After Draco melted away with Katie tucked under his arm, off on a mission to prove his love or win her back or kiss her crystal tears or possibly all three, Harry went home.
Once home, it was clear that he would have to move. He couldn’t look at the window and he certainly couldn’t go into the bedroom: he couldn’t even look at the fridge because there were brightly coloured magnets on it spelling out ‘MARMALADE DOES NOT BELONG IN HERE POTTER.’
He sat on the sofa and read through all the missing persons reports the Aurors’d had on the file. He found a few cases that he put to one side for Malfoy to look at when he got home. He was scribbling ‘Half phoenix or crazed pyromaniac? Discuss’ on a post-it when he heard the door click open and shut, and the crisp cold sound of Malfoy’s voice.
“I’m trying to decide, Potter,” he said. “Is the problem with you just that you’re completely thoughtless, or is it that you’re so self-centred that you can’t bear it when your life’s not one big miserable drama?”
Harry’s head snapped up.
“I beg your pardon?” His voice came out as icily affronted as Malfoy’s.
Malfoy tossed his cloak in some random direction, Harry didn’t care, leaned against the kitchen counter and glared.
“You’re so destroyed by not being able to work,” he said, every word stabbing in with what seemed to be deliberate cruelty, like shoving splinters under someone’s fingernails. “It’s so important to get everything sorted and get you back to work, and on the first day you leave at lunchtime without a word to anyone? What’s wrong with you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Harry demanded. He stared at Malfoy’s white furious face and came up with one reason: that Malfoy regretted what he’d done, that he resented it and everything was ruined between them, and then he looked away and bit out: “Is this something to do with Katie?”
“Katie?” Malfoy echoed, sounding blank. “No. What are you talking about? Stop raving.”
“I’m not raving, you’re raving!” Harry said. “What, she made you miserable so you come home and tell me off?”
“She made me miserable?” Malfoy repeated, sounding blank again but with fury gathering behind the surprise. “She didn’t make me miserable. She made me happy, I was glad she trusted me enough to come to me when she was in trouble and I was glad she asked me to do something for her. I was fine until I came back from the Bells’ and nobody knew where you were and I thought you might be in packets!”
So his first thought had been the right one. So Malfoy had come to the conclusion that the favour he’d done him was too much for partners, too much even for friends. Harry opened his mouth to remind Malfoy that he’d tried to say no when the last thing Malfoy’d said sank in.
“Packets?” he repeated. “What?”
Malfoy glared at him as if he could bear Harry’s stupidity no longer.
“I found—there were Unspeakable files on packets found in the sea tied with twine bought in Knockturn Alley. They seemed like fish guts and parts of a boy, but since they were all in similar packages and wrapped with the same paper it was on file. I checked it against the records of the part-merman boy who disappeared and it was a match, so these people—so turning halfbreeds into ingredients is at least one of their hobbies.” Malfoy set his jaw and gave the mantelpiece a distant and disdainful look. “The pictures were quite unpleasant.”
“Oh,” Harry said. His mind was still running in every direction, but this new kind of confusion hurt a good deal less than the old. He looked at Malfoy’s strained cross face and felt suddenly warm. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
“Worried me, you didn’t worry me, I wasn’t worried,” Malfoy informed him grumpily. “I was enraged at your sheer stupidity in traipsing off God knows where when there’s a killer on the loose. Honestly, Potter. You deserve to be in packets.”
He was still glaring the mantelpiece into submission and did not see Harry get up. Confusion was dissipating as Malfoy rambled on, drawling and annoyed and so familiar, almost unbearably dear.
“I’m sorry for enraging you, then,” he said, low and pleased, and moved past the counter.
Malfoy did notice how close he was then. He started and moved away, but he didn’t go far. Harry was pretty sure he was just surprised.
“Yes, well,” he said, his voice slightly softer, though remaining haughty and making it clear he wasn’t entirely mollified. “I’ve invested enough time in this partnership to prefer that someone doesn’t ruin all my hard work by putting you in packets.”
He glanced up at Harry and away, then back as if his gaze was a thread he’d snagged on a nail and would have to detach with care. His mouth was a curled uncertain shape, balanced unevenly somewhere between anger and nervousness. He might be about to say something appalling in five seconds or less.
It made Harry happy just to look at him. He reached out and touched the side of Malfoy’s jaw with the back of his hand, testing.
“That would be a shame,” he murmured.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying. Malfoy didn’t look like he was sure, either: his gaze kept moving away a little and then back, as if he was tugging on that snagged thread and soon it might snap.
Harry moved before it could and caught Malfoy’s mouth with his own. He was tense, ready to pull back, but Malfoy’s mouth opened warm and hungry at the first touch of his. Everything was suddenly all right and better than all right, bright colours behind Harry’s eyelids and a roaring in his ears, as if someone had set the flat on fire and he was happy about it.
He had Malfoy pushed against the fridge, Malfoy’s head tilting back a little and his fingers clenched in Harry’s shirt, always holding onto things too tight. Harry kissed him with a hot thrill of elation running through him, recognising all the details: God, how he knew him. He had his fingers curled at the base of Malfoy’s throat, feeling his pulse flutter and his skin warm.
His mouth and Malfoy’s parted for a moment, still brushing, Malfoy’s breath heated and uneven against Harry’s cheek. He drew in another breath and his teeth slid lightly over the lower curve of Harry’s lip, drawing it in too. Harry’s own breathing hitched, a jolt running sweet and strong through bones and blood, chest rising and falling sharply against Malfoy’s. Harry made a soft snarling sound of desire and went for Malfoy’s mouth again, Malfoy’s head going back against the fridge door and the magnets all getting knocked off.
Malfoy’s hand against his chest seemed like part of it all for a minute, until Malfoy pushed him away so hard his back hit the counter.
“What,” Malfoy said, and swallowed. “What are you doing? You can’t do that.”
“Oh,” Harry said, and suddenly found his throat tight and the countertop fascinating. He clenched his fist around the end of the counter and felt the edge bite into his palm. “I thought—I thought maybe I could.”
“No,” Malfoy returned. “That wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”
Harry looked over at him and saw him trying to think his way out of this, jaw sharp and tight with concentration. The expression was so familiar it sent a fierce irrational pang through Harry, not sadness but the furious feeling that he was being robbed. He knew it was stupid and terrible of him to feel such a right to Malfoy, as if just because he had him memorised that meant he could keep him.
He knew it was stupid, but he snapped: “You kissed me back.”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed into cold slits and Harry should have expected what he said next: cruelty was the only way Malfoy knew how to defend himself, but somehow he didn’t.
“Of course I did,” Malfoy said. “You’re a Veela.”
Harry thought if he held onto the counter any tighter, it would cut his hand. He must have looked some version of dreadful because Malfoy dropped his eyes, never able to follow up on being cruel, and said quickly: “That came out wrong—”
He was interrupted, and looked profoundly thankful for it, by the sound of a beak tapping on glass. Malfoy muttered something that pretended to be irritation and looked entirely thrilled by this excuse to leave the kitchen and stride towards the window, throwing it up briskly to let the owl in and get the message into his hands.
He slid the envelope open and cursed.
“What?” Harry asked, suddenly intent. “What is it?”
“Blaise Zabini was attacked,” Malfoy answered shortly. “He’s asking for me.”
Harry picked up Malfoy’s cloak and threw it at him. “I’ll go with you.”
The Aurors’ holding cell might’ve housed Harry a few times, Malfoy and Smith one memorable time, and an assortment of murderers, people of questionable virtue and wizards so drunk they’d done unspeakable and unfortunate things with fireworks, but Harry didn’t think it had ever contained anything as flamboyant as Blaise Zabini before. The twit was sitting in a chair running his hands through his hair to achieve maximum beautiful dishevelment, and he seemed to be wearing nothing but a pair of leather trousers and a lady’s scarlet silk dressing gown.
Harry’s lip barely had time to curl at how ridiculous he was when Zabini looked up, caught sight of Malfoy and said in tones of deep and desperate relief: “Oh, thank God!”
“Blaise,” said Malfoy, using Zabini’s Christian name for the first time that Harry’d ever heard, and then he was no longer standing where he always was during investigations, to Harry’s left and close enough to lean on if Harry’d ever needed that. He ran over to Zabini’s chair and knelt down. “Are you all right?”
“No!” Zabini exclaimed, as if Malfoy was being extraordinarily dense. “Of course I’m not all right! It’s been horrible, Malfoy, absolutely horrible. They’re all Gryffindors here, did you know, and Hufflepuffs! I will not answer personal questions addressed to me by Hufflepuffs. I utterly refuse.”
Malfoy laughed, relaxing a little and seeming happy. He slid a hand, casual and possessive, around the back of Zabini’s neck and Zabini leaned in a little, in a certain way. It was an animal gesture Harry recognised, that sent warning signals coursing through him, waking all those strange savage instincts.
Zabini was laying claim to Malfoy’s protection, his care and attention. But Zabini couldn’t have him.
“Yes, Zabini,” Malfoy drawled. “But about the small matter of that attack earlier?”
“That was horrible too,” Zabini declared.
Past the prickling feeling Harry was getting at the back of his neck, the hot sensation behind his eyes, he realised that Zabini might be putting on a show and genuinely scared.
That didn’t stop him snarling when Zabini gripped the front of Malfoy’s shirt and said: “All these men came in and tried to kidnap me. If the lady I was with hadn’t had assassin training I don’t know what I would have done. I’m a lover,” he almost shrieked, drawing Malfoy closer. “Not a fighter!”
“Er, Harry,” said Dean, who was one of the guards posted at the door. “I don’t like to ask personal questions or anything, but did you just snarl?”
“No,” Harry ground out between locked teeth.
“Okay then,” said Dean, who knew when to pick his battles. “Must’ve been the pipes.”
“Probably,” Harry said. He tried to look away and couldn’t, Zabini didn’t have a shirt on or anything and that idiotic silk robe was hanging open, he was half naked and twined around Malfoy. “What—what happened?” he asked thickly, trying to fight past this, to be professional if he couldn’t be entirely human.
“‘Bout fifteen men tried to grab him,” Dean said briefly. “Louison’s seeing to them now. All of them seem to be under Imperius. Half of them are Muggles. One of them’s Walker.”
“Oh?” Harry said vaguely.
“He’s an Auror, Potter,” Malfoy tossed over his shoulder.
“Ah,” said Harry, and felt the hot grip of unease slacken a little because Malfoy was paying attention to him. “Damn it.”
An Auror, and someone had gotten the jump on him. It was definitely an inside job. There was no other possibility.
“An Auror?” Zabini screeched. “Do you mean to tell me I’m not even safe in this Godforsaken hole crawling with Hufflepuffs, I’m liable to be attacked at any moment? I am not accustomed to being assaulted.”
“Sure you are,” Malfoy said.
“Lustful assaults are different,” Zabini told him. “I have experience with crimes of passion, not crimes of crime!”
The bird-high edge of panic in Zabini’s voice was hurting Harry’s head, setting his teeth on edge. It made him want to bite.
“They won’t even let me out of here,” Zabini continued. “Not even to get a shirt or a comb or some hair product.”
“You look great,” Malfoy told him, sounding amused.
His fingers might be in Zabini’s hair. This was just—it was like the unhappy need to be close to Hermione at all times when he and Ron were fighting in fourth year, it was like the building fury when he’d seen Dean with Ginny in sixth, and it was a hundred times worse than that. Harry couldn’t take very much more of this.
“Well obviously,” said Zabini. “But I don’t just have transcendent and unearthly beauty, you know. I have standards!”
“Harry, do you maybe want to step outside and have a glass of water,” Dean offered tentatively.
“No,” Harry growled. “I do not want a glass of water. I want—”
“Can I go home with you?” Zabini asked imploringly, and Malfoy said at once: “Of course.”
He wanted to rip out Blaise Zabini’s throat. He could taste the sleek metallic hit of blood against his tongue already, thought about it with the same longing as he thought about the taste of Malfoy’s mouth. There was a roaring, not in his ears or his chest but through all the veins and bones in his body.
Harry made a soft sound, a quiet little promise of death. And Blaise Zabini’s head came up, head tilted at a certain birdlike angle, dark eyes glittering in a way that was not quite human. Dean was wittering something and forcing mints on the other guard, Harry didn’t have time for them, because Zabini was uncoiling from his chair. He didn’t want to fight, Harry could tell that much, but they were in an enclosed space: there was no way to surrender territory, no way to escape. He’d fight. Harry would win.
How dare he, Harry thought, watching him move, weaker, softer, all his natural instincts bent to seduce instead of attack. How dare he?
“Oh, hey, what,” Malfoy began in what seemed to be genuine puzzlement, climbing to his feet. Not before time, he looked Harry’s way and said: “Oh hell, no.”
Harry couldn’t pay proper attention to him: he’d be distracted.
“Zabini, stop it at once, I am the prefect of you!” Malfoy commanded, and by sheer bizarreness he turned Zabini’s head.
Harry tensed to spring in Zabini’s direction while he was distracted.
Then Malfoy was in front of him, face wavering in Harry’s vision, eyes gleaming and cold. “Potter,” he said, low and dangerous. “Cut it out!”
Then he punched him in the face.
Harry threw himself at him, crashing to the stone floor in a tangled heap. He brought Malfoy down with him, under him, and was confused for an instant because of all the things Malfoy was, prey and enemy and territory, and then Malfoy twisted under him and hit him again and things were simple, clean: it was just the fight, just them, like always.
He punched Malfoy in the ribs and had him still for a second, heart beating fast and Harry’s mouth hovering over his throat, waiting for him to say the word. Malfoy was saying a lot of things but none of them sounded like surrender, and then he elbowed Harry in the nose, threw him down and got a good handful of his hair so he could bash his head against the floor.
“Are you listening to me, Potter?” he snarled. “Because I can do this all night, I swear. Stop it right now!”
“Don’t—don’t order me around, Malfoy,” Harry got out between his teeth, the first word coming out in a thick, distorted growl and every one after that clearer and more human.
Malfoy stopped bashing his head against the floor, though he held himself ready to do it again anytime.
“I can if I like,” he said.
Harry shut his eyes for a moment, letting the world slide away and his aching head rest on the stone. The animal fury was fading and Malfoy was close, grounding him. Everything seemed all right for a moment.
Then he realised that he’d just attacked a traumatised assault victim. In a lady’s dressing gown.
“How are you feeling?” Malfoy asked eventually, his voice clearly concerned and even more clearly annoyed about showing it.
“Horribly embarrassed,” Harry mumbled.
“Good, keep it up,” Malfoy told him, flashing him the inappropriately bright and pleased grin he always grinned when Harry was shamed.
He let go of Harry then but stayed kneeling beside him on the floor as Harry sat up and saw Dean, the other Auror whose name Harry couldn’t quite recall at present, and Blaise Zabini all staring at them as if they were crazy.
“Please never punch a Veela in the face again,” Zabini said at length. “A Veela’s face is a work of art. It is like punching a delicate porcelain vase.”
Harry made a face. “It is not.”
“Don’t contradict me when you were almost at my flawless ebony throat, Potter,” Zabini said in a drawl they’d obviously evolved as some sort of common tongue down in the dungeons.
Harry glanced at Malfoy and Malfoy was staring at him with an eyebrow raised. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Oh, you can apologise to me,” Zabini said. “But how would you apologise to the women of England?” When Harry had stared at him and been obviously at a loss for words long enough, Zabini sniffed. “And what sort of person has a prison cell as their territory anyway?”
Harry stared some more, opened his mouth to explain and envisioned the explanation. He settled for saying: “Er.”
“Well, he’s in here a lot,” Malfoy said, resting a hand against Harry’s shoulderblade. Harry leaned back a little and Malfoy went on, voice mocking and fond: “Aren’t you, my delicate porcelain vase?”
“Shut up,” Harry said, every muscle relaxing a little more. “You complete prat.”
Zabini leaned against the wall and examined his fingernails. “Consorting with Gryffindors grows more alluring by the second. It’s nothing but hurling insults and punching people in the face. Can we go now, Malfoy?”
“Well,” Malfoy said. “The thing is—I’m staying at Potter’s. If the holding cell’s territory, I kind of fear that every day ending in y will be Ruining Your Beautiful Face Day.”
Zabini’s beautiful face was a picture of horror.
“Let’s go to a safe house,” he said. “Do Gryffindors understand the concept of safe?”
“I sometimes wonder,” Malfoy murmured, slanting a look Harry’s way. “But—I mean, I can’t—”
The first thing Harry thought of was Malfoy in the kitchen earlier, saying You can’t do that. Then he remembered what Malfoy had said to Katie, what he couldn’t do.
I can’t leave. He’ll die.
Good, Harry thought. He shouldn’t leave. He wasn’t going anywhere with bloody Zabini.
Only Malfoy had already scuppered things with Katie at least partly because of this, hadn’t he, and he was standing there looking pinched and upset. He’d been such an insufferable bragging idiot about being a prefect: he’d been so proud of it. Zabini was a Slytherin, and Malfoy’s friend as well. Harry knew better than anyone what that meant.
He leaned back a little more and said, low and ignoring the sibilant current just beneath the human words: “You should go with him if you want. I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, that’s what you always think,” Malfoy snapped, which was not exactly the gratitude for Harry’s sacrifice he’d been expecting. “I think you must be the stupidest man alive,” he added, which was even less what Harry’d had in mind.
He looked strained and unhappy, not at all as if Harry had just solved a dilemma for him. Harry didn’t know what he wanted.
“The lady who, er, implemented your daring rescue has offered you the safety of her home if you want to accept it,” Dean said quietly. “Not sure how she’d feel about Malfoy, mind.” He sent him a wry smile. “He has that effect on a lot of women.”
“Men dating gingers shouldn’t throw stones, Thomas,” Malfoy sneered, beaming all over his pointed face. Harry hadn’t actually thought that he would ever feel jealous of Dean again.
“She seemed nice,” Zabini said, brightening. “I noticed how lithe and flexible she was when she twisted a man’s arm out of his socket. Perhaps we do have unfinished business I should attend to. She deserves to be thanked, after all. On my behalf and, naturally, on behalf of all the women in England.”
He looked suddenly like a brave, determined and extremely attractive soldier. Harry rolled his eyes as Zabini got up, letting the silk of the dressing gown flow behind him like a scarlet flag. The Auror with Dean swallowed and looked away.
Malfoy uncoiled from the floor and was on his feet.
“You sure you’ll be all right?”
“Oh fine, fine,” Zabini said. “She was pretty feisty, I won’t deny it, but you know it takes seven people before I start to feel overstretched. Anyway, it would only make me anxious to see you fretting like a weird angry mother hen over what stupidity Potter was getting up to without you, and if you made me get a worry line I would be forced to kill you.”
“You’d be forced to try,” Malfoy said, smirking. “And then I would be forced to punch you in the face. Owl me if you need me, and don’t annoy me by taking any stupid risks.”
“I would never: it would be too much of a blow for the nation,” Zabini drawled, and then he added casually: “Do something about Potter, will you?” He glanced over at Harry, dark eyes flicking over him with a measured and unexpectedly intelligent gaze. “Good job on getting him sorted out, however you managed it. Did that Oliver Wood plan work out?”
“Er,” said Malfoy.
“Well, whatever. The thing is, he shouldn’t still be getting into a tizzy about his holding cell territory and attacking people. Whoever you got couldn’t have been much good. Try someone else next time.”
There was a perfectly terrible silence.
“Don’t talk about me as if I’m a badly trained dog,” Harry snarled, not even daring to look at Malfoy. Dean and Whatshisface were there, Dean and a total stranger: he couldn’t say a word to him. Malfoy had made it very clear that he wanted everything to go on as normal: he didn’t want anyone to know.
“But that is how I think of you, Potter,” Zabini said, turning away from them both to the Auror Harry didn’t recognise. “Excuse me,” he said with a melting smile. The Auror made a sound like a distressed kitten and bolted up the stairs. “Could you possibly remind me of the name of the nice lady I’ll be staying with?” Zabini asked in dulcet tones as he followed him up.
“Huh,” Malfoy drawled. “Do you think your problem with names might be some sort of Veela thing, Potter? I always put it down to you being world-endingly self-centred.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have a problem with names,” Harry said, climbing to his feet. “C’mon. Zabini’s safe and out of Auror territory. Let’s go home, I have some notes to show you.”
And some things to say as well, away from Dean’s mild, curious gaze. Malfoy was not looking at him or Dean: his eyes were fixed on the door.
“I don’t want to go home,” he said. “It is vital that I see Cuthbert at once.”
Cuthbert looked thrilled to see them as they approached. It was a nice change from his usual expressions around them, which ranged from quietly disappointed to truly appalled.
“Mr Malfoy, Mr Potter,” he said, bouncing a little in his seat. “I think you’re going to be terribly pleased with me. I have a Suspect.”
“Good. Who is it?” Malfoy demanded, throwing himself into a chair in front of Cuthbert’s little desk. He crossed his arms over his chest and fixed Cuthbert with a glare.
Harry would’ve felt a bit sorry for Cuthbert, but he wasn’t having a great day himself and his head still hurt. He sank into the chair beside Cuthbert’s and gave Cuthbert a look that made his bouncing falter and then stop. It was like seeing a little balloon, bobbing in the air, come into sudden contact with two thorn bushes.
“I’ve been taking notes,” he offered in a small, hopeful voice. “Would you like to see them? I recorded my impressions as I was sleuthing. That’s how I came up with my Suspect.”
“Who is?” Malfoy snapped.
“Well, I deduced,” Cuthbert looked proudly from Malfoy to Harry and back again. “I deduced that it was Louison.”
Malfoy frowned. “What? No it’s not. Who else d’you have?”
“I have a list of reasons why he is my Suspect,” Cuthbert said, looking extremely crestfallen. “Could I read them out? I think my deductive reasoning might convince you!”
“Go ahead,” Harry said. He was trying to remember something about Louison besides the fact that he was French, Dean’s partner and Malfoy had once said he’d made being louche an art form.
“Well he emigrated to this country barely speaking English, that’s why he had to be partnered with Dean Thomas,” Cuthbert told them excitedly. He stroked his upper lip as if he had a invisible moustache. “Why did he leave France? Perhaps he was involved in a Scandal which had to be Hushed Up.”
“His family were known supporters of Grindelwald back in the day and he was trying to get away from that connection,” Malfoy said crisply. “Do your research, Cuthbert.”
“Well blood tells, you know,” Cuthbert said earnestly.
“Does it?” asked Draco Malfoy, in a voice that could have turned the desert into an ice rink.
Harry said nothing. He just looked at Cuthbert and Cuthbert looked convinced he was going to be murdered with an inkpot. They sat in silence for a while as Dean and Ginny breezed past on the way home, Cuthbert’s small distressed face a silent cry for help that they cheerfully ignored.
“I’ve seen him watching you two,” Cuthbert offered weakly at last, and then with a feeble gleam of hope: “Covertly.”
“People watch Potter all the time,” Malfoy said with a dismissive hand wave. “Anything else?”
“He’s French, you know,” Cuthbert said darkly.
“Give me that scroll, Cuthbert,” Malfoy said in a very calm voice.
Cuthbert brightened. “Why, do you want to keep it for your records?”
“No,” said Malfoy, still extraordinarily calm. “I am going to roll it up and beat you with it.”
“He looked like he was going to cry,” Harry said as they went down the steps towards where the car waited, a silvery gleam on the evening streets. “You shouldn’t be a bully.”
“I’m not a bully,” Malfoy claimed, which was just a complete lie. “I’m encouraging him.”
“You were shooting down every word he said, Malfoy.”
“I’m encouraging him to be smarter,” Malfoy drawled. “Strongly.”
They swung into the car, Malfoy’s hands going for the radio station as they always did, fiddling until the volume and station were all according to his satisfaction. He sighed and leaned back when he was done, tilting his head back against the leather and shutting his eyes. This ridiculous case was really getting to him: he was starting to get that ashen consumptive look he got again. Harry made a mental note to force him to eat.
“Why don’t you want it to be Louison?” Harry asked casually, flipping the invisibility switch on the car.
A Muggle turned, startled, at the rising purr of a car launching into the sky near her ear. Harry saw her wide eyes catching moonlight and then she was lost below in the darkness.
“I like Louison.”
“Since when?”
“Since always,” Malfoy said irritably. “He’s always been friendly, which is more than I can say for most, and he didn’t have to be. His family is connected with the Dark Arts and it wouldn’t take much to make people suspect him—as you can see—but he still doesn’t steer clear. Besides, I think this person is Muggleborn. Remember, he shot me.”
“Could’ve been a strategic move,” Harry said. “Trying to make us think that. Or maybe you just annoy him.”
He felt he should try to be logical since Malfoy obviously was never going to suspect Louison: he was glad that not many criminals ever discovered Malfoy’s secret weakness and pretended to like him.
“Hmm,” said Malfoy in an unconvinced way, which meant ‘I am right and you are wrong and also, when have I ever liked anyone evil aside from most of my family and friends, shut up.’
The sky was laid out in front of them, clear and cool, a sheet of still dark pierced with tiny points of light. Malfoy’s breathing was even, he seemed tired but calm, and they were going home.
“About what Zabini said,” Harry said tentatively.
“No.” Malfoy’s voice lashed out like a whip. “We’re not having this conversation. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t be concerned about my feelings, do not try to reassure me, I am absolutely fine and besides, Zabini was right.”
“No he wasn’t,” Harry snarled.
“That’s not what I meant,” Malfoy said, sounding a little amused but mostly bitter. “Though you’re a gentleman. I meant you were all worked up and you certainly shouldn’t have been. I don’t know what to do about that right now. But I’ll think of something.”
Harry glanced over at Malfoy, his arms crossed and his eyes falling shut, a lock of fair hair in his face. He looked so tired.
“You always think you can fix everything,” he said.
“I can,” Malfoy told him, not as if he believed it at all but as if he was quite determined that Harry should. “I can fix the Veela thing and sort out this case and find Katie’s stupid boyfriend. No problem is too terrible. World hunger. War. Your hair. I am that brilliant.”
He didn’t fall asleep in the car. If he had, if he’d leaned against Harry and murmured in his sleep, Harry was certain as their course home, sure down to his bones and singing blood, that he would have kissed him. Then they would’ve had to have something out.
Malfoy didn’t fall asleep. He was just quiet and when they got home, he headed straight for the sofa as if he’d never dreamed of sleeping anywhere else.
He didn’t want to talk about it. Nothing was going to change.
Harry went into his room and looked at the tumbled sheets in the moonlight. He was definitely going to have to move.
It was good to have the Veela thing sorted out. It was excellent getting back to the office, and getting down the street without being mobbed and going to the post office without receiving indecent proposals. That was why Malfoy’d done it, and Harry tried hard to show him that everything was great now.
“Just so you know, I have no questions,” Ron told him one day when they caught dinner in a local pub. “There is no judgement here. If you went to Sinistra’s, I support that.”
“Appreciate your support, Ron,” said Harry.
“How are things with Malfoy? Are you two still going to live together?” Ron continued, lowering his voice and looking shiftily over to where Malfoy was leaning against the bar and talking to Pansy, his hands forming expressive shapes in the air.
Malfoy instantly looked back at Ron, eyes sharp. There was possibly a reason why Ron had never made it as an Auror.
“‘Course,” Harry said, looking at his glass. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Things were much better. Things were fine.
“We’d really like some results,” Padma Patil told them, leaning against Malfoy’s desk.
Hermione and Penelope stood beside her, looking rather sorry for Malfoy. Malfoy looked quite pleased: apparently Padma was welcome to come lean and scowl in his direction anytime she liked.
Padma scowled some more. “Now that we know that there are at least three children missing and adolescent boys are being found in packets, the Ministry would really like to see some results, Mr Malfoy. Sooner rather than later. I thought you two were supposed to be the best?”
“Oh, I am the best,” Malfoy drawled, face all lit up and delighted, his eyes shining at her.
Padma’s eyes narrowed. “Then I suggest you prove it.”
“Would you like to spar with me sometime?” Malfoy inquired.
“I’d kill you,” Padma told him.
Malfoy looked thrilled. “I’m prepared to take that chance. D’you know, I can’t imagine why people think your sister is the pretty one. I think—”
Padma suddenly looked a lot more frightening. Malfoy looked taken aback.
“My sister is the pretty one,” Padma told him. “We’re extremely close. And I might add that after being separated from her for seven years by a stupid Hat and the stupid Sorting system, I am not interested in hearing some man badmouth her. Particularly a man who can never shut up and can’t seem to deliver the culprit the Ministry is clamouring for. Do you think you can handle this case, or do the Unspeakables need to handle it for you?”
Malfoy looked a lot less charmed with her. “This is our case.”
“We can handle anything,” Harry told her calmly. She raised an eyebrow in his direction and he raised one back at her. “It’d be easier to work without all these interruptions, mind you.”
Malfoy snorted, their eyes meeting and gleaming over Harry’s file. Hermione gave Harry a reproachful look.
Padma straightened up and Malfoy looked faintly disappointed.
“I want to see something in three days, or we’re coming back.”
“Promise?” Malfoy asked.
“You’re in there, mate,” Harry said dryly as the Unspeakables made their way out.
Malfoy nicked a file off his desk. They were at a point where he wasn’t even watching the Unspeakables leave or correcting the grammar on Harry’s notes.
“Mine is a hopeless love,” he agreed. He didn’t sound terribly heartbroken.
Harry leaned over and pushed Malfoy’s sandwich pointedly towards him, then returned to his file. Three days, and the only person who had a suspect was Cuthbert.
“You know what we could do,” he said slowly.
“No,” Malfoy said.
“Think about it, Malfoy,” Harry urged. “This guy tried for me once. I’m the perfect bait. We could—”
“I said no,” Malfoy told him.
Harry looked at his fair head bent over the hundredth file, and thought of how little time they had before the Unspeakables tried to pull the case, and how little time those goblin children and that girl from Hogwarts might have.
He picked up a quill and turned it over in his hands, hating what he was about to do.
“Anything could be happening to Conleth Frexley right now,” he said, watching Malfoy go paler with every word. “You promised you’d save him.”
Malfoy looked white as salt, and sick. “You’re not doing it.”
Harry broke the quill in his hands and held the broken pieces in one fist. “What about Katie?”
“The hell with Katie,” Malfoy snarled.
While Harry was staring at him, struck speechless, Malfoy drew in a sharp frustrated breath and tried to smooth out the line between his brows. “That’s not what I—you’re terrible at being bait, you always get involved and something awful happens. You remember that time we had you Polyjuiced as Oliver Wood.”
“I had to defend myself,” Harry said, his voice strangely distant in his own ears. “Those women were crazed.”
Malfoy looked up from his file and met Harry’s eyes. He had that look on his face, pushed to the point of desperation until he hit some crazy Malfoy wall and bounced back with a plan. Harry hated seeing it, but it did work.
It might not work in time for Conleth, though, and Harry didn’t like to think about what Malfoy would feel about letting Katie down. It might not work in time for those kids.
“There’s another way,” Malfoy said. “I can do this.”
“I know that,” Harry answered, and watched Malfoy’s shoulders ease down, comforted and calmer.
Malfoy would think up something. But they didn’t have much time, and Harry had a plan already.
He couldn’t do much under Malfoy’s eye, though. So he settled back down to his files and tried to stop himself thinking about what Malfoy’d said. So maybe he was getting over Katie, a bit. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.
We’re not having this conversation.
The Murimble kids and Eugenia Varley had been at home and at school. They were hardly ever anywhere else: the halfblood kidnapper had no choice than to target them there, even though they were warded around by spells and guardians.
Zabini hadn’t been at home, though: he’d been in a hotel. The half-merman boy had been taking a walk in the rain. That had apparently been a habit of his. Zabini’s habit of going to a variety of hotels was pretty well-known, too. Harry and Malfoy had been attacked at a crime scene and at the Auror headquarters when the kidnapper had known no other Aurors would be around.
The kidnapper was watching. All Harry had to do was be alone and away from home, somewhere the kidnapper would be expecting him.
And Malfoy couldn’t be with him. It was funny how hard it was to think of a reason for Malfoy not to be with him: it was strange and a little amazing, how natural it felt to have him there.
Harry glanced over piles of paper and quills at Malfoy, who was absorbed in his file, pale hair tumbling into his eyes. He had his lower lip drawn into his mouth and he was leaning back in his chair, body loose and relaxed, with the kind of weary, lovely grace he achieved at the point of exhaustion.
Something about the line of his body made Harry see him another way for an instant, muscles straining and then relaxed, body spilling in a long lean line over the pearl-white bedclothes. He thought of the silvery sheen of sweat on Malfoy’s skin and the low, beautiful sounds he’d made.
He realised Malfoy was looking at him with shocked-wide eyes.
“Hey,” he said, bristling and unhappy as a wet cat. “Don’t.”
“I,” Harry began, and found his mouth dry. “I didn’t mean to.”
Malfoy rubbed the back of his neck as if it suddenly ached. “I’m sorry,” he said, which Harry didn’t understand at all. “I’m going to get some new files, all right? And maybe a bowl of coffee.”
“Drink from a cup as God intended,” Harry said automatically.
Malfoy gave him a strained smile pretending to be his usual smile, still looking wretched, and fled for the archives room. Harry took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to tell himself that things were better, fine, that everything was going to be okay. Somehow.
Then he saw Louison slip into the room after Malfoy. He looked around carefully, his usual lazy air so very lazy it seemed suddenly forced, ducked his shaggy dark head and then went into the archives room and shut the door behind him.
Harry got up from his chair. The hair on the back of his neck was prickling, his hands involuntarily closing into fists, and a little voice at the back of his head was saying that if Cuthbert had cracked the case he and Malfoy were going to be deeply shamed.
It was a bit harder to move unobtrusively towards the archives room, since even without the Veela thing at full power people’s eyes seemed to drift over to him a lot these days. Harry tried to look buried in his file and as if he was making his leisurely way towards the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
He was closer, then closer, and then he was easing open the door and he heard Louison say: “Well, it’s the logical conclusion, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Malfoy asked vaguely. “Can you help me with this box? Thank you.”
He leaned up for a tatty cardboard box filled with scrolls and Louison grabbed the other end of it. Malfoy pretty much had it, but Louison held on until Malfoy had lowered the box to the floor. Malfoy knelt down and rummaged in the box for whatever he was looking at: he remembered to look up after a second and reward Louison with a flashing smile.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Nobody’s going to mention it or anything,” Louison said. “You don’t need to worry.”
“What aren’t people going to mention?” Malfoy asked absently.
“Uh, the office kind of figured you helped Potter out with his, you know, problem,” Louison said, and Malfoy looked up with his face transformed by sudden horror.
He was suddenly sorting the scrolls without looking at them, pushing them together one by one like a praying soul telling rosary beads.
“Uh-huh,” Malfoy said, his voice cracking. “Right.”
“Well, you two are good friends and you’re living together, and Potter was being determined about things in that way of his, and suddenly—voilà! It’s pretty clear what went on, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Malfoy asked, his expression edging on the hunted. “Indeed.”
“Everyone thought it’d be more tactful to just get on with things and not mention it,” Louison told him chattily.
“Only you thought a day spent not humiliating me to the dust was a day wasted?” Malfoy inquired. “Excellent. Thanks for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to—run away and join the circus.”
He seized up a scroll at what Harry was pretty sure was random and stood up.
“Wait,” said Louison. “Hey. No. That’s not what I meant to say. What I meant was…” He paused. “Do you want to go out with me?”
Malfoy promptly dropped the scroll.
“Beg pardon?” he asked in a funny, stunned voice, as if Louison had just produced a large salmon from his pocket and slapped Malfoy around the face with it.
“Want to go out with me?” Louison repeated, sounding amused. “You swing that way. So do I. I think you’re cute in this sort of very excitable fashion. What do you say?”
Malfoy stared some more and then his mouth tugged up a little at one corner. Malfoy’s weakness for flattery was frankly getting ridiculous.
“I’m not that excitable.”
“You kind of are,” Louison told him, head tilted to one side, sounding encouraged. “But that’s all right. So do you want to?”
“Well…”
Harry realised, to his incredulous horror, that Malfoy was actually hesitating. He looked pleased.
“You’re not with Potter or anything, are you?” Louison asked.
“No.” Malfoy threw the word at him, fast and cold as a knife in the air.
“That’s what I figured. Well, you know what Potter’s like.”
“Tell me, Louison,” Harry said, his voice twice as cold as Malfoy’s and wrapping sleek as a snake around a hiss. “Since you’re such an expert on the subject. What am I like?”
Louison jumped. Harry was viciously glad to see it. He wasn’t a Veela like Zabini, wasn’t a real threat like Katie, but Malfoy’d looked at him and looked as if he was considering it. Harry didn’t understand what Louison had done to make Malfoy respond like that. He didn’t know how to steal that power from this relative stranger, reach out and have it for himself. It wasn’t fair, the thought that someone might be able to casually reach out and take what Harry wanted so much.
“Oh, mon Dieu,” Louison said, being suddenly and deliberately French as he sometimes was when Shacklebolt had questions about his reports. “Is that the time?”
He eeled out between Harry and the door. Harry let him go, lip curling, because if he went then he would be far away from Malfoy. He could stay away, too.
“When all our colleagues come up with a plot to assassinate you at the Christmas party,” Malfoy said. “I can’t honestly say that I’ll blame them. There was no reason to be rude.”
“I guess that’s just what I’m like,” Harry said. “Anyway, what are you like, Malfoy? You were considering going out with him!”
The dark little archives room was too small: Harry’s voice echoed, far too loud, against the walls. Malfoy wouldn’t look at him. He was looking at the box of files very closely, as if it was the only possible thing of interest in the room.
“I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”
“No?” Harry spoke with some difficulty. “I’m your—friend. We did say that much. You don’t think that I should know if you’re suddenly—”
“I don’t know,” Malfoy said. “I just hesitated for a second. I never really thought about it before. I was always—it was Pansy and then Katie for so long. I occasionally had thoughts about Zabini but I put it down to the Veela thing. Maybe it was. But I—speaking purely physically, from my side, the other night was fine. So I don’t know. And it’s still none of your business. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Yeah?” Harry asked. “You don’t want to talk about much, apparently. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk about anything,” Malfoy said bleakly. “There’s too much to do. I can’t think of any way to save Frexley for Katie, or those kids. I can’t think of a way to solve this whole Veela thing. I have to think: I can’t talk. I don’t know what to say.”
His head was still lowered. Harry remembered how unhappy he’d looked when he went into the archives room.
He’d smiled at Louison.
“You want to take this box home?” he asked. His voice came out a little rough, but he didn’t want it to. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee there.”
“A bowl,” Malfoy corrected him, sounding a little less wretched.
“A cup,” Harry said. “Here, let me get that.”
Malfoy waved him away without looking up. “I’ve got it. Go start the car.”
Harry had actually left the office and got the car started, the invisibility switch flipped and the car hovering about a foot above the street, when it occurred to him that Louison—who Harry had never liked, Cuthbert was right, he was shifty-looking—had done something that Harry hadn’t.
Louison had asked.
Malfoy went to the car without having to see it, throwing the box into the back and catching the invisible door as Harry leaned over and opened it for him. He climbed in and Harry sent the car in a sharp slope up into the sky.
“At least we know why Louison’s been creeping around,” Harry said neutrally, trying to show he wouldn’t be rude about that again.
“We don’t know anything,” Malfoy said. “He could be trying to allay our suspicions. If I were the kidnapper, I’d definitely know to go for my vanity. I’d also cunningly confuse you by giving you a different name every day. If Louison does that, we’re arresting him.”
“We’re not arresting Cuthbert’s suspect, Malfoy, for God’s sake,” Harry said.
“It would be a blow, but I’m prepared to do it,” Malfoy told him. “And I’m getting into the kidnapper’s mindset. So, my name is Engleberry.”
“Suits you,” Harry said.
Malfoy made a small content sound and leaned his forehead against the window. Harry looked at his hands on the wheel. He was holding on too tight: his fingers were white on the black wheel, the sinking sun hurting his eyes a bit.
“We could go out,” he said.
His voice sounded all wrong, abrupt and almost angry, but at least he’d said it. He glanced over at Malfoy and Malfoy was staring at him. He just looked lost.
“What?” he said. “Who?”
“Us,” Harry said, clearing his throat. “You and me. We could go out. If you wanted.”
“What?” Malfoy asked again.
He’d picked up on what Louison was asking easily enough, and he’d been pleased. He didn’t sound pleased now.
“You were saying you wanted a solution,” Harry said uncertainly. “That’s a solution. And I’d—I’d like it. We could—”
“No,” said Malfoy.
Harry wanted to say something, but he had nothing: he had absolutely no idea what to say, how he could make this better. There was no way. There were no words that would help.
In the corner of Harry’s eye he saw Malfoy, hair gold in the setting sun and far away across the car. He was leaning his forehead back against the glass and watching the clouds drift past.
“I just don’t think that would be a good idea,” Malfoy continued quietly.
He said nothing more. They drove on in silence.