Working outside the office had its advantages. For one thing, Harry didn’t have to face Dawlish every day.
For another, Malfoy liked having his workplace about four inches away from where he slept. He decided that this meant Shacklebolt meant him to sleep in until half past ten every day, because he wanted him to be happy.
It was typical Malfoy that, with the everyday presence of Shacklebolt removed, he decided that Shacklebolt was his wise and all-knowing mentor.
“It is at difficult times like these that I think of my dear sensei,” Malfoy said soulfully three days after they’d started working from home, “and I ask myself—What Would Shacklebolt Do?”
Harry could hear the capital letters in his head. He also came to the belated realisation that he shouldn’t let Malfoy watch karate movies.
“Malfoy, I just asked you what you wanted in your sandwich.”
“Shacklebolt used to eat sandwiches,” Malfoy said. “Oh, I remember. Through the mist of years, through the veil of tears. Don’t you remember? Those were happy days.” He indulged himself in a wistful pause. “How I miss our glorious leader’s guidance. I think he had tuna on rye.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “Just so you know, I’m smirking at you and finding you generally ridiculous.”
“No you’re not,” Malfoy said, curled up serene under his quilt with his eyes tight shut. “You can never muster up a proper smirk. It’s almost a disability. It makes me so sad for you.”
Harry came and put the sandwiches down on the coffee table, next to the case files.
“Get up,” he said. He meant it to be a simple command, Malfoy was being disgracefully lazy, but he was looking at Malfoy’s sleepy face and it came out low and almost—if his voice didn’t snag on that kind of thing, like a rough hand on silk—tender.
Malfoy smiled slowly and did not open his eyes. “Mmm. I am up.”
“I’m shaking my head at you,” Harry informed him. He sat cross-legged at the coffee table and dragged over a report on a troll highwayman.
After a few minutes he heard the small familiar rustling sounds of Malfoy dragging himself the few crucial centimetres out of his blankets and felt the weight of Malfoy’s head hit his shoulder. Malfoy dug his sharp chin into the muscle reprovingly.
“You’re spelling nefarious wrong.”
“You barely have your eyes open,” Harry said, not turning even a little towards him. He knew Malfoy’s face was close: he could see the tangled and sunlit blond movement in the corner of his eye. He felt rather than saw the smile.
“I can hear you spelling things wrong at this stage,” Malfoy drawled.
He leaned against Harry while Harry wrote, his chest against Harry’s back warm and solid under a thin t-shirt. It always took him a while to summon up the energy to snatch at his coffee cup: after that he was able to shower and dress and set to work with twice the speed of a normal person, vibrating slightly like a tense, held wire.
The mornings were nice. Harry tried to pretend everything else was fine, too, even though they couldn’t spar and the endless paperwork was mind-numbingly dull and either he or Malfoy was pacing the floor half the time. Harry couldn’t really go for a walk anymore without his Invisibility Cloak and the neighbours all thought Malfoy was talking to himself and utterly mental, which wasn’t really a significant change in the neighbours’ views on Malfoy. They tried to spar in a local gym and had to climb out a window and escape when someone called the cops.
For New Year’s they went to Andromeda’s house and Harry had to answer Mrs Weasley’s well-meaning questions about his love life and Malfoy had to answer Andromeda’s well-meaning questions about Katie.
They had to leave early when Mrs Weasley got an upsetting gleam in her eye and suggested what Harry needed was the love of a good woman ripe in years and comfortable in her own skin. They rang in the New Year with Malfoy sniggering uncontrollably into the sofa cushions and Harry feeling traumatised for life in the armchair.
Harry knew that it was strange and warped to want the adrenalin of pushing his body almost to breakdown limit, of escaping death at least once a week and of breaking every rule and every law in the book, but he didn’t much care. He just wanted the job back, with a restless uneasy longing that made him resent everyone in the world.
Sometimes when Harry was up hours early and Malfoy was fast asleep on the sofa, Harry would lean over and brush a lock of hair out of his face, as gently as he knew how. It was just—he’d be more comfortable that way and it made Harry feel better, stilled the wild urge to do something for a little while.
Malfoy never had to know.
Malfoy mostly did the grocery shopping by himself now. Harry was leaning in the threshold, door ajar so he could hear his return, when he heard Malfoy taking the steps two at a time and a woman’s voice—that Scottish girl, what was her name—say: “Hi, Draco.”
“Hi, Fiona,” said Malfoy. That was it.
“I was wondering,” said Fiona, and stopped. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Harry leaned his head back against the door frame and frowned. What did she want? Oh God, could she be going to ask Malfoy out?
Harry had pretty much no doubt that Malfoy’s anti-Muggle prejudices would probably evaporate if any Muggles were to show a pro-Malfoy bias and he reminded himself again that Malfoy hadn’t chosen to be here, didn’t want to be here: that he was here because his heart was broken and Harry couldn’t keep him.
He’d always disliked Fiona. She had a shifty look about her. He suspected her of stealing the internet from the couple on the third floor. You couldn’t trust someone like her.
“This shopping bag in my hand was not moving of its own accord,” Malfoy told her. “That was an optical illusion. For as you can plainly see, it is in my hand. As it is inanimate and I must carry it from place to place.”
“Okay,” Fiona said, and sounded like she was smiling and finding Malfoy strangely charming. Which was idiotic, as Malfoy was quite obviously insane and she should stay away. “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. So, you’ve moved in?”
“Er,” Malfoy said doubtfully. “I suppose you could say that.”
“Things are going well?”
“We haven’t had any trouble with the pipes or anything, if that’s what you mean,” Malfoy said. “Are you having trouble with the pipes? Oh my God, don’t tell me we have rats, I hate rats. The common rat typically carries at least eleven potentially fatal diseases. So do pigeons. Lots of people think pigeons are harmless, you know, but they’re really not, they’re just vermin with wings. Nasty tempers, too. If pigeons had shark teeth London would be a scene of carnage.”
When exactly had he got comfortable enough with Fiona to chat to her like a maniac?
“You know I like you, Draco,” said Fiona in a rush. That hussy.
“Do you?” Malfoy’s voice warmed. “I like you too.”
Malfoy, Harry reflected irritably, was a lot like one of those dogs who looked fierce and was secretly anyone’s for a pat on the head.
“And I know you’re different,” Fiona went on.
“I swear to God that shopping bag was not moving—”
“I mean different from the others,” said Fiona. “To Harry.”
There was a deep, deeply puzzled silence.
“But I thought you should know there are others,” Fiona told him, sounding distressed. “There was this good-looking boy with freckles around all of one summer, and this sparkly little guy, he was around again quite recently. I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this but—he’s not faithful.”
“Ah,” said Malfoy, his voice all funny and distant. “Well, you see, he’s not—” There was a pause, and then Harry was horrified to hear him speaking in the calm, delighted tones he used when he’d thought of something he believed was funny. “He’s not to blame,” Malfoy informed Fiona. “He has a problem.”
“What?” said Fiona.
“Oh yes,” said Malfoy smoothly, sounding inappropriately thrilled about this. “He’s a sex maniac.”
“What?” said Fiona.
“He could never be satisfied by just one man,” Malfoy told her with gathering glee. “Which is sad for me,” he added as an obvious afterthought. “Yes. But I’m very brave and patient about it. I recognise that it’s a disease.”
“What?” said Fiona.
“Well, I must be off,” Malfoy said. “But I want to talk more about this later, all right? I’m so glad to finally have someone to confide in.”
He came in, stepping neatly around Harry, and Harry caught a fleeting glimpse of Fiona’s shocked face before he shut the door. Malfoy went over to the kitchen sink and leaned against it as he burst out into hysterics.
“Oh my God, I hate you,” Harry said. “You’re evil and I hate you.”
“Serves you right for cheating on me,” said Malfoy, and howled laughing at how absolutely absurd he obviously thought Fiona’s mistake was.
They saved up visiting Hogwarts until it was almost February and they were going stir crazy and Malfoy was talking about fixing their showerhead to talk like Cyril the toaster.
Cyril the toaster was always making helpful remarks in the kitchen and Harry found that pretty entertaining, but he really didn’t think he could handle that kind of thing in the shower. So he got Malfoy to Owl the school and warn them to stock up on the peppermints, and Malfoy became overexcited about seeing Snape which in Harry’s opinion was a bit like being excited about going on holiday in one of the lower circles of hell.
They got the car and Malfoy spent the first hour passionately telling the radio, which he’d named Maurice, how much he loved and had missed him. Harry spent his time feeling peaceful, with even the turn of the wheel under his hands sweet and familiar to him, the car sailing through clear air on their way to a job and Malfoy’s voice going on and on and on, endless as the sky.
“I think you should like Professor Snape now we know he liked your mother,” Malfoy decided randomly at some point.
“I don’t see why,” Harry said. “Doesn’t have anything to do with me. Besides, I think it’s kind of weird and disgusting.”
“Not disgusting,” Malfoy protested. “Professor Snape is a very striking man! And your mother was—”
“Malfoy, if you finish that sentence I will push you out of the car.”
“What?” Malfoy said, outraged. “I don’t mean it personally. God, you know me better than that, not a redhead.”
“Nothing wrong with redheads,” Harry said. He liked bright hair: he liked the way it lit up a room, made places seem warmer and more like home.
“Your sexual preferences are bizarre and distressing,” Malfoy told him, very solemn.
Harry made a rude gesture and then saw Hogwarts appear on the horizon, turrets bright gold in the afternoon sunlight and making Harry catch his breath as it always did, like seeing someone you loved unexpectedly. Gardens and hills and Quidditch pitches and dark forests spiralled out from it and the castle stood, the serene unchanging centre of it all. His first home: his only home so far, and for a moment it felt like Ron and Hermione were waiting at the Gryffindor table and he was safe, he belonged at last and he always would.
The feeling lingered long enough for him to say, as he brought the car in a descending circle and parked outside the door: “Sometimes I wish we’d never left school.”
“I can insult you at every opportunity and look at you with purest loathing if that makes you happier,” Malfoy said, and shut his door with unnecessary force.
“That’s not what—” Harry began, but Malfoy was striding ahead, shoving the doors open and walking out into the Great Hall, where he was intercepted by a woman’s voice.
The woman was descending the staircase. She was tall and sturdy-looking, her face freckled and her grey-flecked brown hair cut short. Harry didn’t recognise her: she was beaming at Malfoy.
“Draco,” she said with obvious pleasure. “I just nipped down before class to see you. You’re looking well.”
She came over to him and kissed him on the cheek. Malfoy put his arm around her waist and practically glowed in that way he did, so all the coolness of pale face and grey eyes kindled and blazed up in something less like colour than light.
“And Mr Potter, nice to see you too.”
“Harry,” Harry said, wondering who on earth she could possibly be.
“But you were never one of my students, were you,” said the woman, which didn’t help Harry a whole lot. “While Draco here was a bit of a favourite of mine.”
Malfoy glowed some more. “I was an engaging child,” he told them all as if he was about to launch into a dramatic performance of his autobiography. “Everyone thought so. I was blond like a little angel and always impeccably well-behaved. Not to mention my quick wit.”
“I can say with total honesty that this is not how I remember you,” said Harry.
“You were very sweet,” said Professor Who the Hell Knew, and squeezed Malfoy’s arm. “I’ve never seen anyone in my class with such a bad case of the purebloods. You talked too loudly to nobody in particular and you acted like touching the desks with your elbows would contaminate you and how I longed to smack that stupid smirk off your arrogant little face. And then your first bit of homework came in and it was the best piece of work I’d seen in years, and I remembered that you had chosen Muggle Studies.”
“I always did superbly at school,” Malfoy decided, ignoring the rest of it blithely. “And I was very sweet.”
“You’re wasted being an Auror,” Professor—Muggle Studies, Hermione had definitely told him this, possibly Burbling. No, Burbage, that was it—Professor Burbage said, and leaned up and kissed Malfoy on the cheek. “Come to the next reunion.”
Malfoy pressed her hand and was silent, and then Professor Burbage nodded pleasantly at Harry and walked back up the stairs. Harry was startled to see a shadow pass over Malfoy’s face and he moved closer to him, put a shoulder in front of him and gave him an inquiring look.
“It’s nothing,” Malfoy snapped at him, and then in a lower voice: “I was just—I was always afraid something would happen to her, during the war. But I asked Professor Snape and—he saw to it that she was safe.”
They didn’t talk much about the war, except for a few times when they’d both been really drunk and Harry had talked about blood and Malfoy about fear. Harry cleared his throat and pressed his shoulder back into Malfoy’s.
“I wonder if she’s single,” Malfoy said meditatively.
“Malfoy! She must be fifty years old!”
“I don’t mind,” Malfoy said. “I found Mrs Weasley’s speech at New Year’s very convincing, actually. How did it go now, oh yes—”
“Time’s getting on,” Harry threatened him. “Maybe we’d better skip seeing Professor Snape.”
“Oh fine,” Malfoy said. “I’ll be good. Let’s go now, come on, this way—”
It made Malfoy happy and he was in a weird mood, so Harry went and prepared to do that thing he and Snape did where they carefully pretended that they weren’t in the same room as each other but that they’d taken a random dislike to a certain spot of empty air.
As they opened the door to the Potions classroom, they heard Snape say: “Ten points from—what house are you even in, boy?”
“Hufflepuff,” said a small dark boy promptly.
Harry was relieved to see that Snape was teaching first years: Malfoy’d had to send warnings ahead for the staff to eat mints and keep anyone who’d gone through puberty out of the way.
“Nice try, Ratcliff. Twenty points from Slytherin,” said Snape dryly, and Malfoy broke into a smile.
“Sir,” he said, and rapped on the doorframe. “We’re from the Aurors? I was wondering if you might help us with some questions.”
Snape turned, and his lip curled away from his yellow teeth in what Harry recognised was half-surprise and half almost a smile. That changed when his black eyes moved over Malfoy’s shoulder to Harry.
“Mr Malfoy,” he said, and his voice hitting a flat note: “Mr Potter. Of course: come in.”
Malfoy strolled in and leaned on the desk beside Snape, his whole body an easy, liquid slump, never more graceful than when he wasn’t thinking about it. He started talking about getting a list of all the mixed-blood students, his voice low, hands making small shapes.
Harry leaned against the doorframe and studied the first years, small and excited in the gloom of the Potions dungeons. Some of them were looking at Harry in awe or fear, depending on what their parents had told them about the war. Some of them were obviously thrilled by the mention of Aurors and were gazing as if he and Malfoy were rock stars, and some of them were looking at Malfoy’s close proximity to Snape with the air of people watching someone juggle flaming torches next to dynamite.
One of them, the little dark one called Ratcliff, was looking deeply alarmed and waving his hand around urgently.
Snape slanted a more than usually irritated glance towards him. “Well?”
“Sir, I think I may have raised my slug from the dead, sir!”
Snape’s narrow-eyed gaze caused the small boy to shrink even further in his seat and murmur pleadingly: “Accidentally, sir!”
Snape sighed. “Mr Malfoy, I believe you have just about sufficient Potions expertise to deal with this: I really do not have the heart.”
His tone was cold and his manner contemptuous, but Malfoy smiled as if he had just been presented with a lollipop by an indulgent uncle. There was a slight lessening of hostility in Snape’s face once Malfoy had turned his back, and Harry thought that it was possible that this was how Snape had meant it.
Harry also noticed that there was no smell of peppermint lingering about Snape as there had been about Professor Burbage, and clutched the doorframe in complete terror.
“Oh please, Mr Potter,” said Snape, not looking at him but wiping the instructions from his board to the accompanying faint moans of students who obviously hadn’t transcribed it all. “Let me assure you that I do not stand in the least need of peppermint. I am considered rather skilled at Occlumency, I would find a large arachnid more my type than anyone even vaguely resembling James Potter, and the other obstacle before your Veela charms—” he only just got those words out past a terrific sneer—“is also in place.”
There was a silence broken only by Malfoy and Ratcliff anxiously begging a slug to go into the light as Harry thought: in love with someone else.
“Is it,” he said, and looked at the floor. “Still?”
“Always,” Snape answered, and spoiled the pathos of the moment by adding: “Not that it is any of your business at all.”
“It was just, I meant,” Harry said. “If it was all about the V—I mean, it wasn’t real, was it?”
“I fail to see why anyone would be dense enough to imagine that the origin of a feeling is all that a feeling ends up being about,” Snape said crossly. “The right moment, a particularly attractive dress, the right word, a shared interest or magic—what does it matter? It has been over twenty years: the effects of Veela magic last about five minutes when out of the Veela’s immediate presence. A Veela can inspire real feeling as well as any other creature.” He paused and added: “Given your singularly unappealing personality, I doubt you will ever do so, of course.”
“Oh thanks,” Harry said dryly. He was about to inquire how much lasting devotion Snape himself had inspired when real curiosity stopped him and made him ask instead: “So was it all—the war and the spying business—was it all about… that?”
“Certainly not,” Snape barked.
“Oh,” said Harry, who’d been tentatively thinking that really was a bit romantic, after all.
“It may have started out like that,” Snape admitted grudgingly, as if he ever did anything any other way. “But what is a feeling worth if it shuts out all other feeling? Not living life as fully as I could would be an insult to—” He swallowed the name. “If a life is lived in memory of one feeling—it would have made it a smaller life, and me a smaller person, not to do other things with that life. I fought the war for many reasons, Mr Potter, including the fact I have felt both respect and affection for several people. Never you, I might add.”
“You shock me,” said Harry.
He thought of the way Snape had guarded Malfoy through the war as he knew he had, how he’d listened to Malfoy’s concerns and saved Professor Burbage. He could have been a smaller person, with smaller concerns: it all could have gone much worse.
Not that Snape the way he was had a big soppy heart overflowing with love, of course.
“Sir!” a girl said at the top of her voice. “Ratcliff’s undead slug is trying to eat my stewed slugs!”
“It isn’t!” Ratcliff snapped, glaring.
“Ratcliff’s undead cannibal slug is ruining my Potion! This always happens!”
“It does not,” said Ratcliff, turning eyes of appeal to Malfoy. “How could it? I’ve never even had an undead cannibal slug before. She’s talking rubbish!”
“I have never yet heard any of you talk anything else,” Snape snarled, wheeling from the blackboard towards the students, who leaned back in their chairs like trees in a gale. “Mr Malfoy, I see you have let the whole situation spiral out of control, please step back and let me handle it. Miss Varley, cease complaining: I have no doubt your shrill tones are only aggravating the slug. Mr Ratcliff—words fail me.”
“Don’t kill him!” Ratcliff screeched. “Mr Malfoy named him Eustace!”
“My stewed slugs are all gone,” Miss Varley observed, fixing Ratcliff with darkly accusing eyes. “This is what comes of sharing Potions class with Slytherins.”
“Eustace didn’t mean any harm,” said Ratcliff, sharing a conspiratorial look with Malfoy. “I can’t wait to leave school,” he added with growing conviction, “and be an Auror and never have to mix with Gryffindors anymore and not have women messing with my slug!”
“Hey,” Malfoy said lightly. “My partner’s a Gryffindor.”
“Oh my God,” said Ratcliff, sweeping Harry an appalled look from head to toe. “You mean you never get away from them?”
Ratcliff made a lunge and Varley seized her schoolbook like a weapon and Snape roared: “Mr Ratcliff, unhand Miss Varley’s crucible at once—do you hear me? At once!”
“I was thinking of dropping by for tea around your birthday, sir,” Malfoy said tentatively.
Snape hesitated and then said: “Bother me any time but now, Mr Malfoy,” which sent Malfoy practically floating up the stairs. The sound of an all-out war for the undead cannibal slug followed after them.
Harry was a bit distracted by unexpectedly feeling empathy with Snape. He was thinking of Ron and Hermione and, well, Pansy and Crabbe and Goyle and Dean and Ginny, his friends, and the job he loved and the people he’d helped and having Malfoy with him even if he couldn’t have anything else. Making his life about one thing would have been making his life small, and himself a smaller person.
He’d been able to accept not having what he wanted. But now this stupid ridiculous Veela thing was messing with his job and his friends and—if it could just go away, everything would be all right. He could go on with his life. He could.
Lavender and Firenze lived in the hut that Hagrid had lived in before he gave up his job—“Was fired,” Malfoy insisted every time—and went to live in sin and in France with Madame Maxime.
Lavender had added a lot of extensions, though. Her daughter had a little pink bedroom and she had a separate kitchen and her husband had a platform to star-gaze from and a paddock where they exercised the baby.
She was pleased to see them at first. She shook hands and passed around peppermint tea that Harry refused and Malfoy accepted, and offered extremely embarrassingly congratulations about being partners. Malfoy corrected her without turning a hair and then told her that she might want to call in her husband.
The little girl, Jasmine, was small and sweet and fit in her mother’s arms when Lavender snatched her up as they kept talking. She had brown hair tied with two ribbons and the only thing that suggested her mixed blood was the fact she had little hooves instead of feet. Lavender had put pink socks over those.
The baby, Fornax, looked like a full centaur except apparently his upper half had matured slowly, like a human’s. Lavender told them shakily about how they’d still had to keep his head supported while his legs were able to run a mile.
“It was a bit of a nightmare for the first six months,” she said, “Some people thought we should’ve stopped with Jas since we got lucky and there were a few nights I agreed with them—but, oh, we love him.”
She looked at Harry almost pleadingly, as if her moments of doubt had put her child in danger and Harry was the judge who’d decide if her love could redeem him. Harry looked away.
“There’ll be four Aurors watching the house day and night,” Malfoy promised, already sitting on the floor and amusing Fornax with floating spoons. He stumbled forward, a little top-heavy and almost toppling flat, but Firenze reached down and arrested the fall with gentle hands and what was obviously long habit.
“He’ll grow into this,” Firenze told them both. “In a few years, nobody will be able to tell he had a human mother. But he will know, and always remember these years of helplessness, and—he will be a great man one day.”
Harry wasn’t sure if this was fatherly fondness or weird prophecy, so he said “Oh?” and took one of Lavender’s scones.
“Of course I always knew that Lavender was the one soul destined for mine,” Firenze added, apropos of nothing very much. “I read it in the stars. But I felt it was inappropriate to inform her before she had left school.”
Lavender looked at him with a radiant face, so obviously I-read-it-in-the-stars was the language of love in the Firenze-Brown household. Harry supposed this made sense.
“Similarly, I knew my children were in danger before this,” Firenze said. “The danger has not passed yet.”
“Have the stars given you any names or addresses?” Malfoy inquired.
Firenze gave Malfoy a disapproving look and told him that was not really how the stars worked. Malfoy subsided into muttering about how taking Divination would have made him develop an ulcer.
“I know the Murimbles,” Lavender said, looking steadily more upset. She reached out a hand and Firenze caught it without even looking to see it was there, the gesture speaking of the same long habit he’d shown catching his son. “We all belong to LAST—the Love Above Species Team, d’you see?”
“Could we get the names and addresses of everyone in that group?” Harry asked, and took them down. “And Professor Snape is making a list of all the students of mixed ancestry, if you could look it over and add any names he may have left out—”
“Of course, anything we can do,” Lavender said, and Malfoy did what Harry couldn’t do and said all the right things, soothing and smooth and like the politician he’d wanted to be in third year. He made jokes until she smiled weakly and told her there was no reason to believe they were specific targets, that she would be well looked after.
At the door Lavender took Harry’s hand and he looked down into her scared face.
“I won’t let anything happen to your children,” he blurted out. “I swear.”
She smiled a little less weakly then, and gave him a hug. He patted her back a bit awkwardly.
“She’s cute,” Malfoy observed as they walked across green hills and back to the car. Harry could see the school Quidditch pitch in the distance, tiny flying figures and the faint sweet sounds of children yelling obscenities about a foul. “I don’t suppose you ever had a tiny fling on one of those long boring evenings in the Gryffindor common room?”
“We mostly played Exploding Snap.”
“I am so thankful I was in Slytherin,” Malfoy told him. “Not even a tiny crush?”
“I never had a crush on anyone in school but Cho Chang and Ginny,” Harry said firmly.
“That Exploding Snap must hold off hormones like nobody’s business,” Malfoy observed. “I had dozens of crushes. I liked Cho Chang too, mind you.” He sounded a little wistful. “She had such pretty hair. And the way she flew…”
“Did anything ever happen?” Harry asked, not sure how he felt about that.
Malfoy scoffed. “Oh sure, with you and Michael Corner and Cedric Diggory after her. No, she never noticed. Of course, I usually expressed my affections by cheating in Ravenclaw games with what I fondly imagined was a debonair grace.”
Harry looked back at what he remembered of Slytherin and Ravenclaw games. He mostly recalled being on his feet cheering determinedly for Ravenclaw a lot. He supposed there had been moments when the blue and green flags turned into an aquamarine silk sea in a sudden gust of wind, when he’d seen other players whirled about in the air like falling leaves and Malfoy riding the currents, face a pale intent blur, and he’d been able to appreciate that when Malfoy wasn’t cheating like a fiend he could still fly well.
“A lot of school was wondering why I never seemed to get what I wanted,” Malfoy said, more thoughtful than bitter. “Of course, I didn’t know then that’s how life is. I mostly blamed you.”
He had, too, Harry thought, recalling about a million instances of Malfoy behaving towards him in the way he did with people who disliked him, furious, bewildered, and exactly calculated to make people dislike him more. Harry wondered what he would’ve done if—oh, if something had happened: if they’d never had a bad start and worse to follow, if Harry had been Sorted into Slytherin or if Harry had worked Malfoy out miraculously or more likely if Hermione had and told Harry about it. Maybe they could’ve fought a troll together.
The castle was dark grey against the pale grey sky of afternoon turning to evening. There were lights inside and voices, children running past the windows.
“It might’ve been nice if we hadn’t hated each other at school,” Harry offered slowly.
Of course if they hadn’t, if he’d got to know Malfoy who flew debonairly to impress Cho Chang and pretended not to like Muggle Studies and fooled absolutely nobody, well, then… Well, actually, Harry had a clear memory of his past self and if past Harry had been assailed by some helpless schoolboy longings for Malfoy, he definitely would’ve put it down to Voldemort influencing his mind.
“Yes,” Malfoy agreed. “Right up to the moment when the world favoured you so much that I had to restore karmic balance to the universe by punching you in the nose. Or right up to the moment I said something racist and you punched me in the nose.”
Harry frowned. “Yes, right up til then.”
“So that would’ve been a beautiful and harmonious four minutes,” Malfoy said, but he was smiling a little. He raised his eyebrows when Harry glanced over at him, glad he was pleased, and said: “Only Cho Chang and Ginny Weasley? God, the world is unfair. You’ve never wanted anything in your life that you didn’t get, have you?”
Malfoy stopped and looked over his shoulder at the Quidditch practise, shielding his eyes with a hand. The setting sun flattered him: turned his hair gold and made his eyes look like hazy, liquid mirrors. The sun even touched his thin, expressive mouth with light and made it look almost kind, which Harry knew it never looked on its own.
If this was karmic balance, Harry hated it. It was all so difficult, with this stupid Veela thing, he had only Malfoy, all the time, and Malfoy was alone so he could have him all the time and it wasn’t helping at all and he didn’t want it to stop.
He put his hands in his pockets, in fists, so he wouldn’t reach out.
His voice scraped on birdsong and a hiss again as he said: “Guess not.”
“WE WANT WOOD!” screamed a hundred voices. “WE WANT WOOOOOOD!”
Harry had wanted to stake out Hogwarts but they were only allowed to pull some night shifts. Malfoy, that traitor, had nodded at the orders and murmured that seeing teenage girls swarm Harry had been bad enough when they were actually at school.
But they had been desperate and pleaded, and Shacklebolt had decided to send them somewhere where everyone loved another.
And that other was one man.
Oliver Wood, singlehandedly responsible for making Quidditch a sport overwhelmingly dominated by female spectators and holder of a world record for received love letters and death threats, smiled around the dressing room.
“Looks like they’re eager to start the match!” he said brightly. “So’m I, boys! And not to worry about the lads who say I’ve stolen their wives’ hearts and they’ll kill me for it. Or about the ladies who say that if they can’t have me nobody will. Because these fine Aurors are here to protect us. You can trust Harry, lads, he could’ve played Quidditch for England if he hadn’t decided that being an Auror would, uh, what was it you said again, Harry?”
“I wanted to help people and combat the injustices of the world,” Harry said.
Wood blinked, obviously completely uncomprehending, and said: “Um. And it’s your right to choose, I suppose. Since the government haven’t been responding to my letters about Quidditch conscription.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s go get them!”
His team, who loved him passionately to a man despite the fact their team headquarters had been blown up by crazed fans seven times, all cheered desperately.
“You don’t have any Veela blood in you, do you?” Malfoy asked in an undertone.
“Nah,” Wood said, white teeth flashing in his tanned face. “I’m all man.”
“And what a man!” murmured an adoring teammate.
His teammates were nothing compared to the fans. He and Malfoy took brooms and flew over the screaming, rioting masses as the match went on. They didn’t see a trace of a threat and Wood’s team won the game with four hundred points to spare.
Harry and Malfoy followed Wood up onto the winner’s platform amid a rain of flowers and underwear.
“WHAT DO WE WANT?” shrieked the referee, who seemed to have completely lost his head. “WOOD! WHEN DO WE WANT HIM? NOW!”
“You’re a beautiful man,” said the woman presenting Wood with his trophy. “Make love to me.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the game,” Wood told her. “Always pleased to meet a fan.”
Harry was outside and he’d been flying and the job had gone as smoothly as cream. He was in an wonderful mood. He shook the woman’s hand and she told him that he was gloriously handsome but no Oliver Wood, and he almost wanted to kiss her.
He and Malfoy fell into step beside Wood as he walked away from the Quidditch grounds.
“Excellent guarding,” Wood said. “Nothing got blown up even a little bit. And more importantly, there were no assassination attempts! Those always put me off my game.”
Malfoy was occupied grumbling about how one elderly wizard’s yellow pantaloons had hit him in the face, so Harry gave Wood a warm smile and told him he was glad and it’d been a great game.
“Thanks, Harry,” Wood said. He beamed and Harry smiled back again, feeling relaxed and happy for the first time in weeks, and Wood blinked at him. “Harry,” he said slowly. “I, um—you’re really good-looking.”
He sounded mildly puzzled, as if this was the first time he’d ever noticed this about anything but a shapely and aerodynamic broom.
“Thanks,” Harry said, very short, all his pleasure in the day fading. “Malfoy, where’s your mint spray?”
“I mean—really, really good-looking,” Wood told him, still looking puzzled but with his brown eyes becoming warm. “And a marvellous flier, of course,” he added, sounding on firmer ground there. “You move like a dream in the air.”
“Malfoy,” Harry said urgently.
“You know,” Malfoy remarked in a thoughtful voice, “I think… maybe you guys should talk some more about dreams in the air and so forth. I’ll be in the car flipping through some Quidditch magazines or something. Take your time.”
“Which Quidditch magazines?” Wood asked, his eyes turning to Malfoy for a second.
“You’ve read them, Wood,” Malfoy told him firmly, his voice retreating.
“Oh,” said Wood, and his eyes swung back to Harry as if he was a compass finding true north.
Harry was rooted to the spot with horror at how quickly the day had turned on him and by Malfoy’s desertion: by what Malfoy so clearly wanted him to do.
And why shouldn’t Malfoy want him to do it? What difference did it make to Malfoy, except the difference between being able to do their jobs and not being able to do them? Everything could be okay.
Not living my life as fully as I could would be an insult, Snape had said.
It was nearly March, and the sky overhead was a bright overbearing blue and he was standing by a Quidditch shed with Oliver Wood looking at him with soft warm eyes. The Veela thing was only getting worse. This would make Malfoy happier. It would make Harry happier.
Harry looked at Wood directly for the first time since this had started. Wood in a rumpled Quidditch uniform, big shoulders, strong jaw and sweet dark eyes. There was a sprinkling of golden freckles on the bridge of his nose. He was very, very attractive. Harry could see that. And this wouldn’t hurt Wood, he didn’t think Wood could ever love anyone more than Quidditch.
Harry could do it, he thought.
He’d done it before, he remembered: Smith’s teeth too hard in his lower lip, the ashy taste of Baddock’s cigarettes in his mouth, Ritchie really good and really trying and really not touching a single chord in him, and even that stranger he couldn’t recall any details about.
“Would you like to go flying sometime?” Wood asked, and then less certainly: “Or—or kiss me, now?”
“Yes,” Harry said, his voice defiant and violent, and he grabbed Wood’s brown wrist and drew him towards Harry.
The wood of the Quidditch shed was rough against Harry’s back. He curled his fingers around a slat: uneven, the paint flaking, splinters biting into his palm, and shut his eyes and concentrated on that instead of Wood’s body against his, Wood’s wide mouth suddenly pressed to his. Wood felt good, Harry told himself, he was strong and his muscles were hard against Harry’s and he was surprisingly gentle and he smelled good, too.
It was just—he was confused by spending so much time with Malfoy, that was all. His mind was all tangled up, it kept presenting him with thoughts of things that made no sense at all like—like Malfoy resting against him in the mornings, sleepy and lovely, his hair tickling Harry’s ear and feeling as if Harry could just turn and slide his fingers lightly along Malfoy’s sharp jaw and how was he supposed to ever want anything else?
Harry paused, shocked still by Wood’s startled noise, and realised he’d just grabbed Wood, whirled and pushed him up against the shed, and begun to kiss him for real.
And why not, he thought, sweat trickling cold down the back of his neck as Wood kissed him with even more eagerness. This wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, either, about a thousand times in the shower or alone in bed or with Baddock, Malfoy’s face in the lamplight before his closed eyes, or sometimes with Ritchie when he was too tired or desperate to stop himself.
If he shut his eyes and just thought about something, like—like one stifling summer day in the car when Malfoy’d been swimming and crawled back into the car. He’d stretched shirtless against the hot seat, head tipped back, pale throat bared and cool drops of water—Harry could feel how cool they were just looking—sliding down to the waist of his jeans and Harry had thought oh Jesus yes, please and had to hold onto the car door to stop himself lunging at him.
Wood made a low sound of approval deep in his throat, and Malfoy and the car slipped out of Harry’s mind. He was just standing here, fingers at the waist of Wood’s trousers under his Quidditch robes, and he didn’t feel like he was with Malfoy or even with Wood but with Malcolm Baddock again, with the taste of ash and despair in his mouth.
Harry stumbled backwards, wiping his mouth, and saw Wood reach out to have him back.
“God, no,” Harry said, feeling blind and sick as if someone’d hit him. “I can’t, I can’t, I don’t want to.”
He turned and ran before his body could make clear its protest that it’d actually been far too long and maybe he did want to, and fled for the car. He slammed the door behind him and sat in the driver’s seat, blood thumping in his veins as if it was running somewhere still, his muscles still tense with the urge to escape, to go anywhere—
If Malfoy had been in the passenger seat Harry would have done something, hit him possibly but far more probably just have really lunged like he’d wanted to years ago, held him against the window and kissed that stupid mouth, what had he been thinking of deserting him like that, God.
Malfoy was lying in the back seat flipping through a Quidditch magazine. Harry leaned against the steering wheel and put his head in his arms and heard Malfoy scrambling to sit up, to get to him. He wanted to hit something, wanted to spar: his muscles were locked now and screaming at him. He could still smell Oliver Wood on himself, the scent was all over him.
“I’m sorry,” Malfoy said instantly. “Look, I’m sorry. You two get on well and you have lots in common and he’s very handsome and I thought it might be a good solution. You should’ve said. I’m sorry.”
“What,” Harry snarled, and he could hear his voice going all wrong, trying to threaten Malfoy and call him closer at the same time, splintering in every direction. “What did you want me to say, I don’t…”
“Shhh,” said Malfoy, his voice so soothing, and Harry almost hated him for the fact it was going to work and Harry would feel better and calmer and then it wouldn’t last.
He lunged. Malfoy completely misinterpreted things, the stupid idiot, and there was a brief nightmarish struggle which ended in Harry’s head being forcibly shoved onto Malfoy’s shoulder. Harry’d hesitated, torn between grabbing him and throwing him into the car door and running, and lost.
His muscles still felt tight, strained to the limit. Malfoy stroked his back, a long smooth motion that made Harry relax under his hands like a cat, and Harry shut his eyes and leaned into Malfoy. “I hate this,” he snarled into Malfoy’s neck.
“I know,” Malfoy murmured, when he didn’t know anything. “I will work this out. Hey. Hey, Harry. It’s going to be all right.”
Malfoy’s voice went a little soft and tentative on his name and Harry did feel better and calmer, happy in the same ridiculous way he was in the mornings, for the sheer animal comfort of being close. Malfoy petted his hair a bit, which he did sometimes when he thought Harry was being particularly crazy. Nobody else ever touched him like this. Harry breathed in, deep and ragged and trying to collect himself. He didn’t have to convince himself that this felt good, his hand braced against Malfoy’s waist, knowing the precise feel of him, Malfoy warm and always slightly too thin, whipcord muscle and not enough flesh. He was practically in Malfoy’s car seat, breathing in and out and trying to concentrate on nothing but comfort.
“Everything’s all right,” Malfoy almost hummed, and Harry believed him. He made a small sound of agreement, contentment, and nuzzled the smooth warm line of Malfoy’s neck.
The back of his head hit the car window so suddenly he almost blacked out and did bite his tongue, darkness filling his head and blood filling his mouth, angry and amazed and feeling mostly like a starving animal allowed one bite to eat and then having it taken away, bewildered and ready to howl.
When he could see Malfoy properly Malfoy had turned his face away and all he could see was icy profile.
“That’s enough,” Malfoy drawled, using the drawl like a knife. “I’m not your mum. That ought to be easy for you to remember, shouldn’t it—considering you never had one?”
“What?” said Harry blankly.
“Nothing,” said Malfoy, sounding a bit guilty for a moment and he didn’t make any sense, that was his problem, “Can we go now?”
Malfoy was fairly silent for most of the journey home, seemingly intent on re-bonding with Maurice. Harry watched him carefully touching the controls, fingers light and almost loving, and told himself that it would be insane to be jealous of a car radio.
When they got home Malfoy went for a run and Harry had a shower. Once he was dressed again and left his room, towelling his hair dry, he found Malfoy apparently recovered from his weird fit or regression to school or whatever it had been, leaning against the kitchen counter and eating sugary cereal in his running clothes.
“You know, considering my broken heart and everything, I think a truly good partner would have used his Veela charms for something useful,” Malfoy remarked.
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yes. All you would have to do was sparkle a bit or whatever it is you do, and then you could bring me the Patil twins and I would be happy. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“I don’t think Padma Patil killing you and eating your liver would make you happy.”
“I don’t know,” Malfoy said with a sigh. “I bet she’d do it very attractively. Would you bring me just one Patil twin, just one tiny one? Padma for preference, of course.”
Insofar as Harry was aware, being totally unmoved by the Patil twins, most people preferred pretty, laughing, butterfly-wearing and not scary like her sister Parvati. Which was just more proof that Malfoy was weird.
“No,” he said flatly, and went to sit on the sofa.
“Fine,” Malfoy said, sounding terribly wronged and not all that heartbroken. “If you want me to die all wretched and alone, so be it. You’ll be sorry one of these days.”
Harry snorted. “Bet you one million Galleons?”
Malfoy laughed and poured himself another bowl of cereal, then shook the box. “If I can’t have the Patil twins, I should at least have Cheerios,” he said sadly, and wandered over to see what was on TV.
Naturally, Malfoy being Malfoy, he decided that the whole Oliver Wood thing was an enormous joke in approximately two days. They were driving to the Auror headquarters where they were due to perform their long-delayed display of synchronised Apparition.
“You’re just spoiled, that’s your problem,” Malfoy said. “Poor little Oliver Wood. He’s terribly attractive. Katie always thought so.”
It was the first time Harry had heard Malfoy say Katie’s name casually, so he said a little encouragingly: “Oh?”
“Oh yes,” said Malfoy, a little vicious. “Quidditch-mad imbecile that he is. I thought about getting an Oliver Wood haircut for a while. Maybe I should, now that I’m back on the dating scene.”
Malfoy flipped down the mirror and Harry glanced over, trying to see what Malfoy saw, and saw cool grey eyes under soft falling hair.
“Do you think I should get an Oliver Wood haircut?” Malfoy asked speculatively, tilting his head this way and that. “Would it look dashing?”
“No,” Harry said.
“Oh fine,” Malfoy sighed, flipping the mirror back up. “Probably best not to encourage any mad wenches with Wood obsessions, anyway. They’d only want a threesome or something. Katie and I were reading this book on—well, personal matters, I trust you understand—and we were meant to write down lots of different imaginary scenarios and once I was out of parchment I looked up and the only thing she’d been able to come up with was a threesome with Oliver Wood.”
Malfoy wittering like a maniac and occasionally saying truly inappropriate things was par for the course, and he was still saying Katie’s name casually enough, so Harry made a noncommittal sound and let the sound wash over him.
“I didn’t mind,” Malfoy assured him, a touch too quickly. “I’m very open like that. Jaded, you might say. A man of the world. The time I made out with Zabini, I don’t mind telling you that—oh my God, stop!”
Harry had just lost control of the wheel and the car had kind of—flipped over in midair, in a screaming circle, and Harry had barely noticed but Malfoy bolted upright from his idle, chattering slouch.
“You did what?”
“Park the car,” Malfoy commanded in a shaken voice, and when Harry parked in an empty building site he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the dashboard. “Oh my God,” he said hollowly. “My whole life just flashed before my eyes. You were even crazier the second time around.”
“You did what?”
“What?” Malfoy blinked over at him, looking distinctly woebegone about the cars flipping and life flashing business. “What are you—oh. The time I made out with Zabini? Did you not know about that?”
“No,” Harry snarled. “What—when?”
“In school,” Malfoy said, his voice wondering at this new madness. “Sixth year, you know, when everyone with Veela powers was going completely haywire. It was a dare, Slytherins do that kind of thing because we can’t handle the excitement of Exploding Snap, and it sort of got out of hand—”
Malfoy’s voice, beginning to be amused and always enjoying telling a story, cut off when Harry reached out and cut off all circulation from his wrist.
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a sudden outbreak of homophobia,” Malfoy remarked, letting Harry keep his wrist without comment. “What’s the matter?”
“How out of hand?” Harry demanded. “What happened?”
He’d thought that he didn’t mind Zabini. He’d been wrong, he saw that now: he wanted to tear him into tiny bloody pieces before he could ever even look at Malfoy again.
“Not much,” Malfoy answered. “A bit of kissing, a bit of rolling around on the floor. We did have an audience, after all, and besides that I know precisely where Zabini’s been and also, am I territory?”
“What?” Harry snapped, the thought of Malfoy kissing and—it went through him like toothache flashing through every bone in his body. He let go of Malfoy’s wrist and almost threw his hand back at him. “What are you talking about?”
He turned the car ignition on with a vicious twist, the engine snarling to itself, and spun it in a circle through the grey rubble and up into the air.
“Well—territory,” Malfoy offered the word again as if it wasn’t nonsense. “Like, it made Zabini upset when Fleur came to Hogwarts and Fleur’s the worst house guest in the world because it makes her irritable not to be on her own territory. And Zabini’s weird and unhappy about his mum all the time and Fleur didn’t even like having Bill’s family about much at first and you got all cranky and trailed Granger to the library like a pet bear cub when Weasley was hanging around with Thomas and Finnigan in fourth year. I suppose I might count as territory, with the partners thing and all. Veela are very territorial: other Veela mean a threat to the food supply, don’t you see, so—”
Harry had a headache and was fighting an urge to murder Zabini and all Malfoy could do was talk like a teacher. The clawing at his chest was making him feel breathless and scared of himself. His fist closed around the gear stick and he looked down at his own hand, knuckles bone white, and tried to breathe.
“Well—that’s okay,” Malfoy said after a moment. “I won’t do it again? Not that I was planning to.”
“Okay,” Harry ground out.
“And Granger and Weasley haven’t ever made out with Zabini,” Malfoy told him, evidently hoping this would appease Harry. “Gryffindor was up in a tower and safer, you know. I wish I could say the same thing for every Hufflepuff who went to school with us. D’you know, Zabini was voted Most Likely to Be Killed in a Crime of Passion and Most Likely to Die Young and Syphilitic in our yearbook.”
“We didn’t have a yearbook.” Harry made this point feeling tired and a little less furious, and wondering why Malfoy seemed pleased about something.
“Sure we did,” Malfoy said. “I made it. Did I forget to send the Gryffindors their copies? Oh, that’s a shame. You were voted Most Likely to Be Killed in a Crime of Annoyance. Won by a landslide, I don’t mind telling you.”
He reached over, casually but happy as if he was changing channels on Maurice, and his fingers played lightly over Harry’s white knuckles. Harry’s grip eased a little.
“Don’t worry,” said Malfoy, warm and light as the touch. “I’m not anybody’s partner but yours.”
They were standing on the rooftops when Shacklebolt let the prisoners in the Auror headquarters go. It was a day so clear the grey air was almost shining.
“Ready?” Shacklebolt said.
There were fourteen wandless but still dangerous criminals flooding over the roofs and down alleys, and the entire Aurors’ department standing around them taking notes. Harry felt lighter than he had in months, his spine easing out in a rush of adrenalin. He turned his head to catch the slow curve of Malfoy’s smile.
“I don’t know, Potter, are we ready?”
“I think so,” said Harry.
“Go!” said Shacklebolt, and Harry and Malfoy’s eyes met: Harry jerked his head towards the man farthest away, shinning down a drainpipe.
Malfoy nodded briefly and Harry Apparated smooth and sure, onto the edge of the roof. He grinned down and the man lost his grip and tumbled right into Malfoy’s arms, where Malfoy had Apparated directly below.
“Tch,” Malfoy said, efficiently putting his enchanted handcuffs to use. “Try to be more of a challenge, will you? We want this to look good.”
The man on the drainpipe down, next was a man trying to climb in a civilian’s window who swung in to see Malfoy and back out hurriedly into Harry’s grasp. The man trying to hide in a dustbin Harry dealt with himself as Malfoy lounged against the wall and declared he wasn’t even going to bother. Then there were a few who just ran and he and Malfoy ran with them, the March air cold and sweet in the back of Harry’s throat, Apparating and weaving and laughing with Malfoy always in the right place, always knowing exactly where he was.
It took less than ten minutes.
“Very good,” said Shacklebolt, a shade closer to an expression than usual. “And now I trust we all see the benefits of teamwork and practise, don’t we, ladies and gentlemen? How many times did you have to practise this?”
Malfoy, breathless and eyes shining, was sitting casually on the back of one of the prisoners and examining his nails. “This time counts, so—once?” he drawled.
Harry swallowed down a laugh. “Sir,” he said instead of yes. “Can we use the practise rooms to spar before we make a report?”
Shacklebolt made the despairing gesture they always took as permission and so wonderfully soon after they were in the empty rooms, prowling around each other and pretending to be lazy and casual about it. He watched the turn of Malfoy’s body as he circled, Harry’s every muscle singing: Malfoy’s eyes were all pupil, almost black.
“Been too long,” Harry said, and even the hissing song of his voice was right then. Everything was.
“Feeling rusty, are we?” Malfoy asked in a challenge Harry was dying to meet.
Twenty confused painful beautiful moments later, Malfoy surrendered and Harry stopped trying to break his collarbone and rolled off him and flat onto his back, arm over his eyes. He was covered in sweat and so tired, his whole body aching, and all he wanted was to crawl home and sleep for a week.
“Ow,” Malfoy complained, trying to lift up from the mat and collapsing face down. “I can’t move.”
“Whiner,” said Harry.
“I hate you,” said Malfoy. All that Harry could see of his face was Malfoy’s eye and the corner of his mouth, and sweaty hair in that single glittering eye. The corner of Malfoy’s mouth was turning up and Harry laughed, so happy, and thought wildly that he should have with Wood, that it was worth anything in the world not to lose this.