Sunday morning started with the bang of a football against Harry’s headboard.
“Wake up!” Malfoy commanded, retrieving the ball and throwing it at Harry’s head again.
This registered an instant later, after Harry had bolted upright in a tangle of sheets and convinced they were under attack, and then almost fallen out of bed.
“I am up,” he said, blinking at Malfoy, who was blurry but noticeably glowing. “Oddly enough, I wake up whenever someone throws things at my head.”
“I see, I see, so you’re saying that my methods are foolproof and I should employ them more often,” Malfoy said, and gave Harry his glasses.
By the time Harry was focusing properly, Malfoy had turned to his wardrobe and wasn’t looking at him even as he threw him jeans and a football shirt.
“I’ve told you, you must start wearing more to bed,” Malfoy continued in a reproving tone. “Shacklebolt will send us that house elf one of these days, I just know it. And don’t think I’ll help save your virtue. I won’t. Shacklebolt is like a god to me. I submit to his ineffable will. I will just laugh and laugh.”
“I’m not actually listening to you,” Harry felt obliged to inform him. “This early on a Sunday morning, all I hear is ‘la la la I’m crazy.’”
“That’s all right,” Malfoy said placidly. Apparently he was unable to tear his horrified gaze from Harry’s Weasley jumpers and would never look at people while conversing with them ever again. “Before my coffee all I hear is ‘yes Malfoy, it’s all so clear now, you’re a genius.’”
“That’d be Cyril talking to you, then.”
“Cyril understands me like no-one else, it’s true,” Malfoy said soulfully. “Are you decent yet? Can we go play some Quidditch?”
“Oh,” said Harry, warmed through and through by the surprise. He usually counted the days until Quidditch in the summertime, but that was partly because it meant a weekend with Malfoy, and now he had weekends with Malfoy all the time.
It would be good to have Quidditch too.
“Mm, Flint Owled me last week,” said Malfoy, obviously pleased at the success of his surprise. “I made sure everyone was fully briefed. They’ll all have mint. I planned this, so naturally everything is going to be perfect. Can we go?”
“Sure,” Harry said easily, pulling on the football shirt, pleased with the company and the day and the promise of Quidditch. They’d spent all Saturday making lists of suspects, of people he knew. He wanted a break.
Malfoy turned away from the much-contemplated wardrobe and made for the door. “Take your football,” he said sternly. “It’s an essential prop.”
“We don’t need props, Malfoy,” Harry said, agreeably scooping up the ball and following him with it tucked in the corner of his elbow.
“We do need props to maintain our cover story and secret identities,” Malfoy argued loudly. “We are wizards living undercover in this mundane Muggle world and we do not dare let them suspect us. We are just like spies, except even more magically glamorous.”
“We could just Obliviate them if they suspected anything,” Harry pointed out, and grinned when Malfoy scowled at him.
“You have no romance in your soul at all, Potter.”
Malfoy bounced his football enthusiastically on the landing and Fiona caught it as she went by and tossed it back to him. She smiled at them both, having apparently decided that their perverse fictional love life was none of her business.
Malfoy was evidently charmed by this opportunity to air his cover story.
“Potter and I are going off to play a pick-me-up football game with the lads,” he declared, and watched Fiona to see if she was buying it.
“Football fancier, are you?” she asked, smiling. “What team d’you support?”
Harry cast Malfoy an alarmed look, but he’d forgotten Malfoy was a crazy person who researched his roles. “Aston Villa,” he said firmly.
“How about you, Harry?”
“Er,” said Harry, as Malfoy smirked the triumphant smirk of someone whose cover hadn’t been blown.
“Him?” he drawled, and flashed Fiona a brilliant smile. “He supports Man United.”
He bounced the ball in high good humour all the way down the stairs, because he thought he was hilarious.
“The word you’re searching for is ridiculous,” Harry told him as they went out the front door, shaking his head at him. Malfoy tilted his face up to the sun as he stepped outside, and then threw his brilliant smile back at Harry as if it was something shining he expected Harry to catch.
“You should speak with more respect to the reigning Quidditch champion,” he remarked sadly, his manner suggesting that he was much disappointed by the youth of today.
“Malfoy, you won one game.”
“The last game,” Malfoy pointed out sweetly. “Which makes me the winner until you take back your crown—if you can.”
“You won one game out of sixteen.”
Malfoy dismissed this with scorn as mere quibbling. Harry told him he was ridiculous again. He was laughing, the sun warm on his head and his bare arms, as Malfoy explained to him that at least three of the sixteen games had been a moral victory for Malfoy’s side.
They found Flint outside the barriers, setting up the illusions that made a Quidditch pitch look like a football field to a casual observer and suggested that the casual observer had better pass on without observing anything more.
“See you went a bit Veela on us,” Flint observed, cracking gum Harry devoutly hoped was peppermint. Harry nodded and Flint dismissed this trivial concern in favour of truly important things. “Been practising, boys?”
“We watched a wonderful professional match,” Malfoy baited him, trying to speak in a deeply impressed voice and fight the wicked smile tugging up the corners of his mouth all at once. “Oliver Wood played. Now there’s a flier.”
“Useless prettyboy,” Flint snarled.
“He has so much more going for him than stunning natural good looks,” Malfoy urged, casting a swift amused look under his eyelids at Harry, eyes dancing, while Harry bit down on his own smile and looked into the middle distance. “I feel he has raw talent. Those schoolboy rivalries, Flint, one has to move on from them. That’s the mature thing to do.”
“Harry, get that babbling idiot out of my sight,” Flint said tolerantly, casting another illusory charm to be on the safe side, and Harry put a hand between Malfoy’s shoulderblades and steered him out into the Quidditch pitch to get their brooms.
As they went Malfoy solemnly told Harry that Flint was getting old and with Malfoy installed as reigning champion, he obviously feared that he would never be on top again.
“That makes sense,” Harry said gravely. “After all, he is almost thirty years old.”
“I know, he might as well be dead!” Malfoy said. “Quidditch years are like dog years, you know. It’s a saying.”
“Funny that I hadn’t heard it before.”
“You’re very young,” said Malfoy. “If you had lived as long as I have, my boy—”
“It’s nice to think that in a month I will achieve supreme wisdom,” Harry remarked. “Gives me something to look forward to.”
“It’s practically two months,” Malfoy told him. “But you mustn’t feel intimidated by me.”
“I’ll try not to let myself become overwhelmed.”
“I like you, my boy,” Malfoy informed him graciously. “You shall be my protege.”
“I’m trying to think of a phrase,” Harry said. “I’ve almost got it, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Something about pupils, and outstripping masters?”
Malfoy frowned. “I haven’t heard that,” he decided, and then called out a greeting to Adrian Pucey. “Excuse me, I have to go explain my masterful strategy plan to the underlings,” he said briskly. “You’ll see it in action soon. And the Snitch.”
“I have no doubt I’ll see the Snitch,” Harry said mildly, and Malfoy made a rude gesture and loped easily over towards Pucey.
Most of the Slytherins had somehow ended up on Malfoy’s side that first summer, and most of the Ravenclaws on Harry’s. Harry could have wished for more Gryffindors on this pick-up team, but the Ravenclaws were nice guys. Besides, Flint was on Harry’s team and he said that he would take a Beater’s bat to Wood or any of his people if they showed their faces on his pitch.
Technically Harry was one of Wood’s people, but he and Flint never spoke on the painful subject.
The Slytherins were a bit less than cunning, always going with Malfoy and on a steady losing streak despite their creative cheating, but Pucey said it was worth it for the entertainment value and besides it was beautiful to see Malfoy cheat, he was a true artist.
Not to mention the fact that nobody but Malfoy would have even won once last summer.
Harry lay back on the warm grass while Flint described his strategies, and waited until it was time and then, laughing and joking with the Ravenclaws, he grabbed his broom and someone blew a whistle and he kicked off into the endless blue sky. It was clean and clear for miles and he felt balanced, natural in the air, all of it coming sweet and instinctive as breathing after a long time holding his breath. Malfoy was in the air too, casting a glance Harry’s way that was bright and challenging at once, and if this was part of the Veela legacy, this shining serene moment in the sky, it was the only part that was worth anything.
That was when screaming Muggles broke through the barriers and ran rioting through the Quidditch pitch, lifting yearning hands towards the sky and Harry. Harry banked in midair and stared down at the spectacle in horror.
Malfoy cursed at the top of his voice. “Oh my God, what a disaster.”
A woman below tore off her shirt and implored Harry to take her savagely on the Quidditch pitch.
Malfoy peered down and said: “Well, I admit there’s a silver lining to be found here.”
“Malfoy, focus,” Harry snapped. “I can’t fly this broom over half of London and staying here indefinitely will get a bit chilly and uncomfortable. What if I—”
Malfoy began doubtfully: “We could Stun them all—”
Then Harry felt himself banking for no reason but instinct. Sky and thought and Malfoy’s voice were all knocked out of Harry’s head. Pain and darkness followed in a sickening swoop and he felt his broom become a stick plummeting to the sky under his hands. He bowed over the broom and tried to fight himself back to consciousness, his head throbbing. Once he’d shoved the rush of blackness back for a moment all he was aware of was that he wanted to be sick. Then he realised that Malfoy had grabbed his arm, Malfoy’s chest a solid presence against his shoulder, and Malfoy was cursing at great length.
Apparently the Muggles had got into the box of balls and they were throwing Bludgers, trying to knock Harry out of the sky.
“Because nothing says romance like broken limbs and serious head trauma,” Malfoy drawled. “If you hadn’t swerved—if you’d been anyone but you, they would have got you. Potter! Can you hear me!”
“Yes,” Harry said, frowning and wincing as he got each word out. “I—don’t shout.”
The screaming below was a nightmarish sound, hungry and ready to swallow them like a storm.
“Let go of me,” Harry said, and shoved. “I’m going to—the trees.”
He slanted his broom downwards, hearing the screams rise to meet him, and towards the chestnut trees at the end of the pitch. Behind him he heard Malfoy yell: “Potter, if you dare fall-!”
He didn’t know why Malfoy was yelling. He was a bit too excitable, that was his problem.
He crash-landed the broom deliberately into the leaves, let the broom fall and heard the thump as it hit the ground and he grabbed a branch and swung himself to the other side of the tree.
Malfoy landed on the ground below, a neat light landing that let Harry know it was Malfoy before he looked down and saw grey eyes through green leaves.
“I’m going to get our wands, stay there,” he commanded, and fled.
In the distance Harry could hear Flint shouting hexes and audibly wondering if this was some plot of Wood’s.
Much louder, he could hear people shrieking that they loved him so much they wanted to eat him up. He shut his eyes and held onto a branch as if it was a broomstick and there was a long terrible fall waiting.
Malfoy was back quicker than Harry would have thought possible, panting and then hauling himself up into the tree with the ease of what seemed to be long habit, moving with grace and ease. Harry wondered if Malfoy had climbed trees a lot as a kid, and then Malfoy grabbed him by the arm, fingers strong, and the noise of the crowd faded into blissful quiet.
Harry went and sat heavily on the kitchen stool, put his head in his arms on the countertop and wished to be unconscious. His head was really hurting quite a lot, the darkness behind his eyes tearing itself into pieces, split with jagged lines of white.
“You’re bleeding,” Malfoy told him, still breathing hard but speaking softly. “I’m going to make you a Potion.”
Harry listened to him moving about the kitchen. Every sound Malfoy made was painful, but he sort of liked hearing the sounds. There was someone else here and they were going to take care of him. Not that he needed it, not really, but it was—it was nice.
“Did you climb trees when you were a kid?” he asked randomly when Malfoy coaxed him to sit up and put the truly awful-smelling Potion into his hand, in his favourite mug.
“Sometimes. There were a lot of trees around the Manor,” Malfoy said distractedly, and pushed the mug towards Harry’s mouth. Harry lifted it obediently to his lips and drank.
“I bet you were a cute kid,” he said, and shut his eyes.
Malfoy laughed a little, body tilted to support a little of Harry’s weight, shoulder an inviting support against Harry’s. “Wow, you are concussed,” he drawled, voice still soft and going a little sweet. “I was not a cute kid,” he told him, breath ruffling Harry’s hair. “You were there, remember. I was sooo obnoxious. Hey, don’t go to sleep, not when you’re concussed, not until the Potion takes effect. Where was I?”
“Sooo obnoxious,” Harry mumbled. “Now that you mention it, ‘s all coming back to me.”
“Do you know,” Malfoy said confidentially, “I used to leave nasty notes for the house elves in my bedclothes. And I started a school paper called The Daily Slitherer that insinuated Hagrid was having a torrid affair with one of the students.”
“Which one?” Harry asked.
“I forget,” said Malfoy, and patted him on the back a bit in apology. “Also I didn’t so much insinuate as come right out and say. And I did this brilliant impression of Granger, but it involved wearing two dusters on my head because of her hair and that wasn’t too manly, so I only did it in the common room. It was a wonderful impression,” he added sadly. “It made Goyle laugh so much one time he peed himself a little.”
Harry sighed and rested his forehead against Malfoy’s collarbone. “You must have been very proud.”
“You know, I really was. Oh, and when Pansy showed me her dress for the Yule Ball I told her it was so hideous that word was bound to get out about it and nobody would ask her, so I was prepared to save her the embarrassment of arriving without a date and take her myself. I couldn’t think of any other way to ask her. That was not a good way, though. She was not happy with me at all.”
She’d looked happy with Malfoy, all right, hanging on tight to his arm and glowing. At the time Harry had been amazed that anyone would voluntarily spend time with Malfoy. Of course at the time he also hadn’t realised that Crabbe and Goyle were on a date.
Those people on the Quidditch pitch had been baying like animals.
“I hate this,” Harry said. His head wasn’t aching anymore: thank God for Malfoy’s Potions.
“Hmm, I know,” Malfoy murmured, casting the cuts on Harry’s head closed with a few soft spells. “This is all some sort of cosmic joke, of course. All that endless and one might add ostentatious discomfort about the fame, and now you get to be all tragic about being supernaturally attractive. I don’t think you have a talent for happiness.”
Harry would have taken exception to this if Malfoy hadn’t said it rather quietly, as if he really had thought about it and it did make him sad.
“It’s fine. I’m happy now,” he said reassuringly, and tucked his head in the curve of Malfoy’s neck and shoulder.
“Oh what, fine, you’re happy now. Lots of people would appreciate the fame and good looks, but n-no, not you, you enjoy head trauma,” Malfoy said, his voice sharp and a bit uneven, not even slightly soothing anymore. He pushed Harry away, gently, because Malfoy was always careful when Harry’d been hurt.
There’d been a time when Harry had wanted to get hurt just a little more often, to have that, until he realised that was actually a pretty good way to get killed.
“Go wash that blood out of your hair,” Malfoy commanded.
He didn’t sound happy right now, that was for sure.
“You called us into your office, sir,” Malfoy said to Shacklebolt with the reverent air of one admitted into a shrine.
Shacklebolt gave him his usual flat stare, and said: “Yes. I have something to say. What on earth are you two doing here? Go straight home.”
Malfoy looked tragically disappointed in his mentor for a moment, then visibly changed from his attitude of hero worship to his secret theory that Shacklebolt was an evil robot. “Sir, we can’t possibly. We have reason to believe that an Auror is involved in the halfblood kidnappings: the attack on Hogwarts was clearly based off our list, which only people working here had access to.”
“Aurors, archivists and Unspeakables, then,” Shacklebolt said. “Very disquieting. Go home.”
“Sir, listen to me when I tell you quite reasonably, oh hell no, what?” Malfoy snapped. “Nobody else can be trusted with the investigation, it isn’t safe—”
“I’ll put Thomas and Louison on the case,” Shacklebolt said. “Louison went to Beauxbatons: I understand that they are very open about taking in mixed-breed students there. And Thomas is, I believe, a particular friend of yours.”
“He’s a Muggleborn,” Malfoy said, his voice hard. “The Muggleborn are responsible for ninety per cent of any attacks on magical creatures or mixed-breeds. And Louison’s family are not famous for their tolerance.”
“Nor were yours, I believe,” said Shacklebolt.
There was a silence, which Malfoy spent looking at his left wrist.
“Well, it isn’t Malfoy,” Harry said. “And it isn’t Dean either.”
“Why, just because you say so?” Malfoy muttered. “The lordly Potter spoke and lo, all was as he wished it. Sir, we’ll be really inconspicuous—”
“I will reluctantly admit that you and Mr Potter have certain talents,” Shacklebolt said. “Neither of you has ever displayed the least aptitude for being inconspicuous. Particularly not of late. Mr Potter, you may be interested to know that you are the first Auror ever to be the direct cause of a riot. This must be extremely gratifying for you.”
“Yeah, he loved it when they almost brained him,” Malfoy sneered. “Sir, that’s not fair—”
“I am perfectly aware it is not fair, Mr Malfoy,” Shacklebolt said. “I simply do not find the fact particularly interesting. Fair or not, I cannot permit anything to interfere with the orderly working of my office.”
“It was quite a small riot,” Malfoy argued. “More a sort of—rabble. A mob. A mini-mob.”
“Thank you, Mr Malfoy, how I wonder what tomorrow’s word of the day will be,” said Shacklebolt. “Mr Potter, I must ask you not to enter the premises until you are absolutely certain that you will not be inciting any—mini-mobs in Auror headquarters.”
Harry thought about the screaming crowds on the Quidditch pitch below as the world tipped sickeningly around him.
“All right,” he said.
“Then I quit,” said Malfoy. “I told you I would and I will. I shall quit and go on a Grand Tour.” He mulled this over. “I shall enjoy travel,” he decided. “I want to meet exotic Brazilian ladies and I want to become a shaman in the East and—I don’t know. I want to drink tequila in Tijuana and say why not when someone says, do you want to?”
He half-smiled in the way he did when he was quoting stupid Muggle songs and for an instant before the expression of fatalistic calm reasserted itself Shacklebolt looked like he might possibly be plotting their deaths.
“Indeed?” he said, all expression apparently pounded out of his voice by a big flat rock.
“He doesn’t mean it, sir.”
“Shut up, yes I do.” Malfoy scowled.
“Mr Malfoy, my all-consuming concern is the smooth running of the Aurors,” Shacklebolt said. “Your all-consuming concern may be Mr Potter, but—”
Malfoy flushed and tilted his sharp chin to hide it, ending up emphasising it. “My concern is Tijuana,” he muttered. “I feel Tijuana needs me.”
“If we put a watch on the archives, perhaps,” Harry suggested.
“And who guards the guards?” Shacklebolt inquired.
They lapsed into a silence that was really unusual for them in an interview held in Shacklebolt’s office, which usually consisted of shouting and protesting and very loud drawling and sometimes lamps crashing against the walls.
“I think,” Malfoy said, in a voice of deep foreboding, “I may have a cunning plan.”
“And so that, Cuthbert,” Malfoy finished with what, if he had been writing instead of speaking, would have been a flourish, “is why you are our only hope.”
Cuthbert sat with his notebook and his mouth open. He looked about as impressed with Malfoy’s brilliant plan as Harry was.
“Cuthbert?” he’d repeated with outrage when Malfoy had made the suggestion. “We’re trusting Cuthbert instead of Dean?”
“You’re the one with the alibi,” Malfoy explained to Cuthbert now. “For the time in which we were attacked. I asked little Baddock and he swears you were, hem hem, fully occupied the entire time. And Baddock is the only person who has no personal or professional reason to give a false alibi, since he’d never met you before in his life.”
Cuthbert gazed sadly at his notebook. “I thought we maybe had a connection,” he said in a small voice.
“You should just think yourself lucky that your date-stealing ways have come in useful this time,” Malfoy told him severely. “Otherwise you would have faced my wrath. Now, you are going to be our eyes and ears in this office. You are going to make notes like you’ve never made notes in your life before!”
Cuthbert looked tiny and determined. “I won’t let you down, Mr Malfoy!”
“Now who do you think might possibly be an insane midnight assailant and kidnapper?”
Cuthbert blinked. “Er—aside from you and Mr Potter?”
“No,” Malfoy said. “You can put us down. I wish to be strictly impartial. After all, Potter’s known for his nasty temper.”
“I am part Veela,” Harry pointed out coldly.
“Self-hatred is a tragic thing,” Malfoy said, shaking his head. “And put Ginny Weasley down, she was here at the ball and she was at Headquarters Friday. What’s she really doing back from France anyway?”
“You dare,” said Harry.
Cuthbert looked from one of them to the other and dropped his quill in an agony of indecision.
“And put down Ron Weasley too!” Malfoy said. “He was here Friday as well. And he’s a rich man now, moves in very corrupt circles by necessity. Believe me, I know. And put down Kingsley Shacklebolt!”
“The b-boss?” Cuthbert breathed, looking scandalised.
“You can’t believe that Ron or Ginny had anything to do with this!” Harry exclaimed.
“Maybe I don’t, but it’s always the ones you least suspect,” Malfoy told him darkly. “Besides which, my mentor has become corrupted by high office and betrayed my youthful and innocent hero-worship. Or he’s an evil robot, I can’t decide which. Put those names down!”
“Put those names down and I break your quill.”
Cuthbert’s eyes leaped from one face to the other like an agitated frog unsure which resting place was the lily pad and which the alligator’s head.
Eventually he wrote Kingsley Shacklebolt in an agitated scrawl and looked hopefully up for approval.
Malfoy looked betrayed and Harry rolled his eyes. Cuthbert looked piteous.
“Katie Bell in archives has been seeing a banshee type,” he offered beseechingly. “Didn’t they use banshee fire at Hogwaaa…”
His voice trailed off into a wail as he saw Malfoy’s face.
“It’s not Katie Bell,” he said with great finality. “Don’t even think about putting down Katie Bell. I—look, we’re very busy and important, we can’t spend our whole day hanging about at work. Send us a list of all Aurors, archivists and Unspeakables, and anyone who was seen at headquarters this Friday. Anyone at all, do you hear me? Except Katie Bell.”
“Or the Weasleys,” Harry put in, before Malfoy almost hurled himself out of his chair and Harry followed right after him.
He snagged Malfoy’s cloak and his own jacket and left Cuthbert looking tiny and panicked at their desk, staring at a notebook that held only the names of his assigned mentors and the head of the whole department.
Harry found Malfoy waiting for him outside headquarters. It was starting to rain, a fine drizzle that turned the whole sky dense grey, and Malfoy was shivering a bit.
“Thank you,” he said in a subdued voice, and added: “I’m sorry I mentioned the Weasleys. I’ll take them off the list.”
“They’re not on the list,” Harry reminded him.
“I know they’re yours,” Malfoy said. “Katie’s mine. There are certain people who—it’s not about—even when the Weasleys weren’t talking to you and you didn’t know if they ever would, you would have protected them. Never let anyone say a word against them.”
“‘Course,” said Harry. “No. I understand.”
He understood a whole hell of a lot better than Malfoy did, he thought. Malfoy only understood it one way—always burningly ready to shield his parents, his friends, his stupid ex-girlfriend, but he seemed stunned and pleased whenever someone stepped up for him.
The Weasleys weren’t his family and had never quite felt like one no matter how much he’d wanted to, but they were his and he was theirs in the way Malfoy meant. He was sure of them.
“No matter what they thought about you,” Malfoy continued, low and uncertain.
“Did you ever,” Harry said, abrupt with misery. “Have you ever stopped loving anyone?”
Malfoy gave him a small unhappy smile. “No.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
They looked out into the rain. The sky above them was so cloudy it looked like it was sagging, like they were trapped in a soggy cardboard box.
“I,” said Malfoy, a little hesitant. “I stopped hating someone once, though.”
“Oh,” Harry said, warmed.
It was cold and the rain was falling faster and yet they were walking home. Harry thought perhaps it would be nice to walk a bit close, especially since Malfoy looked sad and as if he could have used it, but Malfoy was keeping his distance.
“Shacklebolt was right about that riot,” Harry said. “And we’re running out of work at home, the one who took that little girl is in there.”
Malfoy offered him another small smile, washed away almost at once by the rain. “Not much of a day, is it, Potter?” he asked, at least three steps away all the time. “Never mind: it’s Pansy and Weasley’s dinner thing tonight. That should be fun.”
Malfoy insisted on stopping for a coffee on their way to Pansy and Ron’s. Harry waited outside because last time he’d been tackled into an espresso machine and Malfoy had almost wept with horror at the waste.
“You’re an addict and it’s sick,” Harry told him as he emerged from the shop with a giant styrofoam cup.
“It keeps me sane,” Malfoy asserted, waving the cup at him like a trophy. “You wouldn’t like me without it.”
“What d’you mean, keeps you?” Harry asked.
Either the soothing spell of his coffee or the evening chill led Malfoy to abandon his earlier three steps away policy, and he walked shoulder to shoulder with Harry, bickering amicably until they reached Ron and Pansy’s.
The mansion was decorated in Chudley Cannons colours. The neighbours had written a lot of letters of complaint but it still stood in its expensive neighbourhood, like a defiant pumpkin among wedding cakes.
Malfoy winced whenever he saw it and Harry had to admit he wasn’t crazy about it, himself, but inside the house it was warm and there were lights in every window. He could hear people laughing as they came up the path.
“I’d like our place to be like this,” he said as Malfoy knocked on the door.
Malfoy looked perfectly horrified, but the door opened and Pansy was in Malfoy’s arms before Harry had a chance to explain. She put her arms around his neck and Malfoy lifted her up off her feet and spun her.
Harry nodded to Ron in the doorway.
“Obviously I’d pick you up and spin you,” Harry said. “But you’ve put on some weight recently.”
“That’s the good life for you,” Ron said, and gestured them all into the bright hall and beyond into the dining room.
There was a lot of food on the table: it was obvious Goyle had cooked, and Hermione had made it on time for a change. Harry slipped into the chair beside her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She’d brought that Muggle bloke with her. He gave Harry a friendly enough nod.
“Oh, it’s the weirdly attractive chap, isn’t it?”
“Most people just go with Harry,” said Harry.
“Reginald, wasn’t it?” Malfoy asked, which saved Harry having to ask. He reached over and shook hands, and informed Reginald solemnly that he was very open-minded about his people.
Reginald blinked. “Me too,” he said heartily. “I think that you should be allowed to get married and all that stuff, absolutely. Live and let live, say I.”
“Muggles don’t want magical people to get married?” Malfoy demanded, looking horrorstruck.
“Er, that’s not what he meant,” Harry said.
“Your sparkly little man couldn’t come today, could he?” Reginald asked.
“Ah,” said Malfoy. “I—he left me for another,” he concluded. “My heart is broken. I will never find a love so sparkly again.”
“Oh dear,” said Reginald, looking extremely sympathetic while Malfoy smirked behind his wine glass. “Oh that’s a shame. But those two chaps who look like twin peaks seem very happy, so there’s still hope. Buck up!”
Malfoy eyed him coldly, as did Goyle, who said in a loud voice: “I’ve been slimming.”
“You can tell,” Dean said.
Harry wondered a bit what Dean was doing there before Ginny came out of the kitchen and planted the potatoes in the middle of the table and a kiss at the corner of Dean’s mouth.
It was nice having Ginny back, he thought, grinning at her. She grinned in return, warm and easy, as if things could be as simple as that, at least for tonight.
And he was used to Katie at these dinner parties and Malfoy hovering at her side, a little tense and anxious to please her, to make her feel included. Malfoy often made a brief escape from the awkwardness by volunteering to do the washing-up, and a couple of times Harry had slunk in after him and offered to do the drying and Malfoy had played the radio too loud and tried to make Harry sing along until Katie ran out of conversation with the others and came to find Malfoy, and Malfoy switched off the radio at once and all would be silence, and he would kiss her.
Now she was gone and it made Harry feel guilty, what a relief it was, how good it was to simply have Malfoy beside him and be happy to be here.
“You look well,” Hermione whispered to him.
She looked incredibly well, hair obviously straightened but gone fluffy in the rain, golden in the candlelight. Her eyes were shining.
“So do you,” said Harry, and then because he’d learned to, in the time when he’d only seen Hermione by herself and crying over Ron: “I mean—beautiful. That’s how you look. Er.”
She went pink and smiled.
“And things must be going well with that chap,” Harry observed. “I don’t notice any peppermint on your person.”
“Yes, well, clearly the only thing needed was willpower,” said Hermione, sneaking a glance at Reginald. “A little positive thinking and the thing was done.”
“I don’t blame you for any of it, Hermione,” Harry said gravely. “Who could resist all this?”
He made a small gesture towards his dark, frayed-at-the-sleeves Weasley jumper, and Hermione tilted back her head and laughed, elegant and gleaming and just a little warmer and happier than usual. Given half a chance, Harry thought he could come to like this Reginald bloke.
Malfoy was detailing an elaborate plan for Crabbe’s career advancement which involved stealing a hundred cups of jelly and (not fatally, Crabbe, not fatally) poisoning half his patients.
And Pansy came in and sat at the foot of the table, hands clasped and pearls at her neck, and looked like a prim lady of the house for all of three seconds before her red lips curled up and she started asking Ginny how Dean measured up to Frenchmen.
“What’s that?” Ron asked, entering with a bottle of champagne.
“I never touched her!” Dean said instantly, and then pretended he had dropped a fork and hid under the table talking loudly about how he had to find it.
“You Gryffindors are so smooth,” Pansy said, raising her eyebrows with a supercilious air that lasted the second it took for Ron to smile at her.
Everyone started pouring themselves champagne and Reginald beamed around at them with the usual air of a bloke massively relieved that his new girlfriend’s mates were not crazed axe murderers.
“You’re a nice group,” he said affably. “So how do you all know each other? Were you all at the same magic school? What was the name again, Gryffindor?”
“No!” chorused four perfectly appalled Slytherin voices.
“It was called Hogwarts,” said Goyle, who was the good-natured one, but even he sounded reproachful.
“That’s an awkward sort of name,” Reginald observed. “I like the sound of that other one, what was the word, Beauxbatons. That sounds elegant, darling. You should have gone there.”
“I liked Hogwarts,” Hermione said firmly, but she looked pleased.
“So were you all friends at school, how jolly,” said Reginald.
A rather blank silence followed.
“Well,” Ron said, with the air of a host whose duty it was to assign placements. “I’m best mates with Hermione and Harry here, and Ginny’s my sister, and she’s going out with Dean—except she used to go out with Harry—”
“I was young and he dazzled me with his Veela charms, but I saw the light in the end,” Ginny put in cheerfully.
“Thanks very much,” said Harry.
“And I am best mates with Crabbe and Goyle and they are going out, and I used to go out with Pansy,” Malfoy said helpfully.
“Must have been very hard for you when you found out,” Reginald murmured sympathetically to Pansy.
Pansy looked as if she wondered whether Reginald drank.
“And now you and Ronald are going out, so all’s well that ends well!” Reginald said in a pleased sort of way.
“Well,” said Ron, and coughed. “Well, actually. Actually, well. We’re not going out. She’s going to be my—I mean, sorry, I’m going to be her. Right, I knew I was going to be crap at this. We’re going to get married.”
“Thank you, darling, that was beautiful,” Pansy told him, very dry, and then she lifted her glass and she just beamed at him, Pansy Parkinson, the sullen-faced girl who could just about pretend she didn’t like baby unicorns, looking silly and glowing and almost melting with it.
She’d stopped clasping her hands and they could see her engagement ring. The diamond was the size of a Quaffle, but she wore it well.
Hermione leaned over Reginald and gave Ron a kiss, and Goyle started to cry because it was all so beautiful, and Ginny thumped Ron on the back at the same time Hermione kissed him and Hermione ended up biting her lip, and it didn’t seem to matter.
Harry said: “Congratulations, mate,” and Ron, blinking and amazed and delighted as if faced with snapping cameras after single-handedly winning the World Cup, said: “Thanks—yeah, thanks, thanks!”
Then Reginald said brightly: “We should have a toast, what do you say, chaps!”
They had several.
“If I had known,” Malfoy said, speaking very slowly and distinctly as he sat on the hearthrug in Pansy and Ron’s parlour, hugging his knees to his chest and trying to balance a decanter of brandy on his knees, “that Ron Weasley was going to end up the richest wizard in Britain and marry my best girl, I would have topped myself.” He frowned, and then corrected that. “I would have first killed you and then myself,” he told Ron earnestly.
“I’d like to have seen you try, you were a shrimp for half of school,” Ron told him, lying back against the sofa with Pansy cradled tenderly in one arm and a vodka bottle cradled tenderly in the other.
“I think it is very touching that you were all friends in school,” Reginald said soulfully. “I wish I had gone to Hoggleworts.”
“That is so beautiful,” said Goyle, who got maudlin on liquors and was getting ready for a fourth bout of weeping. “I wish you had too! You could have been in Slytherin!”
“I would have been charmed, old boy, absolutely charmed!” said Reginald. “What is a Slytherin?”
“We are a cunning folk,” said Crabbe, and laid his head down on the table with great care.
“Was it one of the teams in that flying cricket game?” Reginald inquired.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “The rest of us were in Gryffindor. We played Quidditch too. We had, er, sort of a rivalry going on.”
“That is exactly how I would’ve described it,” Dean said. “I hear the sky is also sort of blue.”
“We didn’t actually get on all that well at school,” Harry said, resigned to spoiling Reginald’s beautiful vision. “But, er, Malfoy and I started working together—”
“I started tutoring Vincent,” Hermione said, smiling over at Crabbe.
“I think I need a glass of water,” said Crabbe.
“I started using Ron for sex,” Pansy said blandly, and stole Ron’s vodka while he was spluttering.
“—we get on now,” Harry said. “We’re flatmates.”
“Temporarily,” Ron said, abandoning his quest to wrest alcohol from his promised bride.
“No, actually,” Malfoy said, and he sounded glad, and Harry smiled and leaned back a little against his shoulder.
He was a bit drunk, sitting with his legs stretched out on the rug in Ron and Pansy’s ridiculous orange house, and Pansy and Ron were getting married and there was a bloke treating Hermione like gold, and Malfoy was right here and going to live with him. It seemed possible for a moment to be perfectly happy with just this.
Malfoy took the leaning as a request for the brandy and passed it over, and after a burning mouthful Harry said: “We’re going to look for a bigger place.”
“Hermione,” Ron said in a low moan.
“Hmm?” Hermione asked, looking away from Reginald.
“You know everything, right?” Ron said desperately. “Right? You wouldn’t fail me now, would you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Ron.”
Harry wished that Ron would stop talking about it. He tried, with a crawling sensation of dread, to calculate exactly how drunk Ron must be.
“I mean, you knew that Harry was gay in fourth year, right?” Ron pursued.
“Well, yes,” Hermione said, preening a little.
“The Daily Slitherer had a lot to say about people who left the Patil twins and sneaked off into the bushes with their best friends,” Malfoy said smugly.
“Hey!” said Ron. “What?”
“It’s boyish experimentation, Weasley, perfectly natural, nobody judges you for it,” Malfoy said, and Harry could tell by his tone he was smirking.
“I would understand,” Pansy told him. “You could tell me all about it. That time Draco kissed Blaise was smoking hot. Draco was making these noises—”
Harry shifted and glared, hating even thinking about it, and Draco moved away and he hated that too, and Ron mercifully got Pansy to drink instead of finishing her sentence.
“I would understand if you ever kissed Seamus,” Ginny told Dean, apparently feeling this was the supportive thing to do.
“Uh,” Dean said: “no, I never—I never did that. I mean, I was artistic, sure, but that’s a stereotype… You know, I knew Harry was gay too.”
“Did Cho Chang tell you as well?” Goyle inquired with interest.
“Cho said that?” Harry asked, outraged.
There was a series of nods around the room. Just because she happened coincidentally to have been right, Harry saw no reason why Cho should leap to wild assumptions based on one kiss that he certainly could have improved on. Given time.
“Actually I meant in sixth year when you were stalking Malfoy,” Dean said.
“Er,” said Harry.
“He wasn’t stalking me,” Malfoy snapped. “I was evil.”
“Yes, but nobody believed that at the time,” Hermione said reminiscently. “It was quite funny, really. Professor McGonagall kept trying to work out a way to have a sensitive heart to heart with him.”
“Professor McGonagall?” asked Harry, in a voice gone all faint and thin with horror.
“She got the wrong end of the stick after you made that big embarrassing speech to her,” Hermione said.
“I wasn’t—”
“I know you weren’t,” Malfoy said. Harry looked over at him and he’d actually left the rug in search of his styrofoam cup. The coffee must have been ice-cold by now, but he drank it anyway.
“You were evil?” Reginald asked blankly.
“It was a youthful phase,” Malfoy said, and smiled winningly over at him. “Tell me all about cricket.”
“Can I have a word with you please, Harry?” Ron asked, apparently driven to desperation. “In the kitchen.”
“Okay,” said Harry, and stood, because what else was he going to say even though a few moments ago everything had been all right, he’d been happy, and now everyone had stopped talking like idiots and Reginald had got started on Lord’s and Malfoy was smiling again, coming over to the carpet to sit near Reginald’s chair and hear all about the strange Muggle games.
“I took Muggle Studies, you know,” he told Reginald.
“What’s a Muggle?” Reginald asked.
Malfoy looked appalled at the state of ignorance that Muggles lived in. “You’re a Muggle.”
Reginald’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t feel like a Muggle.”
Harry reached out because—because he’d had too much to drink, not for any reason but that he felt better when he could—just reach out and touch the collar of Malfoy’s shirt, something, to prove he was there and safe and close.
Malfoy shied away.
“Harry,” Ron said, and Harry went into the kitchen with Ron. “Harry, you can’t do this, you can’t move in with him, are you mental?” Ron said as soon as they’d shut the door behind them. “He’s not one of my favourite people but he’s one of Pansy’s and I can’t—I can’t let you. It’s not good for you: don’t tell me he wasn’t there during the riot on Sunday.”
“It was quite a small riot,” Harry muttered, looking away.
“Look,” Ron said. “I really—I think you should tell him. Then he’ll know what’s going on, it’ll be fair, and—” Ron swallowed and looked direly uncomfortable about the idea. “He really likes you,” he added. “That’s obvious enough. Maybe it’ll—all work out.”
“He won’t realise unless you tell him,” said Crabbe from the sink, finishing his glass of water and putting it down with a tiny clink against the metal that rang through Harry’s head like a bell.
Harry and Ron both spun around and stared at Crabbe. Crabbe made a face at them and shrugged.
“I had a bit of a crush on him in third year,” he said. “He never got that, either. Not good at picking up that kind of stuff. Pansy pretty much had to hold him down and kiss him for him to get it: it was lucky he had that wounded arm.” Crabbe frowned some more. “He’s very clever otherwise, though,” he added, loyal to the end.
Ron crossed the floor in two strides and grabbed Crabbe by the arms.
“You know?” he asked, sounding awed. “Oh, thank God! Someone else knows! Okay, okay, we need a plan! What’s our plan?”
“I don’t know, Malfoy comes up with the plans,” Crabbe said crossly. “Of course I know. I’ve known for years. I don’t think it does much good talking about it, though.”
“Exactly,” Harry said, even could feel himself going a dull red and he was torn between never looking at Crabbe directly again and grabbing Crabbe like Ron had, demanding to know where he’d slipped up. “Exactly. It’s—it’s no good talking about it at all. He’s still in love with Katie Bell.”
Malfoy had said no when Harry asked if he’d ever stopped loving someone. He wasn’t going to fall out of love with her, not Malfoy, impossibly tenacious Malfoy who half killed himself doing a job he’d chosen solely to please Katie. And even if he did, what good would it be? He liked women. They were just friends: Malfoy had said so.
“But you can’t live with him!” Ron exclaimed, returning to his original point and looking to Crabbe for support.
“I wouldn’t do him any harm,” Harry said. “He’d like to. He said so. He was happy.”
“Who cares about him?” Ron demanded. “Uh, sorry, Vince. What about you? What, you’re going to be alone forever at twenty-three with this stupid Veela thing making messes everywhere you go just so you can moon over Malfoy of all people—sorry, Vince. How are you going to find someone else?”
“I don’t want anyone else,” Harry said savagely. “And yes. Yes, I’d rather have that. I’ll find some way to sort this Veela thing out and then it’ll all be fine, I don’t want to find another Smith or God forbid, another Ritchie, someone who’ll just be perfect while I feel nothing and—hurt them and can’t even care about it. I want to live with him and I don’t care about anything else. I want to be happy.”
Ron stared at him for a moment. Harry realised that he wouldn’t have been able to get all that out without the drink, and considered going on the wagon.
“I want you to be happy too,” Ron said finally, helplessly. “It’s just I don’t—see a way for this to end well.”
Harry thought about Malfoy shying away from him like a startled animal.
“You’ve ended up well,” Harry said. “It only happens to some people. And speaking of that—Malfoy was really quiet when you announced it. And then he started drinking. He’s been acting funny since—it probably wasn’t great for him to see you two, all engaged, when he’s—I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Look, I waited for months so Pansy wouldn’t feel bad about telling Malfoy. I was keeping the ring in my sock drawer. Pansy told me when I asked that she’d seen it on the third day!”
“I’m not blaming you,” Harry said. “I just want to make sure he’s all right.”
That was when Pansy came in, looking a little distressed and so coming to Ron as she always did, her hands out and his always there to catch them. She leaned into Ron and surveyed them all with an air of hauteur from her place of safety.
“What are you talking about in here, boys?”
“Malfoy,” Crabbe answered, stolid as ever while Harry and Ron both flushed.
“Should we have waited?” Pansy asked. “He just left. He said, apologies and congratulations and he just had a hangover coming on too soon, but—oh, damn it.”
“I’m going to,” Harry said. “I’ve got to go.”
“He said nobody was to bother,” Pansy informed him in a noncommittal tone.
“He says a lot of stupid things,” Harry said. “I—congratulations again. I know you’ll be happy. I’m happy for you. I—”
“Oh go, fine, get lost,” said Ron, and clapped him on the back before he Apparated and found Malfoy in their flat, stuffing all his belongings into a bag.
“What are you doing here?” Malfoy demanded, looking up from his bag with wild eyes.
Harry felt somewhat wild-eyed himself. “I live here,” he said. “What are you doing?”
He knew what it looked like Malfoy was doing, but he was trying not to think about why Malfoy was doing it. If Malfoy had guessed, or if he had simply changed his mind, or if he’d decided that without Katie what did it all matter and he did want to go to Tijuana after all. He couldn’t stop him, if Malfoy wanted to go. He had absolutely no right.
Malfoy grabbed up one of the books that he always started reading in the supermarket, breaking the spines and ending up having to buy them, and thrust it into a side pocket of the bag. He looked up from throwing all his worldly goods into some stupid bag and his eyes were wary under his falling hair. He looked like he might bolt at any minute and Harry was too terrified by the idea to even try and be gentle.
“I was going to leave you a note,” said Malfoy.
“Well what would it have said?” Harry almost shouted. “If you don’t want to live together, then…”
“I do want to!” Malfoy yelled back. “We will. We’re going to. I just, I need to go to a hotel for a while, I need to sort some stuff out, I’ll come back—”
“Don’t go,” said Harry. “Why are you—”
“Stop asking me questions,” Malfoy snapped. “Don’t hang over me like that. Would you just—sit down and listen.”
He shoved Harry with the bag, let the bag drop on the coffee table and Harry stared up at him, felt he was like water slipping through Harry’s fingers, always, and barely registered the soft sound of a styrofoam cup falling on its side until he followed Malfoy’s gaze and saw water spilling all over the table.
It wasn’t water. It wasn’t coffee, either.
Malfoy went still and silent for a terrible moment, defeated, as they both watched the peppermint tea spilling over the table top. Malfoy made a move as if to right the cup and then stopped before he touched it, hands trembling slightly. Harry couldn’t think: his brain seemed to have frozen in the same way Malfoy had. Everything was so still, and he couldn’t think.
Malfoy swallowed. The small sound echoed in Harry’s head like a door closing.
“I’m not immune,” Malfoy said.
“What?” Harry said, helplessly.
“I’m not immune,” Malfoy repeated in a different way, fraught and a little desperate. “I thought I was and I tried to be and I’m not, I’m sorry, I know how much you hate it. I know it’s not real. It—seems real but I know it’s not. All I need is a break, I can—work on my Occlumency, something. It will be all right.”
That last tone of voice, frantically soothing, always came with a touch but Malfoy wasn’t touching him. Malfoy was scared to touch him, and he’d shied away and he’d walked three steps away because—because he thought—
It wasn’t good, because Malfoy’s face was pale and a little sick in the dim light of the reading lamp. Malfoy was upset and only just not shaking and Harry didn’t want anything like that, but there was still a sense of exultation, of disbelief so intense it made him feel dizzy, rising in Harry’s chest. It almost hurt.
“It’s not real,” Malfoy repeated in that strained miserable way.
Malfoy grabbed his bag and Harry didn’t need to think. He lunged forward on the sofa and grasped Malfoy’s wrist, held on as hard as he could.
He could feel Malfoy’s pulse beating frantically. Harry looked up and could not make out an expression in his eyes: his lashes were lowered, he was breathing fast.
“I don’t care,” Harry said, his voice hoarse, scraping painfully in his throat. “I want you too much to care.”
Malfoy’s eyes snapped open then, but there was no real expression to be found anymore. His whole face looked wiped clean, suddenly shocked and pained, as if Harry had punched him in the stomach.
“Wh-what?”
Malfoy’s jaw was held tight, more angle than curve. His mouth was wavering, as if uncertain what shape to form next, and Harry couldn’t take his eyes off him: it was as if he had been created new in front of Harry’s eyes this moment. “I said—”
“I heard what you said,” Malfoy told him, his voice starting on a whisper and rising fast. “Let go of me!”
It was a convulsively sharp movement but deliberate too, calculated. Harry had to let Malfoy go or, at that angle, break Malfoy’s wrist.
Even if he was in blind shock, Malfoy trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t do that.
Malfoy took a step back, almost stumbling as if he was suddenly blind, and he picked up the bag. “I have to—I have to go,” he said with sudden decision.
“Don’t,” Harry said, his mouth dry.
Malfoy took several more steps, these ones more decided, towards the door. “I have to go,” he repeated, and his hand fumbled at the latch.
That was when Harry thought about it another way: Malfoy shying away and saying it’s not real, because he was fighting it, he didn’t want to.
The door was open and Malfoy stood in a square of light, still looking shaky. His whole face was in motion, changing, like the face of a pool someone had thrown a stone into. And he was leaving.
“I have to go,” he said a little more firmly, and his eyes caught on Harry’s and stilled.
In one sure, graceful movement, the one movement like him that he’d made since Harry came back to the flat, he threw the bag down by the door.
“But—I’ll come back,” Malfoy said, soft, and then there was nothing but the door closing behind him.