“You,” Harry said again, the snarl tearing at his throat as the collar bit into his flesh. He had no time for despair: he was filled with sudden furious purpose. “I’m going to kill you.”
Cuthbert looked a little taller and a whole lot more self-assured in this cold warehouse than he did at the Auror headquarters. Maybe it was that he’d dropped his humble act. Maybe it was that Cuthbert needed the people around him caged and at his mercy before he could feel tall.
“Threats and arrogance from you, Mr Potter?” he asked. “Wish I could say I was surprised. But that’s you people all over, isn’t it?”
“You… people,” Harry repeated slowly, caught off guard by the venom in Cuthbert’s voice. He expected that tone coming from a Death Eater, not from a Muggleborn’s lips. Even this Muggleborn.
“You have no idea,” Cuthbert said. “how much I hate you. Do you? You and that preening pureblood partner of yours, strutting around the Auror headquarters as if you own the place. Too good to obey the rules, and certainly too good for any Mudbloods. I’ve seen it happen my whole life. I was a freak as a kid and then the letter came, I went to Hogwarts and I was still a freak. All the purebloods turned their noses up at me. But you people, you people, the real freaks, the twisted disgusting offspring of half horses and half fish and nightmare bird creatures, you were all accepted without question.” Cuthbert paused for a moment, and then took a swift, deep breath. “Well. You’re probably not feeling quite so pleased with yourself now.”
“My mother was mostly Muggleborn,” Harry said. “One of my best friends is. I don’t think I’m better than the Muggleborn.”
“No, you really don’t think about other people much at all, do you?” Cuthbert asked. “But you always act like you’re better than everyone. You never had to think: you never had to deal with anyone looking down on you, not Harry Potter the gorgeous celebrity. You just carry on with your charmed life, never noticing the little people.”
“Yeah, my life’s always been pretty fantastic, you have me there,” Harry snapped. “We all had our problems at school. Not all of us decided to nurse a crazy grudge until we could use it as a reason to kidnap and sell and murder children. You lose the moral high ground about when you start putting people in cages!”
Cuthbert just smiled, running his fingers along the bars of a cage. A man snapped in his direction with tusks like a troll’s. Cuthbert simply smiled again, and did not take his eyes off Harry.
“Oh, I’m not doing this because of a grudge,” Cuthbert told him. “I’m doing it for the money. There’s a buyer who’s willing to pay top Galleon for you creatures, don’t ask me why. But I won’t deny that when I found out about you—I knew I had to get you. I wanted you to know it was me. I wanted to see the look on your face when you realised. You never thought much of me, did you? Not even enough to suspect me. I was little more than an owl you were sending to deliver a letter to your precious partner, but now…”
“Oh yes,” Harry said, and let his voice run through a wild wood, snakes in the undergrowth and birds calling overhead. “Imagine what I think of you now.”
It fazed Cuthbert for a moment, but only a moment. He walked around in silence, shoes crunching against the gritty stone of the warehouse floor, and surveyed his caged kingdom. He was soon smiling again.
Harry wished he could hold onto the bright hot rush of anger, and he would’ve been able to if it had just been him in the trap. But there was Eugenia Varley to think of, and Conleth Frexley. There was a sea of caged strangers he had a duty to protect, and a buyer of exotic curiosities he had to catch and punish.
“I do wonder how you got your alibi for the night of the Aurors’ party,” Harry said.
“Why should it matter?” Cuthbert asked.
Harry smiled lazily and purposefully, watching Cuthbert shiver with sudden uncontrollable longing and then look abruptly away. “Call it professional curiosity. Had to put Malcolm Baddock under Imperius to get some action, did you?”
“I certainly did not!” Cuthbert barked, eyes snapping back to Harry’s face and blazing.
Harry had been too occupied with fury and Cuthbert to hear approaching footsteps again: this time he only heard the door open, and at that sound he wheeled around thinking Malfoy and feeling a sudden burst of hope.
“He didn’t have to,” said Malcolm Baddock, standing on the threshold and sparkling gently under the fluorescent lights. He smiled a little apologetically at Harry. “I did say I had a boyfriend.”
“Oh, you have to be kidding me,” Harry snarled after an instant of stunned silence. “You didn’t say you had an evil boyfriend!”
Malcolm made a tiny conciliatory gesture, a ring of his catching the light.
“We-ell, I am a Slytherin. You had to know the odds were good.”
Harry was speechless, and Malcolm turned to Cuthbert and gave him a reproachful look. “I asked you to get Zabini instead.”
“Well, I tried to get him, it didn’t work out,” Cuthbert snapped. “And besides that, the buyer wanted Potter and so did I. He’s much stronger, and much more of an exotic specimen, and besides that—I wanted to bring him down.”
He shot Harry another furious glance, the longing burning in his hot eyes and fueling his hatred instead of replacing it. Then Malcolm walked over to him and touched his face: Cuthbert’s eyes softened a little.
“I know you did,” Malcolm said. “I know you only went after Zabini for me.”
“That’s so romantic,” Harry drawled.
Cuthbert’s jaw tightened and his head swung in Harry’s direction again, but Malcolm kept a hand against Cuthbert’s cheek and made Cuthbert look at him. Then he kissed him, slowly.
Even murderous kidnapping racist madmen had better love lives than Harry. Because that was fair.
After a while Malcolm detached from Cuthbert, Cuthbert looking dreamily after him, and then looked over at Harry himself and bit his rather swollen lower lip.
“Malfoy’s going to be so upset.”
“Good,” Cuthbert said with finality.
“I know the purebloods are just as bad and oppressive as the halfbreeds and everything,” Malcolm said, as if repeating a lesson he’d learned and found convincing, if a little dull. “But I like Malfoy. He’s nice to me. Well, incredibly snotty and supercilious to me, but that’s his way.”
“You don’t have to be grateful to Malfoy for the scraps he throws to the little people,” Cuthbert said, reaching out and stroking the back of Malcolm’s neck. “You’ve got me now. And Malfoy was the one who tossed you to Potter like a bone to a mad dog so that Potter could throw you out of the house with the rubbish.”
Harry opened his mouth to say that wasn’t how that was, before he remembered that it had been. He didn’t have to justify himself to these people, though. And he didn’t need to blame the Veela blood for being a jerk: he could be a jerk on his own.
“Yeah, that was terrible,” Malcolm said, sounding supremely unconvincing. “I felt used.” He glanced across at Harry and mouthed: “I regret nothing!”
Then he flashed him a grin. Harry didn’t feel in the mood to grin back.
“So… what,” he said. “You just sit back while your boyfriend kidnaps and sells people?”
“I love him, I have to support him,” Malcolm told Harry, eyes wide and guileless. “My dad wasn’t exactly thrilled with his gay magical son either, and Hogwarts wasn’t any kind of safe refuge. Besides—no offence meant—it’s not like you’re exactly people, now is it? Centaurs and mermaids and Veela things, it’s all a bit weird. And Cuthbert’s right, you do act like you think you’re better than everyone. D’you remember Ritchie Coote? You did a number on him. He was all broken and vulnerable and—I thank you for that, obviously, we had a magical weekend in Brighton—”
“Malcolm do you mind,” Cuthbert snapped.
“But I never loved anyone until you, darling,” said Malcolm, and flashed him a brilliant smile. “My theory’s that you don’t have feelings like proper people do,” he told Harry. “So it’s okay to sell you really. And it means Cuthbert can keep me in the style to which I fully intend to become accustomed.”
“I have feelings,” Harry snarled.
“Oh really?” Malcolm asked, eyes bright with interest as a bird’s. “For who?”
“It’s none of your business!”
Harry was in no mood to talk about boys with Malcolm Baddock, currently the Bonnie to Cuthbert’s Clyde, of all the ridiculous things in the world. He almost hated Baddock more than Cuthbert, for being so blithe about the whole thing. He wanted to kill them both with his bare hands.
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed into pale slits. “On reflection, I think you were absolutely right to take Potter, Cuthbert. I can always console Malfoy. Happy to do it!”
Harry made a low rumbling sound of threat. Cuthbert looked like he agreed: Malcolm closed his eyes and shivered a little.
Oh, Harry thought.
He wanted to kill Cuthbert and Malcolm. He wanted to beat them up. But he couldn’t do that. He only had one way to get to them. Either of them would do: they both had keys at their belts.
Harry and Malcolm had spent a night together: Malcolm should have a little extra immunity, but he didn’t hate Harry the way Cuthbert did. He also seemed more likely to be susceptible, in that he seemed to be a bit of a sparkly harlot.
“So,” Harry muttered. “Why don’t you come over here?”
Malcolm blinked long mascara-black eyelashes at him. “Uh, no thanks,” he said warily. “Why’re you blushing?”
Harry Potter, irresistible love god, was starting to believe everyone had considerably overestimated the power of his Veela allure.
He shut his eyes for a moment and tried to recall that night with Baddock. It’d been years ago, though, tainted at the time and even more tainted in memory now that he knew what Baddock was. He’d been drunk and it had all been dark, the sheets tangled and the bitter taste of Malcolm’s cigarettes on his tongue and he’d been so desperate, been too rough because it’d seemed like there should be some way to shove through all this confusion to reach the clear bright image of Malfoy drunk and laughing by lamplight. He hadn’t wanted Malcolm then. He didn’t want him now, he knew exactly who and what he wanted, and he didn’t feel like pretending anymore.
He wanted to rip Baddock apart. But, it occurred to him slowly, wild Veela wanted to attract humans so they could eat them.
Harry opened his eyes and saw things clearly. His blood was running hot with pure rage and he was remembering a dream about a wild wood. Everything was almost shimmering in his vision, steel and yellow lights all in bright sharp colours. He lifted one hand and curled it, beckoning.
“Hey, Baddock,” he hissed, letting his voice wrap around every syllable, sweet and tight. “I said, come over here. To me.”
Baddock’s eyes drifted almost shut at the sound of Harry’s words and Harry leaned against the bars and willed Baddock to come over. He was a Veela, wasn’t he? That was why they’d locked him up in here, why they thought it was all right. So he’d be one, as hard as he knew how, and when a Veela wanted you to come, you came. You didn’t even care why.
“Right now,” Harry growled, and Baddock almost tripped over himself in his sudden rush to the cage.
He was stumbling, runners sliding on the concrete, and then he had the door of the cage swinging open and held in his shaking fingers. Harry leaped for his throat.
Agony hit him like lightning striking at the base of his neck, the collar around his neck suddenly seeming transformed to electrocuted barbed wire. The shock drove Harry to his knees outside the cage, panting and scrabbling at the concrete, blind with pain for a moment.
When Cuthbert strode over and kicked him in the stomach he went down hard, tasting blood in his mouth.
“I suggest you don’t try that again,” Cuthbert snapped. “You think it’s the first time we’ve seen one of you attempting your monster tricks? I gagged the half-siren bitch and she didn’t eat for a week: what do you have to say about that?”
Harry squinted up at him until pain stopped blurring his vision and Cuthbert’s face coalesced into something that made more sense.
“Nothing much,” he rasped. “I already told you I was going to kill you.”
Malcolm was trembling by Cuthbert’s side, held close against him. The glittery letters on his shirt spelling out Queen of Tarts wavered into a shining mess before Harry’s eyes: he pulled all the broken drifting pieces of himself together with an effort. He couldn’t afford to pass out yet.
“You misunderstood me,” he said, spitting out blood. It shone vivid scarlet against the grim grey stone. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just wanted you to come closer so—” He shut his eyes and continued, very low: “Malfoy.”
Cuthbert made a disgusted sound.
“What about Malfoy?” Baddock asked, sounding startled and a little curious.
Harry clenched his fists and pushed himself up off the ground a little, so he was on his hands and knees instead of knocked flat. It made a tiny bit of difference.
“If you ever got the chance to say something to him,” he said hoarsely. “You could say I’d told you—oh, anytime. There’s something I just—” He swallowed, his throat slick with blood. “I really want him to know.”
“Let’s get going, Malcolm,” Cuthbert said.
“Just a minute,” said Baddock, sounding rather distracted. He knelt down by Harry, his face wavering before Harry’s eyes. “What?” he asked, a little gently. “What do you want me to tell Malfoy? I will.”
Harry reached out and took hold of Baddock’s stupid sparkly t-shirt in one hand, drawing him close, and whispered in his ear. Then he let himself sag, even though it made him sick to collapse with his head on Baddock’s shoulder. He couldn’t last a minute more. He just slipped, sick and aching, into a long cold darkness.
Harry hadn’t been awake all that long when the morning light outside one window was suddenly obscured, as if there was a very localised eclipse happening.
Harry’d been listening to Eugenia Varley describing how she might really rather go up the Amazon than face the remorseless teasing in store for her back at Hogwarts.
“He’ll probably call me Eggenia from now on,” she said morosely.
“This’d be Ratcliff, then?”
Varley eyed Harry coldly. “I don’t see why you decided to bring him up.”
Harry didn’t have much practice talking to children, but he thought that Varley might be especially difficult. She was more like a rather prim hedgehog than his idea of a victimised child, and she was so real, they were all so real. He couldn’t believe how stupid what Baddock had said was. He was getting every one of them out.
“So now that your partner’s not coming,” began the part-mermaid. “Should we just—”
“Oh, he’s still coming,” Harry said absently. “I just don’t know how long he’ll be. So instead of waiting around for him, I suggest—”
That was when the sun was blotted out in one window. Harry looked up at the shadow speeding towards them and relaxed a little, filled with sudden warmth. He’d known Malfoy was coming: he hadn’t known how he’d get there or when, but he’d known. Still, it was good to be proven right, to have the world as he’d known it must be.
His shoulders eased down as the flying car came blasting in, obliterating the window and most of the wall. Chunks of masonry littered the floor suddenly, rolling between the cages, and Ron popped his head out of the driver’s seat and shouted: “Everyone all right down there? Yell if anyone got hurt, okay?”
The passenger door slammed open in midair and a figure threw himself out, a blur of dark clothes and bright hair in the shadow of the car. He hit the floor rolling just as Harry had taught him, rolled to his feet and raked his eyes across the cages as if his line of sight was a searchlight with only one target. His gaze met Harry’s and locked.
“You,” snarled Malfoy.
He strode through the warehouse as if steel cages and their occupants were something he barely noticed at all, irrelevant obstacles in his path. His eyes didn’t leave Harry’s, his focus absolute and furious. He stormed through the halfbreeds until he was upon Harry, and then he grabbed the collar around Harry’s neck, seeming to find it perfectly natural it was there, twisted the leash around his own wrist in one economical movement and pulled.
“You are so stupid I could kill you,” Malfoy raged, and kissed him.
It was possibly the worst kiss of Harry’s life. Malfoy was obviously too frantic and angry to think about it at all, it was just a crush of mouths as if Malfoy had decided that hitting Harry with his face was the way to punish him, and it made every muscle in Harry’s body relax abruptly and completely as if someone had unwound every tight knot in him at once and everything could go smoothly, could be simple, for a moment.
Harry drew in a breath and leaned in against Malfoy, resting along the sharp planes and angles of his body. Malfoy’s other hand, the one not knotted around the choke chain, was suddenly there and gentle at the back of his head, fingers curled in Harry’s hair. Malfoy opened his mouth a little, lips parting on a breath that was either resigned or relieved, and Harry was finally close enough. He was kissing Malfoy back, holding on tight to the worn warm material of his t-shirt, morning light brimming in his almost-shut eyes.
He opened them when Malfoy pulled back, just a bit, blinked and stared at Malfoy’s kissed-pink mouth and cool accusing eyes.
“You idiot. How dare you do something so stupid?” Malfoy demanded, sweeping on with his raging indignation and superbly ignoring any small interruption that might have occurred in his tirade. “What is wrong with you? You know better than this by now, Potter!”
“I had to,” Harry said quietly. He leaned in and kissed Malfoy’s angry mouth again: it helped him think. “You weren’t listening—you were hell-bent on solving it all yourself, and there wasn’t time, there were children involved and you weren’t listening.”
“I would have listened,” Malfoy argued, sounding a little startled but mostly insistent that he had absolutely not been wrong, oh no, because all his plans were so brilliant. “If you’d told me what you were planning and told me you were going to do it no matter what, I would’ve helped, I would have stopped you being so unforgivably stupid, that’s what I do—”
Harry hadn’t been sure that came before all else, not when Katie was involved, but he didn’t know how to put that and it didn’t matter anyway. He was sure enough, now, and all the explanations he could think of seemed unimportant and were fragmenting in his mind. He was vividly aware of Malfoy’s body under his clothes, so close, strength and warm skin a fragile layer of cotton and denim away.
“You were all over the place,” he mumbled. “I wanted to solve it: I didn’t want you upset any more.”
Malfoy laughed somewhere in between the slide of their mouths, sounding slightly desperate. “Yes, this was much better. Thanks for being so considerate, Potter. I only thought you might be dead: nothing to concern yourself with. If you ever, ever do anything like this again—”
“No,” Harry said, soothing. “No, I won’t.”
“I’ll kill you,” said Malfoy into another kiss. “I swear I will.”
“Hem hem,” said Eugenia Varley, in tones appropriate for a disapproving and possibly sixty-year-old schoolteacher.
Harry realised what he was doing and where he was doing it at about the same time that Malfoy whirled away from him, scarlet flooding his face, looking out on the steel sea of cages and the hovering car.
The half-mermaid woman had her faintly-scaled legs crossed before her. She looked highly amused and as if all she had to wish for in the world was popcorn.
“Don’t mind us,” she said.
Even the back of Malfoy’s neck was pink. He did not, however, let go of the chain. It stayed wrapped tight around his wrist, the link between him and Harry held taut. He’d know if Harry even moved.
From on high in the car came Ron’s plaintive voice. “Are they done yet?”
Harry was vaguely horrified to see a face peeping out of the rear window of the car, and to realise that Crabbe and Goyle were in the backseat.
“I think so,” Goyle called back to Ron. “Did you see that, Vince? That was adorable. Vince? Vince, why don’t you look surprised? What have you been keeping from me?”
“Oh my God,” Malfoy muttered. “I wish I was dead.”
The car maneuvered in midair, Ron clearly searching for a place where he could land and park without crashing into a cage. He eventually found one, his face in the window looking dismayed over getting a dent in back, even though the entire front of the car was pretty much destroyed.
“Quite the rescue party,” Harry observed. “Er—how’d that happen?”
“I was a little upset,” Malfoy said in a voice that made Harry wonder whether the Auror headquarters or Harry’s flat were currently in ruins. “So Crabbe and Goyle were with me. At first they were just trying to get me to come to the pub and then when I realised you were nowhere to be found—they were trying to calm me down. I found Weasley and he told me your little plan—not that it deserves to be called a plan, it was some sort of mutant hideous hybrid baby born of lunatic scheming and good old straightforward lunacy—”
Harry reached out and touched Malfoy between his shoulderblades, reminding him that this might not be the ideal time to go off on one.
Malfoy’s shoulders eased down a fraction. “Anyway, I had some—spies Hermione loaned me watching Malcolm Baddock, among other people. Nobody else did anything suspicious during the night, but they reported back that Baddock had come here, so—I came here.”
“Didn’t know you suspected Malcolm Baddock,” Harry said mildly.
Malfoy must still have been terribly off balance, as he did not claim that everything had been part of an enormous overarching plot of his or start with any ‘Elementary, my dear Potter’ posturing.
“I didn’t, really,” he answered. “But it couldn’t be discounted. He was always hanging around, and acting like he wanted to sleep with me was a laughably transparent pretext. Besides, he’s Muggleborn, and I knew he had issues with his father. Oh, well. A Slytherin was the evil mastermind behind all of this.” Malfoy sighed. “I wish people wouldn’t play into stereotypes so much, but I suppose I’m not surprised. Only a Slytherin would have been able to lead us astray for so long.”
“I gave a letter for you to Cuthbert,” Harry said.
“Also, you slept with someone who was evil,” Malfoy continued. “Ha!”
Then he looked over at Harry and frowned, a line appearing between his brows. His face was already strained, terribly tired with shadows marked under his eyes: he clearly wasn’t coming up with any more brilliant leaps until he got some rest.
“So Cuthbert is Baddock’s puppet?” he asked tentatively. “Just one of the many puppets in his circus of evil?”
“‘Fraid not,” Harry said. “Cuthbert’s an evil mastermind. They, uh, seem to be in—involved. Romantically.”
“Oh my God, a Hufflepuff? He should kill himself out of shame,” Malfoy announced. “And oh my God, a Hufflepuff is our—Cuthbert is—Maybe I’ll kill myself out of shame.” He cast Harry a despairing glance. “Well,” he said. “You still slept with someone evil.”
“It was your idea,” Harry said. “I blame you.”
Ron, Crabbe and Goyle were wending their way through the forest of cages. Goyle stopped to chat with an unfortunate soul who looked like he might be part-Hippogriff, but Ron and Crabbe came steadily on.
“Harry, mate,” Ron said. “Glad you’re okay. Possibly not as glad as some people, or at least I don’t plan on expressing it the same way—”
“Oh, bite me,” Malfoy snarled, re-commencing looking like he wanted to die of shame. The fading blush went violently pink again.
“No thanks,” said Ron. “Okay, so I didn’t bring a crowbar or anything and I presume these cages are magically reinforced. How are we going to get everybody out?”
That was when the door to the warehouse swung open, and Cuthbert and Malcolm Baddock stepped inside.
“Baddock,” Malfoy said in a voice of such menace that Baddock stepped back, “I am so very disappointed in you.”
“Um,” said Baddock, shoulders hunching inside his inevitably sparkly Mine’s Eleven Inches—And My Wand’s Not Bad Either! t-shirt.
Cuthbert looked surprised for a moment, then visibly pulled himself together. “I’d suggest that you shut up,” he suggested. “Unless you want Potter to get another little shock, that is.”
Malfoy glanced over at Harry’s collar, and then the side of his face that he thought might’ve got a bit bruised falling down. Then he returned his gaze to Cuthbert, where it rested cold as any spoken threat.
Harry coughed and said: “About that.”
Everyone looked at him and Harry smiled, then snapped off the collar around his neck and tossed it to the ground.
On that signal the other halfbreeds swung open their cage doors, and all of them stepped out free.
Harry tilted his head to enjoy the sight of Cuthbert and Baddock’s faces.
“Why didn’t you do that before?” Malfoy asked, dropping the chain and grabbing his wand in one movement.
“I was perfectly happy where I was,” Harry said.
Malfoy blinked at him, taking another moment to be startled for some reason, but he did not pass any comment. What he did was pass over his spare wand from its sheath under his t-shirt.
“Thought you might have a use for this.”
Harry grinned and Malfoy grinned back, fierce and simple. “Thanks.”
“Malcolm,” Cuthbert said in a small voice. “Is there any particular reason you didn’t notice that Potter had stolen your keys?”
“Well it’s not like I kept my clothes on long after we left, I just thought I’d misplaced them somewhere in the rush, Veela pheromones do not leave your head clear enough for much rational thought!” Baddock burst out. “Also, I’m sorry.” He took a long look at the halfbreeds, all moving gradually closer. “Really sorry.”
There was almost a hush as the halfbreeds closed in, except for Malfoy snickering.
“Veela pheromones?”
“Had to get Baddock closer,” Harry explained briefly. “Used the Veela thing. Almost worked, and then I got him to come the rest of the way telling him I had a message for you.”
“What did you say?” Malfoy asked in a sharp voice.
“Don’t remember, I was kind of losing consciousness at the time,” Harry said. “Something sappy.” He flashed Malfoy another grin, this one triumphant. “Got the keys.”
“Well, that is the important thing,” Malfoy conceded.
“Then when I woke up I got everyone free,” Harry said. “I knew you’d come, but I didn’t know when and there was no point sticking around. We thought we’d surprise them when they came in.”
“Sort of like this,” Malfoy murmured.
Cuthbert and Baddock had their backs to the door now, the halfbreeds surrounding them like a magically-growing wall of thorns with grasping hands and bared teeth. Cuthbert opened the door with a wrench and a boy who looked about thirteen in the back spoke a single word in a language Harry didn’t know but that sounded like the howling of the wind in a storm turned to words. The door slammed shut, and did not open when Cuthbert scrabbled at it.
“Just like this,” Harry breathed. “Yeah.”
Conleth gave a long terrible cry that echoed in Harry’s bones and reminded him that the scream of a banshee was supposed to herald death. Conleth’s red head was cocked back, like a bird about to strike.
Cuthbert lifted his wand and yelled out a spell that knocked Conleth back a few paces. Baddock took advantage of the distraction to make a break for it and hurl himself through the crowd, parting in shock, towards what Harry saw in an instant of crystal clarity was his target: the youngest halfbreed there and the least likely to be able to protect herself. Eugenia Varley.
Who promptly burst into flame.
“I don’t think so!” she hissed, crackling and not burning at the heart of fire, her red hair loose now and streaming in the fire as if it was water, as if this was her element. “I’ve had enough! I’m going home!”
Harry tackled Baddock to the ground at her blazing feet.
“You heard her,” he said, and punched him.
Then he punched him again. Baddock tried to twist away and speak the words of a spell: Harry hit him in the mouth. Baddock was weak, they were both weak and pathetic, preying on children, turning on prejudice with prejudice but they’d be sorry, he’d make them sorry, and they would never ever touch another child again.
He stopped punching Baddock when a hand grasped his wrist in an inexorable hold, and he looked up into Malfoy’s eyes.
“Maybe you don’t want to do this,” Malfoy said, his voice icy-cool but with effort behind it.
“Malfoy—” breathed Baddock through bloody lips.
Malfoy did not even spare him a glance, but he curled his lip in contempt. “Maybe you do,” he continued, and there was chill fury behind the words, born of protective rage that must have been building all night. “You decide.”
Malfoy would understand, no matter what he did. They both knew enough about hatred and the almost-irresistible desire to lash out that Malfoy would get it: that probably a large part of him wanted Harry to murder Baddock right now.
Harry wanted to murder Baddock. He wanted to kill them both, and he wanted it badly.
Only Malfoy had stopped him and given him a moment to think. Varley was there, very close, and at the heart of the flame she was a scared child. Ron was here too, and Crabbe and Goyle, people he respected: and he thought the halfbreeds would follow his lead. Cuthbert and Baddock had caged them like animals. But they weren’t animals.
He was an Auror.
He shut his eyes, pushing down the screaming impulse to leap, feeling sweat running down under his shirt. For a moment he thought about catching Malfoy’s wrist and pulling him in close, even over Baddock’s body, being able to hide his face in the curve of Malfoy’s throat and have a moment of peace.
He pulled his wrist out of Malfoy’s grip and climbed to his feet. There was a sound behind him like Baddock reaching for his wand or moving to attack him, and Harry did not even glance around.
Sure enough, Malfoy’s voice behind him said “Oh no you don’t,” and, unless Harry was very much mistaken, there was the sound of another punch being thrown.
Before him stood the sea of halfbreeds, and Ron, Crabbe and Goyle with their wands out. Conleth seemed to have recovered and hurled Cuthbert to the ground. As Harry watched the half-mermaid woman broke Cuthbert’s wand over one iridescent-scaled knee. Some of them were hanging back, but there were enough halfbreeds closing in, in a beautiful deadly ring, forming an ever-tightening noose.
Harry pitched his voice, commanding as snakes striking or birds of prey dropping from a clear sky, to carry above banshee cries and siren song.
“Stop!”
Conleth didn’t look like he was going to. Then the half-mermaid woman sighed and shook her head, hair flaring out like seaweed caught in the waves, and grabbed his arm. A man with little horns and a ring through his bull-like nose—half-minotaur, Harry presumed—stepped aside to let Harry pass.
The halfbreeds opened their murderous little knot to let Harry slip through. They did not close again, just stood there, all tensed to move but not moving, all of them watching. A boy with a few snakes growing among his dreadlocks nodded so the snakes all hissed and Cuthbert shuddered. They stood there furious but controlled—and controlled, not tamed.
The half-mermaid passed Harry the broken pieces of Cuthbert’s wand.
“I’m going to take him down to Auror headquarters,” Harry said, forcing his voice to sound calm and authoritative. “We’re going to get the name of his buyer. You can all testify against him. You can all come to see him locked up in a cage for the rest of his life.”
Cuthbert lay there silently, eyes huge with shock or fear. Harry didn’t care much which it was. He tossed the broken remains of Cuthbert’s wand down as if they were so much rubbish: they landed on Cuthbert’s chest and Cuthbert looked down at the pieces, still silent.
“I would’ve thought you’d be happy, Cuthbert,” Harry said, baring his teeth. “See? Sometimes I do follow the rules.”
The paperwork was going to be a massive and horrible undertaking: that was clear. They were going to have to go over all of the reports about Cuthbert’s traineeship, which in Harry’s case meant he was going to have to actually write those reports first. And the Auror headquarters was crammed to bursting with half-breeds and their families, and there was a stack of release forms a mile high that said their statements had been taken and they were free to go.
Harry wanted them all free immediately, and was doing his best to make it happen.
A few of them seemed content enough to stay. The half-mermaid woman, whose name had turned out to be Araminta, seemed perfectly happy lounging against office desks and flirting in a leisurely way with Louison. Conleth Frexley had made a leap at Katie and Harry hadn’t seen them for a while.
Until now, as Katie had just appeared beside Malfoy’s desk. Wonderful.
“Hi, Draco,” she said. She was fiddling with her brown hair, which was more disarranged and fuzzy than usual, catching gold in the light. She looked distressed and happy and terribly grateful, and Harry couldn’t imagine anyone who loved her looking at her without feeling something.
Harry hated her, utterly and completely, even though she had not done a thing wrong.
Malfoy tipped his head back to look up at her, leaning away from his desk and the stacked papers and into his chair.
“Hi,” he responded.
“I just wanted to—” Katie made an expansive movement. “Thank you. Draco. For—for everything.”
“You’re welcome for everything,” Malfoy told her.
Katie sighed and tucked her hands into her sleeves in what seemed to be a forcible effort to stop herself fiddling with her hair. “I was hoping that maybe it’s been long enough,” she began. “I wanted—I’d like very much to be friends.”
Malfoy hesitated. “Maybe,” he said. “You might decide you don’t want to be. I’m not very nice.”
Katie made a little face, as if she was pleased but confused. “Well—I’d like to try.”
“All right, then,” Malfoy said, and chucked a file at her head. Katie only barely managed to catch it and not sustain a concussion. “Go file that in the archives, Bell,” he said cheerfully, returning to his stack. “Do try not to lose this one, sometimes I think archives are secretly run by a flock of rather unintelligent ducks. They don’t hand out awards at the ceremonies for incompetence, you know.”
“Er,” said Katie.
Malfoy lifted his eyebrows at her with an extremely pureblood expression. “Sometime today would be ideal, Bell,” he told her coolly, and then grinned. “I told you I wasn’t very nice.”
“Well,” Katie said, still looking shocked but smiling faintly back. “All right. I’ll go file this away.”
She wandered off. Malfoy returned to his papers with a slight smile playing about his lips. Harry wasn’t sure whether what had just happened was good or bad and he frankly wished that Katie had announced she was moving to Germany with Conleth, but there was work to be done and people to be freed. He put his head down.
He lifted it some little time later, when Shacklebolt told them that Eugenia Varley’s father could not be reached at the moment and he and Malfoy had been detailed to take her back to Hogwarts.
“Oh,” Harry said, and smiled at Shacklebolt. Shacklebolt’s face remained as perfectly wooden as ever.
“Don’t hang around and make me change my mind about letting you two go off without supervision,” he said, and five minutes later Harry, Malfoy and Varley were in the car, sailing out into what was still a very early morning.
Varley drooped in the backseat, not exactly the picture of a joyfully liberated child. Her hair still smelled faintly of ashes. Malfoy tried to cheer her up by showing her Maurice the car radio, with very limited success.
They landed the car on the Hogwarts lawn. The first person to arrive was Lavender Brown, who came running out of her house to sweep Varley off her feet in an exuberant hug. Then came a trickle and after that a flood of students, obviously seeing some commotion out the windows they hoped would be more interesting than morning classes.
Varley clung a little to Lavender. Malfoy was engaged talking to Snape as usual. Harry went to meet a short dark boy in pyjamas, easily recognisable because of the giant slug he had cradled in his arms.
“Ratcliff?” he asked.
“Mr Potter,” Ratcliff said. “Varley back, then? D’you see how Eustace has grown?”
“Er—very nice,” Harry said doubtfully. “Look, I wanted a word. The thing is, and you might not have realised this yet, but Eugenia Varley is half phoenix. That would be how she, er, heals slugs on the brink of death with her tears, and uh—occasionally bursts into flames. What I think you should remember is—”
He had an awkward sort of speech worked out about not bullying her and definitely not mentioning the born out of an egg thing she seemed so sensitive about, but he stopped, startled, as it dawned on him that the expression Ratcliff wore was very strange.
“Seriously, sir?” he asked.
“Er—yeah,” said Harry.
“So—so theoretically she could raise an entire undead slug army,” Ratcliff said. “And sometimes she goes on fire. That’s what you’re saying to me.”
“Er—yeah,” Harry repeated.
Ratcliff’s face shone with a look of pure unholy delight.
“My dad told me that I’d figure out what girls were for about now,” he confided, apparently so overcome that he could only speak in a whisper.
Then he turned and made purposefully for Lavender and Varley. Varley looked at him with intense suspicion as he came.
“And what do you want?” she inquired, letting Lavender’s hand drop at last.
Ratcliff sidled up close to her. “Eugenia,” he said with an ingratiating smile. “I’m so glad you’re back.” He paused and added, in the tones of one making an offer no woman could refuse: “Would you like to hold my slug?”
Harry shook his head as he turned away from them and towards Malfoy. Possibly he should have predicted this, but even after all the practice he’d had Slytherins were still pretty hard to fathom.
Malfoy was still talking to Snape, right hand making some sort of gesture no doubt illustrating Malfoy’s own extreme brilliance. Harry caught his left, hand sliding up to fasten on his wrist.
“Hey,” he said. Malfoy leaned back against him a bit, in a small gesture he’d made a thousand times, that meant he was tired and glad Harry was there.
“Hey.”
Snape regarded them in a way that suggested he was hating life just a little more than usual today.
Harry smiled at him brightly, since he’d learned that was what bothered Snape the most, and turned to Malfoy.
“Let’s go home.”
“You certainly look as if you could use some rest,” Snape said grudgingly, with possible concern hidden behind all the heaping contempt for the entire world. “Go, then.”
The ‘And take your monkey with you’ was, Harry felt, implied.
Snape turned with his robe billowing in the wind and morning sunlight silver on the new grey in his hair, and started to herd the students back up towards the school. He looked rather like a large crow who had adopted the duties of a sheepdog, not fitted for it but doing his duty anyway. The students went willingly enough with him and back into the castle.
Harry and Malfoy went home.
What Harry would have done, if he could’ve had exactly what he wanted, was crawl into bed with Malfoy and sleep for about twelve hours. He might’ve settled on putting off sleep for a bit.
What he actually did when they got to the flat was make some tea. It seemed a neutral and not-presumptuous sort of thing to do, since kissing Malfoy against the fridge had gone so badly. He made coffee for Malfoy as well, stirring the dark liquid, hearing the spoon clink against the china.
Malfoy, who’d slid up on the kitchen counter when Harry went for the kettle, accepted it from him without comment. He started slightly when their fingers brushed but kept his head down, bowed over his cup, and Harry turned back to making himself tea.
Silence was never a good sign in the land of Malfoy. It was more along the lines of a sign that warned for both quicksand and dragons.
For a moment Harry wished with all his heart that they were back at the warehouse where everything had seemed so simple, with Malfoy’s hand in his hair.
He turned with the mug of tea in his hand, intending to go for the sofa, and then Malfoy kicked up a leg against the fridge and effectively blocked Harry’s way.
Harry stared at him and Malfoy lifted his chin almost defiantly.
“I think—I need to apologise,” he said, hesitating on every word as if he had to choose just the right one.
“What?” Harry asked blankly.
Malfoy wasn’t quite meeting his eyes. “For earlier,” he explained. “I was overwrought.”
“For—?” Harry made an incredulous sound and shoved his mug onto the draining board. It upset and fell into the sink, sloshing tea everywhere. “For God’s sake, Malfoy, it’s not like I minded.”
“No,” Malfoy conceded, his mouth suddenly at a strange angle as if he were tasting something he was unfamiliar with and uncertain about. “I know that. It’s just that it wasn’t—I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.”
Harry leaned back against the stove, holding onto the edge with fingers suddenly clenched tight.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
“We were going to live together,” Malfoy said, and Harry flinched at his use of the past tense. “And be partners, and I’d much—I’d much rather do that. I’d like to live with you.”
“Who ever said anything about not living together?” Harry demanded, rough with misery and then regretting it when Malfoy’s face shut up even further. “I want to live together too. It was my idea. What has living together got to do with anything?”
“Well, we couldn’t—” Malfoy began, voice wavering.
“Why not?” Harry exclaimed, and felt immediately guilty.
It wasn’t Malfoy’s fault if he didn’t feel the same way. Just because having Malfoy touch him seemed necessary as air didn’t mean it was: it didn’t mean that Harry could demand to have him as a right. This was probably pretty unpleasant for Malfoy, too. Harry knew that Malfoy didn’t like hurting him.
He looked up from the floor, expecting to see Malfoy feeling at least a little sorry for him.
Malfoy looked blazingly angry.
“You don’t understand me at all, do you?” he asked, voice cutting with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. “Either that or you don’t care, or you’re totally crazy. You may think that would be a terribly convenient solution, but do you have any idea what it would do to me—I don’t work like that! It would be horrible and—and insane, living and working and… it’d be putting all my eggs in one basket and there’d be no reason to do it, no way it couldn’t fall to pieces. You must be mad. Don’t you see what a disaster it would be?”
“You’re right,” Harry said, and watched Malfoy’s shoulders hunch in and wanted to smash something. “I don’t understand you,” he went on. “Are you—all I got from everything you just said was that you think I’m a demented egg basket.”
A smile ghosted Malfoy’s lips, faint and not quite there, and Harry felt a hollow place under his ribs: he wished he could summon a smile back and Malfoy’s smile could become real, that they could fix things and go back to what they had been.
“I think…” Malfoy swallowed, tipping his head back and shutting his eyes.
Harry had the unacceptable impulse to just cross the space between them—it wasn’t much, it would be so easy—and bury his face in Malfoy’s throat, just press into the long lean line of his body and slide his mouth up to Malfoy’s ear, find his lips.
Malfoy’s eyes opened, clear cold grey. Harry held onto the edge of the stove hard.
“I think we should just be friends,” Malfoy said. “Okay?”
Harry gritted his teeth. It was up to Malfoy. He had absolutely no right. “Okay,” he said hoarsely.
“Okay.” The word trembled on a sound Malfoy made that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Okay. Good. I’m glad that’s settled.”
Harry looked at the floor. Malfoy lowered his legs from the fridge, clearing the obstacle from Harry’s path so he could move past, and slid off the counter.
“We can forget this whole thing,” Malfoy said without much conviction. There was a pleading note in his voice. “It’s not like you’re in love with me,” he added, and managed a real laugh at that, as if he had found the one supremely ridiculous thing in the world to say.
Harry lifted his gaze from the floor.
“But I am,” he said, his voice still far too rough. “I mean—I think I am.”
He felt angry and helpless: it wasn’t like it was going to make any difference, but Malfoy didn’t have to laugh. He didn’t know where to look after saying it—he’d never said anything like that in his life before—so he shoved his hands, still clenched tight, in his pockets, and looked anywhere but at Malfoy.
“You—think you are,” Malfoy said slowly, his voice colourless. “When will you be sure?”
“I am sure!” Harry told him violently. “I mean, I know how I—how I feel. It’s just I was expecting it to be a bit—different. More like people say or you read in books. Something, something more—something nice. More polite—I’m saying this wrong.”
“How new and different that must be for you,” Malfoy observed, his voice shaking. “And what happens to me when you find this nice polite version of things?”
Harry reached up and clasped the back of his own neck to keep from doing anything else, the movement abrupt and frustrated. He wanted to do something, he didn’t know what.
He looked at Malfoy because he was helpless to do anything else, he couldn’t even go five minutes without looking. Malfoy was staring at him with wide eyes, hair standing up like a dandelion clock, looking as if he’d just received an electric shock or been scared to within an inch of his life.
He was so infuriating that he was probably going to kill Harry one day, but for some reason looking at him edged Harry slightly towards calm.
“Nothing,” he said abruptly, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as if he could erase all these words and make them come out right. “It wouldn’t change anything, all right? I’d still want you more.”
Malfoy swallowed again: there was a little click as he did it, as if his throat was very dry.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Harry said, despairing. “I didn’t mean want like—I want you, that’s what—”
“All right, I understand, shut up,” Malfoy said sharply, which was a profound and enormous relief. “I’m thinking. Oh my God, the courting.”
“Er,” Harry said. “Yeah. That was—I’m sure I can control that now.”
“Oh my God,” Malfoy said in a weak voice. “And when were you planning on telling me any of this?”
There was an edge to his voice now, a peremptory and very Malfoyesque edge that always let Harry know it was pretty important to fight his own corner or else he was going to be blamed for anything and everything in the entire world.
“I thought I’d made it pretty clear,” he snapped.
“Oh—” Malfoy made a sound that indicated he was at a loss for words, which lasted for all of a minute. “Oh no you did not, you raving lunatic! What in God’s name—how was I supposed to—you said it was no big deal!”
“No I didn’t,” Harry said flatly. “What are you talking about?”
“Right here,” Malfoy told him, speaking with the care of a man skirting the edge of madness. “I was standing right here in this kitchen, and I said ‘This isn’t a big deal, is it?‘ and you said No. Were you speaking in some kind of insane person code? Because I did not get that!”
Light dawned for Harry. He remembered that night perfectly well: he could even see what Malfoy was talking about, though Malfoy had clearly been taking apart the pieces of that night and putting them together so they made no sense at all.
“You asked if it was a big deal and if it was going to change anything. And I said that no, nothing had to change.”
“No, you said no, as in it wasn’t a big deal, and then that—” Malfoy possibly realised that telling Harry he hadn’t meant what he’d said was a losing proposition, and pinched the skin between his eyebrows as if he was getting a headache. “Oh my God,” he repeated in hollow tones. “We are meant to be specially trained for communicative and interrogative skills. We are meant to be the crème de la crème. I think I am going to cry.”
“So,” Harry said, and his voice stuck in his throat. “So you didn’t know any of this. I mean, you didn’t have any idea. Then what—what did you think I was suggesting, for God’s sake, moving you in as some kind of useful—”
“Solution?” Malfoy filled in, saying the word in very much the same way someone might say ‘Checkmate.’
Harry shut his eyes.
“All right, I put that badly.”
“Yes you did!” Malfoy exclaimed, sounding almost desperately pleased to have something he could be sure of. “And how was I supposed to know anything, when it sounded like it was Coote all over again, like you just wanted some easy and convenient solution—”
“Malfoy, nobody in his right mind would think you were an easy solution to anything!”
“So what?” Malfoy yelled. “I was supposed to sit down and think to myself, why, Draco Malfoy, you’re enormously difficult to cope with, so Potter must be in—in—”
He seemed to run down on that one like a clockwork toy, mouth forming a soft and almost helpless shape, as if he did not know how to form words in a universe where something like that was possible.
He really hadn’t known. It was terribly clear: it broke Harry’s heart.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, and took his hand out of his pocket and reached out. “Something like that.”
He hadn’t been going to grab or anything, just—touch him somehow, but Malfoy shied back a little, drawing his legs up onto the counter and locking his arms around his knees. Harry let his hand drop.
“I have to think for a minute,” Malfoy told him in a stifled voice.
“Sure,” Harry said. “Obviously. ‘Course.”
He just about stopped himself from telling Malfoy to take as long as he liked. He didn’t know whether this was a good sign or not. Maybe not: Malfoy might just be thinking of a way to let him down easy.
Maybe, though.
Harry looked over at Malfoy, who was staring at his knees and apparently lost in thought: at his intent profile and his lowered eyelids. He looked tired, probably on the verge of being ill, looked like all Harry wanted in the world.
“You really have to learn to leave the plans up to me,” Malfoy said abruptly, and more as if he was thinking aloud than addressing Harry.
“Sorry?”
“You know, that is exactly how I would describe your plans,” Malfoy agreed smoothly. “If I didn’t use a stronger word. I mean, think about it. Everything I said before was true. You are a demented egg basket. If I was living with you and working with you and—and—what would I do if you died?”
“What would I do if you died?”
Malfoy looked badly disconcerted, as if it had never occurred to him that the thought would make Harry sick and keep him up at nights. It didn’t change anything, and wouldn’t: they were both in too deep already, there would be no way to fix that or go back even if Harry wanted to.
“So we just move right into living together and working together and—sleeping together. Forget about that whole dating nonsense.”
“We could date,” Harry said. “Where do you want to go? Malfoy, Jesus, isn’t it obvious—”
Wasn’t it obvious that he would’ve done anything. That he still would.
“I’m not saying I don’t want to,” Malfoy said, sounding like a potentially dangerous lunatic. “I’m saying that—that it’s an insane plan. I mean, I wasn’t even—I’d never, before—and you’re the way you are, and it would all be bound to crash and burn. It wouldn’t work.”
“Right,” Harry said.
He supposed he had his answer, then. He didn’t see why Malfoy had felt the need to draw it out and torture him like this. He supposed Malfoy had some stupid reason like trying to convince him, as if he could persuade Harry to feel a different way. As if anything could do that.
“We’re going to have to go up the Amazon,” Malfoy said suddenly. Harry blinked at this wildly inappropriate change of topic. “I mean, we have to, to catch the guy buying the halfbreeds and free the ones he already has,” Malfoy continued rapidly, as if what he was saying made any sort of sense. “We have to go up the Amazon. It could take weeks. That wouldn’t—wouldn’t be living together.”
Harry went still.
“We could try it,” Malfoy went on, low and still a little uncertain. “We could try and see. If—if you think that’s a good plan.”
“You’re brilliant,” Harry said, and lunged at him.
He didn’t kiss him: he stopped himself before he did that. Apparently he’d done everything wrong so far, but he could try to do this right. He was pressed up against Malfoy just like he’d wanted to be, Malfoy trapped between his body and the kitchen counter, suddenly and wonderfully close. Harry could smell him and feel him: Malfoy’s heart was beating wild and fast against his chest. Harry was astonishingly, stupidly happy.
He wanted to get this right. He took a deep breath, ducked his head and wondered if he should’ve said something else rather than just going for Malfoy like a starving man offered food at last.
Malfoy touched his hair, lingering and a little hesitant, in that way he had. It was so familiar and so good it sent a pang through Harry’s chest, sharp and strong: it hurt. He drew in another breath and leaned against Malfoy, closer, dipped his head and nuzzled up along Malfoy’s throat, felt Malfoy shudder against him.
He was stopped by the touch of Malfoy’s hand, under his chin, bringing his head up. Malfoy smirked at him hesitantly, their noses brushing.
Malfoy whispered: “I’ve been telling you that for years, Potter,” and kissed him, hands closing hard on Harry’s arms suddenly, pushing him so Harry stumbled backwards against the fridge.
It was strange, feeling himself pinned, feeling that Malfoy was strong enough to hold him. Harry let out a startled sound and felt Malfoy smirk against his mouth.
“This is me, Potter,” he said, held tight and sweet against Harry, the curve of his mouth tantalising even while it was touching Harry’s. “If you don’t want—”
“God, I do,” breathed Harry, between kisses in morning sunlight turning gold, laughing at himself and at absurd, impossible Malfoy: his hands came up to grasp handfuls of Malfoy’s worn t-shirt, cup his face, run through his soft hair. He wanted everything, all at once. “I do,” he insisted, finally able to tell him, barely able to draw in a proper breath by now. Malfoy’s mouth was hot and trembling on his. “I do. I do.”