mysteriously have a craving for peppermint tea every ten minutes. I’ll be right back.”
He closed the door carefully after himself. Ginny got up and leaned against his desk. She picked up his paperweight shaped like an enormous heart and turned it over and over in her hands.
“This is,” she said, and laughed a little. “This is weird. I look at you, and I—before I ever met you, I was a little in love with the idea of you, and then I did meet you and I was just.” She shrugged. “I was kind of swept away. They say that’s what the Veela stuff does to impressionable people.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, low.
“It’s not your fault,” Ginny told him. “And it’s not my fault that I thought you were wonderful. I—we never really even talked, and I was offering you love. I see why you couldn’t turn it down.”
“I,” Harry said. “I liked you.”
Harry thought of her doing a vivid laughing act, doing impressions, just to please him. He thought of little normal things that had been real, the way when she was tired she put an elbow in her plate and she’d seemed like a way of being part of the Weasleys and she’d liked Quidditch and he’d always been perfectly, wonderfully sure she liked him. She was the only girl he’d ever really liked.
Ginny laughed more easily. “I thought you were it,” she said. “And now I look at you and you’re not—really my type. I like artistic guys, you know? And, um, no offence, but you’re kind of—now I know a bit more about the world—sort of—really gay.”
“Well there’s that,” said Harry.
“But,” Ginny said, ducking her head and smiling. “The bits of you I did get to know… I liked them. I did.”
“Yeah?” Harry grinned at her. “Thanks.”
“I need to go say hi to Dean, he’ll be worrying about me being shut up in the room with a fancy powered-up Veela,” Ginny said, and passed him by with an easy indifference that she must’ve worked on and which must’ve become habit, just like her bright act meant to catch his eye had become second nature to her.
She wiggled three fingers to him in a little wave as she went by.
He was happy for a moment, painfully glad because this stupid thing could be overcome, could be beaten with enough stubbornness, and then wrenchingly sad. She’d been—he’d thought she was what he’d come home to, once. She’d been his last dream of home, of something normal.
He went back to his desk and saw that Malfoy wasn’t there, felt desolate for a moment, which made no sense. He sat down and hunched over the desk, over pictures of mermaids and centaurs, and thought about the only girl he’d ever really liked.
“You’ll never guess what’s happening in the supplies cupboard,” came Malfoy’s drawl, familiar and beloved, and then he put his fresh cup of coffee down on a mermaid and said in a different voice: “What’s wrong?”
“I was thinking about—you were talking once about parallel universes,” said Harry. “All the different ways things could’ve gone.”
“I was probably the worse for drink.”
“Probably,” said Harry, which was as much as he would say about the drinking. “I just, I saw Ginny and I want to think that—it’d be nice if there was some way it could’ve worked out.”
“Sure,” Malfoy said. “That’s the theory of parallel universes. Everything happens somewhere and—I used to think about them a lot. Ways I could’ve got my parents out of the war alive, mostly, and lately other things. But…”
He stopped for long enough that Harry looked up and saw him leaning against the desk close by, face sharp and thoughtful, not something to dream of. And still.
“What?”
“I’m not brave,” Malfoy said abruptly. “I have to get really angry to be brave. If Mum hadn’t… died, then I wouldn’t—I mightn’t have been on the right side and I wouldn’t have been with the Aurors and I would’ve been something quite different, we wouldn’t be anything at all.”
“You’re,” Harry began, and then they were interrupted by Hermione coming up to them.
She was carrying some strange hybrid of a clipboard and parchment: Harry could see Malfoy’s bone-deep urge to take it away and fiddle it into something extraordinary.
“Don’t worry too much about this, Harry,” she said. “If the worst comes to the worst, we can put peppermint in the drinking water.”
She crunched on a mint and looked happy to be with statistics and reports.
“We’d have to memory charm everyone in England so they’d forget what plain water tasted like,” Malfoy said. “Which I support, by the way. Don’t think I’m trying to find fault.”
Hermione gave him a look that was part fond and part exasperated, and part solemn conviction that she should have slapped him harder and more often in school.
“How are you doing, Malfoy?” she asked.
“Not—so well,” Malfoy said, and after a pause: “But I imagine there are worse universes.”
Hermione gave Malfoy a different look, this time one that accused him of drinking before lunch, and went away. Harry felt calm enough to say: “What is happening in the supplies cupboard?”
“Ginny Weasley just tackled Thomas into it, is what,” Malfoy said, with the supremely happy air he wore when gossip appeared before him. “And you’ll never guess what I heard her say to him! She said—wait for it—she said ‘Oh, Dean! We could have had years.’”
Malfoy laughed like a hyena.
“I think that’s a bit romantic,” Harry muttered.
Ron flooed into Harry’s flat without warning that evening, looked around the room and found it free of Malfoy, and said: “I just had a really interesting talk with my sister-in-law. Courting?”
Harry was mercifully spared from having to reply by Malfoy coming out of the bathroom towelling his hair dry.
Ron made a weird yelping sound. “Malfoy, put a shirt on! Have you no shame?”
“What?” Malfoy said blankly.
“Just clothe yourself decently, that’s all!”
“I knew you’d succumb to a drugging lifestyle,” Malfoy told him at last. “The nouveau riche always do.”
Harry was actually kind of insulted that Ron thought Harry was going to be overcome by the sight of a bit of skin. He and Malfoy had been partners for years. Harry was completely used to and totally unmoved by Malfoy with his shirt off, hair silvery and tangled at the nape of his neck, too thin, with a scar from a knife running along his ribs and muscles moving sleek under pale wet skin.
Mostly totally unmoved.
“What are you even doing here?” Malfoy demanded.
“I came to see how the Unspeakable investigation went,” Ron said promptly. “How did it go?”
Malfoy glowed. “With your sister proving that resistance can be built up through willpower and the help of Gabrielle Delacour, and with our plans to pursue an investigation out of the office, Shacklebolt is giving us another month clear to get out of this. I win again!”
“You didn’t do anything, Malfoy,” Ron pointed out. “Except for lose your shirt, apparently. Wait, Ginny’s not in France? Where is she?”
Malfoy smirked. “I think she’s with Thomas. I imagine he’s—”
“Respecting her,” Harry put in hurriedly.
“I imagine he’ll be respecting her all night long,” Malfoy said, grinning like a fiend. “Potter, may I borrow a nice shirt? Do you own one? I’m going out in a bit.”
“Yes, clothe yourself, for God’s sake!” Ron commanded.
Malfoy gave Ron a look that said Malfoy found this behaviour strange even for a Gryffindor, then he continued drying his hair as he went into Harry’s room.
“He needs to move out,” Ron hissed as the door swung shut. “You need to tell him. Do something! You have no idea how traumatised I am to be saying this, but you got more attractive every second he was walking around without his shirt!”
“Tell him,” Harry echoed. “About five minutes after the love of his life chucked him, d’you mean? When he’s looking to me for help, to be a friend, you think I should come out with something like that? Not to mention whenever I did it, it’d ruin everything at work and everything—no.”
“Okay, when you put it like that,” Ron said after a minute.
“Put it like what?” Malfoy said, emerging buttoning a white shirt Harry thought Hermione might’ve bought him for Christmas one year.
He snagged Virgins and Vixens: A Veracious Version of the Vicissitudes of the Veela off the counter as he went by headed for the sofa, idly fiddling with his shirt collar.
“Aren’t you going to do that shirt up properly?” Ron demanded.
Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “You’re weird, Weasley.”
He stretched out easily on the sofa, one arm behind his head, sighing and getting comfortable, and Harry had to admit Ron had a point. Malfoy’d always worn things with long sleeves and high collars when he was still with Katie, always made sure the Dark Mark didn’t show and kept his coat done up so strangers wouldn’t see the scar on his throat.
He didn’t seem to be bothering about that now, sleeves rolled up and a couple buttons undone. He looked relaxed and it was nice, Harry was glad about it, but it was—distracting.
“Can I borrow that book?” Ron asked suddenly.
“I don’t know, Weasley, some of the words are pretty difficult,” Malfoy told him, but he let Ron tug the book out of his hands. “Don’t lose my place,” he commanded. “I’m reading up about courting. A Veela called Gytha attempted to court a monk and her attractiveness started crossing all sorts of species barriers. I want us all to be prepared for the day Potter is suddenly passionately wooed by a pigeon.”
Harry had already decided not to go round Hermione’s place for a bit, but it was horrifying to think that another reason to stay away was a possible romantic advance by Crookshanks.
Ron started flipping through the book and made a face. “Oh, urgh, there’re illustrations in here.” He turned a page. “Huh. Some of them aren’t so bad.”
“Dear Pansy,” Malfoy said. “It is my sad duty to tell you that today Weasley came round and looked at pictures of Veela instead of coming home to you. Due to the great affection and esteem I feel for you, I am absolutely willing to either hold the chest of thumbscrews so it is within easy reach or—if you prefer—make out in front of him.”
Malfoy reached out for the bowl of mints on the table, took one and put it in his mouth. Ron’s fingers froze as he was turning a page. Harry’s head came up with a jerk.
“Well,” Ron said slowly. “I’d better be—getting back to Pansy. Now. Right now—because, um. I cannot resist Harry any longer.”
“God, Weasley,” Malfoy drawled, sucking on his mint. “Twice in one day. You should be ashamed.”
“Yeah, well, he’s—a handsome devil,” Ron mumbled, sounding supremely unconvinced. “Okay, bye!”
“Bye,” Harry said absentmindedly.
It was perfectly possible that Malfoy had just wanted a mint. He didn’t look any different than usual. Harry didn’t think.
“Would you bring me my new centaur books?” Malfoy inquired from the sofa. His voice didn’t sound any different, either.
Harry went and fetched the pile on the counter, taking a look at the covers and titles as he leaned against the sofa and passed them down. “You’ve got Running Under the Constellations, Common Ground with the Centaur and, uh, Searching for a Support Bra in the Forbidden Forest: A Lady Centaur’s Tale.”
“Support bra, please,” said Malfoy, and they snickered because they were five.
Harry stayed leaning against the sofa. “So—where’re you going out? Is Goyle taking you on another trip to see the Christmas shop windows?”
“I like the ones with lots of silver and lights,” Malfoy said reminiscently. “No, Baddock’s taking me out for a drink.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
The buzzer rang out and Malfoy said: “That’ll be him now,” and got up to let stupid Baddock in. He was wearing another stupid sparkly shirt: this one said in purple …And Then They Made Me Their Queen. He was a guest in Harry’s flat and Harry should be polite.
Baddock was staring at Malfoy. Staring wasn’t too polite, last time Harry had checked.
Harry cleared his throat. “How’s your boyfriend, Baddock?”
“Hello to you too,” Baddock said, as Malfoy accepted a light hug and Baddock stayed leaning against his chest for no good reason at all. “My boyfriend’s very understanding,” Baddock told Malfoy’s chin. “He let me make a list of people I was totally allowed to sleep with. You were on it,” he added confidingly.
He toyed with one of the loops on Malfoy’s jeans. Harry thought about throwing him out the window and wondered exactly how many questions Malfoy would ask if he did.
“That’s sweet,” Malfoy said, and patted Baddock’s spiked and gelled hair. There were purple sparkles in that, too.
“You know,” Baddock told him. “I’m double-jointed.”
“Are you,” Malfoy drawled, lazy and warm as a morning in late summer. “So’m I.”
Baddock looked thoroughly overexcited. Malfoy looked nothing but amused, because he thought that flirting was a game everyone played without being in the least serious, because he was a total idiot. Harry gripped the back of the sofa and heard the wood creak.
Baddock glanced around at the sound, and looked very approving.
“You’re positively smouldering today, Potter! Has anyone ever told you that your body is a festival?”
Harry released the sofa from his death grip. “Um. No. I’m okay with that,” he added quickly.
“Maybe we should all stay in together, what do you say, boys,” Baddock said with an intrepid air.
“That’s not funny, Baddock,” Malfoy said, still sounding tolerant and faintly amused by this carry-on.
“Oh all right,” Baddock said, snuggling in closer.
Malfoy looked vaguely startled, but he let him do it, with the air of one being molested by a kitten: surprised that it was happening at all but thinking the kitten was cute and helpless enough to get away with this behaviour.
“So where d’you want to go?” Baddock asked happily, drawing purple-painted fingernails down the faint scar running along Malfoy’s throat. “We could floo to this great place called the Lengthy—”
Malfoy pushed him away abruptly and hard enough so that Baddock’s back cracked against the counter.
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply, eyes narrowed for a moment, then shrugged and said: “We’ll go to Rick’s. Come on.”
His voice had that ring about it which had made Hermione sure he was abusing his powers as a prefect, and Baddock looked cowed.
“Okay,” he said humbly. “Will you tell me more about those Muggle suits you’re going to wear? I bet they’ll look dashing. I wish I could see them!”
Malfoy relaxed and looked charmed at this opportunity to talk about his James Blond costume. Baddock was a conniving little snake.
“You can see them if you want,” Malfoy told him grandly, with the air of a bigger boy promising the midgets sweets from Hogsmeade. “You can come to the ceremony, if you like. You can be my date.”
Baddock looked thrilled. Harry thought of seventeen ways to kill him with his bare hands and then dispose of the evidence.
The award night for Aurors of the Year was a bit different this year: the tables all had delicate silver bowls of mints nestling beside the champagne bottles. Even the chandeliers were adorned with mints, hanging from the loops of silvery ribbons tied here and there amid the crystal and the lights.
It was all completely embarrassing, but Harry kept his eyes averted from the mints and his hands in his pockets, and tried to enjoy the evening.
It wasn’t as hard as he would’ve thought. Hermione was looking stunning in red and entertaining the whole table with her Muggle date, who seemed dazed by everything and kept asking questions about people’s funny little sticks.
“We use our wands to perform magic,” Hermione said. “Because I’m a witch, remember?”
“I find your straightforward manner very charming, darling,” Reginald Whateverhisnamewas assured her. “Good Lord, look, that chap just seemed to appear from the fireplace. Funny the tricks the mind can play on you.”
Malfoy was breaking Baddock’s heart by obviously not realising they were really supposed to be on a date, and being kind of more into showing off his tuxedo than talking to him. Malfoy was off at another table showing his cufflinks to Dean and Ginny, and Baddock was drooping in his bright silver robes like a sad tinfoil flower.
Harry was quietly pleased by this turn of events, and had some champagne. A few people had looked a little alarming when they’d first caught sight of him in the tuxedo, but after he’d fielded a few comments like ‘I am the Empress of Sheba, and I want your babies’ the susceptible were giving their table a wide berth. Things were all right.
They were even better when Baddock whisked away in glittery dudgeon and Malfoy returned to the table eventually looking very amused indeed.
“Faithless is the heart of man,” he remarked, and poured himself what must have been his ninth glass of champagne. “Do you know what Baddock is doing right now? He’s messing around in the supplies cupboard. With—wait for it—Cuthbert.”
Harry laughed.
“Cuthbert,” Malfoy said in brooding tones. “The indignity! I think I would’ve preferred Dawlish. One of my Slytherins, so lost to all pride that he consorts with Hufflepuffs. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.”
He fiddled with his napkin ring, fingers always restless, and Harry could tell by the line of his mouth that he was thinking of Katie. She’d been beside him at most of these ceremonies: they’d hooked up at the first one.
Then Malfoy glanced up and smiled, his face smoothing out. “What people must think of us, Potter,” he drawled. “Aurors of the Year, and I lose my date to a Hufflepuff and you don’t have one at all. We must look absolutely pathetic. Though extremely well-dressed.”
“That is a great comfort,” Harry said gravely.
Malfoy seemed to really like his tuxedo. He had a couple of buttons undone on his dress shirt, in what seemed to be growing into a new habit, and his hair looked very pale against the black suit. Harry supposed it suited him: he was trying not to think about it.
The loss of Baddock did not seem to’ve dismayed Malfoy all that much. After a minute he asked Hermione to dance and she went with him and he played around, pretending to tangle them both up in her red wrap, dipping her despite her protests.
“Hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, but you’re weirdly attractive for a man,” Reginald-Hermione’s-date told Harry. “And I didn’t even think this kind of thing in boarding school.”
“Um, I have the blood of magical creatures which makes me supernaturally appealing,” Harry explained, feeling himself go red. “Have a peppermint, you’ll feel better.”
Reginald had a peppermint. “Funny old thing, this magic business,” he observed. “Had no idea it existed. Explains a lot, though. Still a bit of a shock when Hermione told me, mind.”
“Er,” Harry said, trying to take an interest. “How long’ve you and Hermione known each other?”
“Oh, we met this morning,” Reginald told him. “Saw her having a coffee with some papers. I rather fancy smart women, so I asked her to have a drink with me, and she invited me to this little shindig. Told me about your whole magical world doo-dah while I was fetching her coat.” He had another peppermint. “Yes,” he said. “Bit of a shock.”
Harry stared.
“I believe in total honesty in a relationship,” Hermione said, coming back to the table with her hair in disarray. “There is absolutely no chance for us unless we are completely open with each other, and of course I cannot tolerate any prejudice about the magical world.”
“Oh quite,” said Reginald comfortably.
“Let me tell you about the oppression of house elves,” Hermione said, beaming at him.
“Sounds fascinatin’,” said Reginald.
Hermione’s latest attempt at dating Muggles was obviously going pretty well, Harry thought. The last bloke had tried to have her committed, and that had really made her lose her temper.
He forgot about Hermione and Reginald at about the time Malfoy slid into the chair next to him. He was laughing and flushed from dancing, hair gold and eyes bright in chandelier lights that Harry saw as ever so slightly blurred by champagne, and he clinked his glass against Harry’s.
“To being tragically alone but extremely well-dressed,” he said, and then the light and laughter left his face entirely.
Katie was trying to go discreetly by, and like most people trying to be discreet she was failing miserably. She’d just bumped Malfoy’s chair.
She was hand in hand with a redhaired stranger.
Harry looked at the way she was tentatively glowing, and suddenly the way she’d been late in the morning and early to leave the office these days made a terrible kind of sense. Malfoy was white to the lips.
“Oh, er, Draco,” said Katie. It was the first time she’d spoken to him since she had told him she didn’t love him. “Harry. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, leaning against Malfoy’s back. Malfoy was trembling a little, not enough for her to see, and he leaned back into Harry’s touch.
“Have you met Conleth Frexley?” Katie asked, trying valiantly to pretend that Malfoy wasn’t staring at her and being terribly silent. “He’s—he’s a friend.”
“Hello,” Harry said coldly. He reached over Draco’s shoulder and took the redhead’s hand, shook it briefly.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Conleth. He had a strange voice, low and crackling like a fire and then rising in certain places with almost the quality of a scream. “Heard a lot about you both.”
“Oh, have you?” Malfoy demanded.
His voice was very, very calm. Harry could still feel him trembling, and he moved his hand on Malfoy’s back, trying to soothe him, but Malfoy jerked away abruptly and was on his feet.
“Can I talk to you outside for a moment, Katie?” he snapped, and strode towards the double doors without waiting for an answer. Katie looked uncertain, and then slowly followed him.
Conleth and Harry were left looking at each other.
“Will she be all right?” this stranger asked in his funny voice and Harry hated him too, hated the whole world for that slight trembling Malfoy hadn’t been able to suppress.
“Oh, she’ll be fine,” he snarled, and he was on his feet too, champagne glass still clenched in his fist, making for the double doors behind which Malfoy and Katie had disappeared. One door was still slightly ajar.
The corridor outside wasn’t done up at all. It was just a normal corridor at headquarters, something not transformed by the festivities, and it looked like another world. Malfoy in his tuxedo and Katie in her blue robes looked totally out of place.
Malfoy also looked as if he was going to be sick.
“—of course not, Draco,” Katie was saying, her voice shaking as if she was going to cry. “I would never cheat on anyone. I wouldn’t, you know me, you know that I wouldn’t—”
“It’s been three weeks!” Malfoy shouted.
Katie swallowed, hugging herself. Harry could see the side of her face: it was wet.
“I know,” she whispered. “I—I knew Con before. I swear, I didn’t think anything was going to happen, I just met him in Germany and the way I felt about him let me know that—that I wasn’t ever going to feel that way about you. I didn’t think he felt the same way, it just helped me come to a decision, but—but then he came after me.”
“That’s so romantic, I could cry,” Malfoy said, his voice savage. “But I see you’re doing that enough for both of us.”
“I’m sorry,” Katie said.
Malfoy’s mouth worked convulsively. “He’s obviously part banshee,” he observed. “Bet your family love that, they never liked magic at all and I kept—”
“It doesn’t matter what my family thinks!” Katie told him, still crying. “None of that matters because it’s right with him the way it wasn’t with—”
“Yes I’ve absorbed your point, thank you,” Malfoy snarled at her. “I wasn’t right. I perfectly understand. And—”
He moved towards her and she flinched, and he stopped dead.
“I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly. “You don’t—this isn’t my business, and I’m causing a scene, and you don’t have to put up with me anymore. I apologise. Go back to your date.”
“Draco, you don’t have to be this way,” Katie told him, and reached out.
He grabbed her wrist before she could touch him.
“No I don’t,” he said, his voice very soft. “I can be this way, or I can be another way, I can tell you just what I think of your family and this new man you don’t even know, I can tell you just what I think of you and what I think will happen to this ever so sweet new love, and I can tell you some of the things I’m capable of. Do you want one of the stories from work I never told you? Do you want me to talk about my parents? Do you want me to scare you or do you, maybe, want me to apologise so you can go back to your date?”
Katie wrenched her hand away and ran, through the doors, brushing by Harry without even looking at him. Harry caught the door as she flung it open so that nobody else would see Malfoy slump against the wall, and then he stepped out into the corridor and shut it behind him.
Malfoy looked up, eyes gleaming in the dim light.
“You,” he said, his voice extremely unpleasant. “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?”
“Not really,” Harry said.
Malfoy arched an eyebrow. “In that case,” he said, and his voice like a knife and Harry was suddenly sure that if he could’ve touched Malfoy at this point without losing a hand, he would’ve been able to feel Malfoy trembling. “Shall we spar?”
Harry cleared his throat. “All right.”
Malfoy walked briskly through the corridors towards the practise rooms and away from the sound of dancing and music. His voice was taut as he spoke and walked, the words tumbling out as if he couldn’t stop them.
“She’s stupid,” he said. “I mean, she thinks she’s in love! She doesn’t know the guy, you cannot be in love with someone if you don’t know them, but do you know what’s worse than anything? It’s not that she feels more for him than she ever did for me. I can understand me not being enough, that’s—but she’s being stupid. And I can see it. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to think of her as stupid, I did not expect to be able to still live and want to live and get bored and—there’s this poem.”
“A poem,” Harry said carefully. “Well, this isn’t where I thought the evening was going.”
Malfoy laughed, a sharp bark of a sound. Malfoy’s words had carried them both blind through the halls, so used to going through to the practise rooms, and now they were here. The fluorescent lights bleached Malfoy’s hair and eyes so they looked as dead-white as his face. Harry put his glass down on the mats.
Malfoy hit him in the face.
“The poem ends,” Malfoy said once Harry’s ears had stopped ringing, Malfoy’s mouth trembling out of shape. “It ends with ‘Alone, most strangely, I live on.’ It feels all wrong, to be able to go on, I always thought that—with Mum and Dad and Katie gone, I’d be gone. I thought.”
He feinted and Harry ducked away, lunged again and caught Harry as he was ducking so they hit the floor, Malfoy knocking all the breath out of him. Malfoy hit him again and he grabbed for Malfoy’s wrists even as darkness flashed on and off before his eyes: he’d hit his head.
Malfoy’s panting sounded almost like sobbing in Harry’s ear. Harry had gained possession of one wrist but Malfoy could and did hit him with his free hand, they were a panting struggling tangle on the floor and Harry didn’t know when they’d left the mats, didn’t know who was going to win or what was going to happen.
“I think I can live with this,” Malfoy raged. “And I can’t bear it.”
That was when a Stunning Spell hit Harry.
It only glanced off him but it made him black out for an instant and by the time he was aware he was sitting up, Malfoy had a hand curled protectively around the back of his neck and a wand in his other hand, he must’ve rolled them onto the mats and grabbed the wand. Harry focused and cursed.
“Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Malfoy said, sounding much calmer now that someone was out to get them. “I just threw a hex at the balcony and it didn’t hit: my guess is they ran. Are you all right?”
“No,” Harry said. “I have a headache. It really ticks me off when people try to kill us when we’re not on duty.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Malfoy mocked him, that possessive protective hand still at the nape of his neck, stroking his hair. “Here’s a riddle for you, Potter: who knows us well enough to know where we might go even at a party and wants to get us?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “Yet.”
Malfoy half-laughed, crouched together and alive, adrenalin racing and Harry felt good despite the sick headache. They were them, and they were all right, and then Malfoy made a horrible horrified sound and pulled his hand away.
“What,” Harry said, full of dread. “What.”
“You didn’t hit me back.” Malfoy was white again, and he looked like he wished he could hit Harry just one more time. “You should’ve hit me back, you have to hit me back, what if I’d hurt you, I really could have—”
“We’d both been drinking and you were upset,” Harry said flatly. “I wasn’t going to hit you. Things could have got really out of hand.”
“Yes, they could have!” Malfoy looked almost terrified.
Harry reached out for him, but Malfoy leaned away. “It’s okay—”
“No,” Malfoy said. “No, it’s not okay, God.” He reached out and deliberately tipped over Harry’s glass of champagne. “That’s enough,” he said, and shut his eyes. “I’m done.”
“That was mine.”
“Shut up, Potter, it was a symbolic gesture.”
“It was still mine.”
Malfoy laughed a stumbling, broken little laugh and said: “I can’t believe I—I am crazy. You should run away, you know. Crazy people, they kill you. They kill you and your household pets, because they are insane.”
“I don’t have any pets and I’m not going anywhere, you idiot,” Harry said. “And the three weeks are up, in case you didn’t notice. And I’m still not going anywhere. If you thought I was, you are crazy.”
Malfoy laughed again, still holding his wand in one hand, and Harry reached out and took hold of his wrist. Malfoy wasn’t trembling now, just laughing shakily with his eyes shut. He didn’t pull away and they sat there, four minutes after an attempt on their lives, sitting on old practise mats under fluorescent lights and in rumpled Muggle suits. Harry held on.