“Hey,” Harry said, propping his forearms up on the counter. “Could I get a table for, um, eight?”
He looked around the café in Hyde Park a bit anxiously as he did so: it was white and washed clean by sunlight. This was the first day of the year really promising summer, and it had called people out to the park in their droves. The place was pretty packed.
When he looked back, the waiter was looking at him: friendly, and with that all-too-usual touch of appreciation.
“I think you could,” the waiter said, flashing a bright-white grin. “You could also get my phone number, if you’re interested.”
He was pretty good-looking, Harry noticed. He had freckles. Good for him.
“Taken,” Harry said cheerfully. “I’ll take the table, though.”
The waiter shrugged philosophically and went to fetch Harry some menus. Harry was pretty sure they were just going to get lemonade and scones, but it did no harm to take a look. Goyle was pretty keen on reading menus everywhere they went.
He looked over at Crabbe and Goyle, but they were still talking to Blaise Zabini, who they’d found unexpectedly and unusually alone at a table for two. He’d been reading the paper and looked happy to be interrupted, and he was also wearing a shirt that was see-through in the sunlight and that made Harry volunteer instantly to be the one to go ask for a table.
Harry didn’t have to go back over and be exposed to the shirt that exposed far too much of Zabini just yet. Ron, Hermione and Reginald were coming in the door of the café. Harry beckoned them over and told them there was a table waiting.
“Oh excellent,” said Reginald. “Good job that man.”
He gave Hermione a loving glance, as if she was responsible for this and everything else that was right with the world. Hermione beamed back.
“Pansy and Malfoy will be along,” Ron said. “They’re feeding the ducks some duck pie. Malfoy keeps saying ‘Soylent Green is people.’” Ron frowned. “I don’t want you to be worried, but he may be having some sort of mental breakdown.”
“It’s a Muggle thing about cannibalism,” Harry said, grinning.
“Those crazy cannibal Muggles, I guess,” Ron said, and shrugged. “Are we eating now? Excellent. Jesus, is that Blaise Zabini? They used to make him wear clothes that actually clothed him at school.”
“Hang on just another second,” said the freckled waiter, coming back and pressing the menus solicitously into Harry’s hand.
“Sure,” Harry said, smiling. “Thanks.”
That was when Malfoy walked through the door, holding it open for Pansy like a courtly gentleman and with a mocking look over at Ron. Pansy was wearing Malfoy’s jacket over her short black sundress, so Malfoy was just in Harry’s shirt, light material rumpled by the spring wind, a couple of buttons pulled loose.
They strolled towards the group at the counter holding hands. This might have made Ron jealous more effectively if Pansy hadn’t kept pulling up the jacket sleeve to show her sparkling engagement ring to the world.
“Hello, Malfoy,” said Reginald, who seemed to approve of the surname thing Malfoy was so into.
“Hey, Cholmondeley-Featherstonehaugh,” Malfoy said. “Weasley. Granger.”
“Er,” Harry said, a bit pointedly. “Hey.”
Malfoy let go of Pansy’s hand and curled two fingers around the belt loop of Harry’s jeans, tugging him in. He leaned over and kissed Harry on the mouth, a slow long kiss that made light shiver behind Harry’s falling eyelids.
“Hey,” Malfoy murmured, leaning back. “Stop flirting with freckled waiters.”
Harry laughed, body moving naturally after Malfoy’s when Malfoy moved away. Malfoy’s fingers slid out of Harry’s belt loop and he caught Harry’s hand. “I wasn’t—”
“Oh, certainly,” Malfoy said darkly. “I am watching you, Potter. My eyes are everywhere!”
It was about then that Draco My Eyes Are Everywhere Malfoy noticed Blaise Zabini and his terrible shirt. He went over to ask Zabini how he was doing—and, Harry presumed, what he could be thinking to wear such a thing in public—and since neither of them had let go of the other’s hand, Harry came too. He left the waiter’s menus with Ron.
“Malfoy,” Zabini said, with a lift in his lazy sex operator’s drawl that suggested he might be pleased. His voice dropped back to the normal drawl when he said: “Potter.” His dark eyes touched on their linked hands. “So that’s true, then.”
“Yeah,” said Harry.
“I am so torn,” Zabini told him. “I am torn between being heartbroken to see a Veela throw himself away on Malfoy, and being heartbroken to see Malfoy throw himself away on a bloody Gryffindor.”
“You’re lucky you have that supernatural appeal going on,” Malfoy told him. “You win no points for charm.”
“I hope you’re very happy and all that,” Zabini told him with great condescension. “I find myself very mellow, these days.”
“Really,” Harry said dryly.
“Really,” Zabini said, and hesitated, which was a strange enough thing for Zabini to do and made everyone stare at him. Zabini ducked his head a little shyly and Harry became worried that he was, in fact, possessed. “I’ve settled down myself,” he confided. “We’re in love.”
“You are?” said Malfoy blankly.
“Do not force me to remind you that I have in my possession a detailed plan of yours chronicling the future expulsion, disfigurement and death by humiliation of the man you’re currently holding hands with,” Zabini said.
Harry glanced at him and Malfoy smiled fondly at the memories and said: “Tell you another time. It was a good plan.” He cleared his throat and continued: “Sorry, Zabini. Congratulations. Who is she?”
Zabini gave him a scathing look. “As if I would ever deprive the world so completely as to focus all I have to give on a single individual,” he said reprovingly. “She is, of course, a ‘they.’”
“Ah,” drawled Malfoy, and raised his eyebrows at Harry. “So who’re they, then?”
Zabini’s face lit up and he adjusted himself in his seat for the best possible display of his indolent lounge and his shocking shirt.
They all looked around to see Padma and Parvati Patil walking through the door together, Parvati laughing and flower-delicate in pink, Padma in severe black and red but smiling at her sister.
“No way,” breathed Goyle.
“Blaise, darling!” said Parvati, and the sisters went over to him. Parvati settled light as a butterfly on Zabini’s lap and pressed her candyfloss-pink lips to his. Padma leaned against the back of his chair, hands settled firmly and possessively on Zabini’s shoulders. She stooped and laid her scarlet mouth onto the exact spot where Parvati’s had rested.
“I am beyond speech,” Malfoy announced to the world.
“That’ll be the day.” Zabini was smiling brilliantly. “After Padma saved me from those terrible kidnappers and took me home, a bond was formed between us,” he drawled. “And once I saw Parvati—well, who could resist such a beautiful creature? I was quite taken by her, too.”
“Someone needed to shop with Parvati and make sure she didn’t buy any more butterfly ornaments,” Padma said, with a fond look at Zabini’s head. “And I can rely on you, Blaise, can’t I?”
“Of course,” Zabini said, looking pleased as a child to be praised.
“We’re going to hit the markets now,” Parvati said, and cast her dark eyes around the group. “Sorry to steal Blaise and run. You must all come around for dinner some day!”
Padma’s red mouth curled, but she did not dispute her sister’s invitation.
“Stop standing around with your mouth open, Malfoy,” Zabini said, looking terribly impressed with himself, which was nothing new, and extremely happy, which was. “You bagged a Veela: you’re not doing badly for yourself at all. And Potter, please cut your hair, you bring shame on our race.”
Zabini rose with a catlike stretch, looking as if he’d got the canary, the cream, and feline worship reinstated in Egypt, and sauntered out of the door with a Patil twin on each arm.
“My God,” Malfoy said faintly.
“Stop standing around with your mouth open, Malfoy,” said Crabbe, looking highly amused. “I hear you’re not doing badly for yourself at all.”
He and Goyle went over to their table, which was ready at last and already spread out with lemonades. Malfoy pulled at his hand but Harry stood still and Malfoy glanced inquiringly back at him.
“Shame about your friend going out with the Patil twins,” Harry said. “Otherwise I suppose I could use my Veela sparkles to get you one.”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “No you wouldn’t.”
“I might,” Harry said. “I’d like to make you happy.”
Malfoy made a face. “Potter, you know this.”
“Sure, I know,” said Harry, who had been witness to Malfoy’s capacity for single obsessive focus for going on thirteen years now. He brushed a lock of hair out of Malfoy’s eyes and said, low: “I want to hear you say it.”
“I don’t want either of the Patil twins,” Malfoy said crossly, going pink. Harry kissed him.
Then he let Malfoy pull him across the floor to the table. The freckled waiter gave Malfoy a slightly incredulous glance as they went by: Harry gave him a cold glare, decided not to tip and rested a hand on the back of Malfoy’s neck, stroking the soft fair hair at his nape.
“Took you long enough,” said Ron, who got cranky when not fed.
“Sorry, Potter was offering me a threesome with a Patil twin of my choice,” Malfoy said, and Ron and Harry both choked on their lemonade.
“Sure he was,” Pansy snorted.
“Would I lie to you, baby?” Malfoy drawled.
Pansy did not even dignify that with a response. They all ordered their scones, Ron asking for a sandwich as well and Goyle asking gloomily for a salad because he was still on his diet.
“You’re looking very well, Harry,” Hermione said with judicious approval. “A tan looks good on you. Did you get a chance to observe any of the flora of the Amazon?”
“Er—we were occupied catching criminals, Hermione,” said Harry virtuously.
Hermione raised her eyebrows. “And on the way back?”
Harry thought about light filtering in through the drawn curtains over the single window on the boat, the rocking of the vessel in the waters and Malfoy under cool white sheets.
“Not really,” he said at length. “Nah.”
“Ah well,” Hermione said philosophically. “Not to worry. I do feel a little bad about not realising all of this was going on, Harry, though Ron seems to have done a sterling job handling it.”
“Thank you, Hermione,” Ron said, beaming.
“To tell you the truth, I was rather occupied trying to find out my new boyfriend’s secret,” Hermione continued, shooting a mildly ferocious glance Reginald’s way. He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“I do admire your intellectual curiosity, darling,” he said. “So enterprisin’.”
“What, Reginald has a secret now?” Ron asked, looking a little wild about the eyes. “Are you handling it, Hermione? I mean, I’m getting married in four days, I don’t have any time to handle another one—though it was no problem, I was totally in control—do you know what Reginald’s secret is, Crabbe?”
“No,” said Crabbe.
They all looked at Reginald with interest. Harry thought he might be immune to shock after the Patil twins revelation. Besides, looking at Reginald’s mild, kindly face—reminiscent of a very high-class rabbit—it was hard to believe he had any terribly startling secrets to impart.
“You should have told me as soon as we met,” Hermione said severely. “I told you.”
“Yes, dear heart, but I can’t Obilivthingummy you, now can I?” Reginald asked. He cast a conspiratorial glance around. “You chaps are trustworthy, aren’t you?”
“On my honour as a Slytherin,” Malfoy said, leaning forward.
“Well, then—besides, my cherished, you only have to answer to the Minister of Magic,” said Reginald, and smiled around at them all with sudden debonair charm. “I answer directly to the Queen.”
“What!” yelped Ron.
“Hush, Ron,” Hermione scolded. “They call it Her Majesty’s Secret Service for a reason, you know.”
Harry glanced over at Malfoy, whose face was shining as he mouthed the words ‘James Blond’ in Harry’s direction. Harry leaned against his shoulder before he could demand to know all about it.
“I’ll say no more,” Reginald said. “Keep it under your hats, fellows, all right?”
There was a dazed chorus of agreement. Hermione smiled up at Reginald and looked stirred to her depths by his life of secret and dangerous glamour.
The owl distracted the attention of everyone at the table and, indeed, everyone in the café. Harry unfolded the Owl while Malfoy cast Obliviate on the nearby tables.
“Great,” he said. “Someone’s released giant alligators into the sewers of London again. On a Sunday.”
“These people have no decency,” said Malfoy, taking his hand and pulling him to his feet. “See you all later.”
“You’re coming to the fitting for the bridesmaids’ dresses,” Pansy instructed him without looking up from her lemonade.
“Well,” Malfoy said cautiously. “I did say I’d come supervise the fitting, yes.”
Pansy snickered around her straw. “That’s what you think.”
Harry took Malfoy away from Pansy before she could disturb him any further. It was just alligators in the sewers again, there was no real need to rush, and they walked leisurely around the lake to the side of the park where they’d stashed their car.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Malfoy said, interrupting his own fevered speculation about Reginald’s possible duties.
He smiled charmingly over at Harry, sweet and dear in the leaf-filtered light of the trees, and Harry was instantly and deeply suspicious.
“You are as beautiful as a god,” Malfoy told him solemnly. “Maybe the god of really horrible jumpers. Still, a god. What do you have to say about that?”
“Er,” Harry said. “Thank you?”
Malfoy beamed at him. “I gave you a compliment and you accepted it,” he observed. “So you’re the girl. Ha!”
Harry rolled his eyes and grinned, reaching out for Malfoy’s hand. He wasn’t really good at that sort of thing, not yet: he forgot or was rough sometimes, had caught his watch in Malfoy’s hair on one embarrassing occasion, but it was getting easier. Malfoy’s fingers fit linked through his.
“Neither of us is a girl,” he said dryly. “That’s sort of the point of a gay relationship.”
Malfoy nodded seriously. “I see your point, Potter,” he said in a grave voice. “That’s exactly what I would say, if I were the girl. Ha!”
Harry had to let go when they reached the car. The rules about Auror partners not fraternising were pretty strict, and neither of them needed the extra black mark on their records, which kind of looked dipped in coal already. It was their rule not to touch when on duty.
It turned out not to be a giant alligator in the sewers. Some wizarding kid must have been very bored that Sunday, and messing around with Potions and their hamsters. Harry could have gone his whole life without seeing a hamster the size of a rhinocerous charge Malfoy. Harry had to draw his wand pretty fast.
It was kind of worth it when they got back to the top of the building where they were parked and Malfoy used his own wand to send a jet of water over his head, washing away any trace of the sewer. Malfoy’s shirt was pretty much transparent when it was soaked: it looked much better on him than Zabini.
“My hero,” Malfoy said, teasing, and then he looked up through his wet hair to where Harry was lying on the car bonnet waiting for him to finish up, and watching. “What are you lo—oh.”
He went faintly pink, still a little startled every time. His eyes met Harry’s, hand closing tight on his own soaked shirt collar, and Harry drew his lower lip in between his teeth.
Malfoy licked his lip, tongue visible for an instant. “Later,” he promised, low, and then smiled like a devil from hell.
Harry made a small sound. The noise of birds and snakes was in there, but it was mostly a growl.
Sometimes he liked the work rule, since Malfoy was still—pretty new at this, uncertain occasionally, and the work rule gave him a little breathing room so that he could feel confident enough to flirt a bit and be a horrible tease. Sometimes he didn’t like the work rule for pretty much the same reason.
He wouldn’t push Malfoy, though, and he didn’t want to get fired. They climbed into the car and flew to the Auror headquarters to fill out the magical and dangerous animal paperwork while the shrunk hamster scurried around the desk and head-butted Malfoy’s coffee cup.
“I feel someone else could have done this,” said Malfoy, rescuing his cup and giving the hamster the evil eye. “People who have not just been risking life and limb on the Amazon for six weeks in a daring search and rescue mission, eventually bringing all criminals to justice. People not us.”
“I think Shacklebolt was a little annoyed that Septimus Umber turned out to be the one buying the halfbreeds, honestly,” Harry said. “Since you’ve been blackmailing the good judge for a few years now. Possibly we could’ve looked into his business before.”
“Look,” Malfoy said hotly. “If we arrested everyone who occasionally messes around with a house elf at Sinistra’s, we’d be arresting—”
“Almost finished?” asked Shacklebolt austerely, walking by on his way to his office.
They waited for him to go by before they started laughing.
“Well exactly,” said Malfoy, and went off to the archives room to find a folder for their report.
He was there a while, so Harry went to find him and found him in deep conversation with some girl who used to be in Gryffindor, Clarabell or Cressida or whatever.
“Thanks, Chrysanthemum,” said Malfoy—ah, that was it—and Chrysanthemum glanced at Harry, giggled and left the room. Malfoy pulled down a green folder without looking at it, face bright with interest. “Guess what.”
“What?” Harry asked indulgently.
“Conleth Frexley and Katie split up,” Malfoy said. “I knew they wouldn’t last, you know. Those banshees, very unreliable, their flame burns brightly but not for long and so on. If you understand what I’m implying right there, and I hope you do.”
“Oh,” Harry said, feeling a little sick. “Yeah. Sure.”
Malfoy looked at him, chucked the folder over his shoulder and reached Harry in two strides. He reached out and then remembered the work rule, fingers a fraction away from Harry’s shirt collar.
“Hey,” he said, voice soothing as if he was stroking Harry’s hair and whispering in his ear. “Katie doesn’t want to get back with me.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “I didn’t mean—”
Malfoy didn’t kiss him, because of the work rule. But he did lean in, close but not quite touching in the shadowy little archives room. Harry felt his body heat as if being grazed by a warm and much-wanted ghost. Slytherins could not be trusted with rules: they could not be trusted at all.
“And I’m,” Malfoy’s mouth almost brushed Harry’s, agonisingly near. All it would take was Harry moving a fraction, and then he could catch that mouth with his. “I’m happier with you,” Malfoy said, and looked away, hand going to the back of his neck, seeming a little embarrassed. “That’s not new, either,” he muttered, still looking away.
“Oh,” said Harry, in a different sort of way.
He slammed the door shut with one hand and then pressed Malfoy up against the wall, really there, really touching, and kissed him for a deep sweet second, the sharp curve of Malfoy’s jaw in his palm. Malfoy made a small sound that made Harry kiss him again, his mouth, the curling corner of his mouth, the line of his jaw and the spot where he hadn’t quite shaved. Malfoy tipped his head back against the wall, breathing erratic.
Harry shut his eyes and caught Malfoy’s ear between his teeth for just a second, his teeth sliding, and then whispered: “Later,” and stepped away.
He opened the door of the archives room and left. He obviously shouldn’t be trusted with rules, either.
“I will get you for that, Potter,” Malfoy told him when he came back with the folder and threw it on Harry’s desk.
“Really?” Harry asked, and Malfoy grinned at him with intent, almost as if they were about to spar. But not quite.
They were almost done with the paperwork. It was almost later. Harry wrote quickly given an incentive, and his quill scratched rapidly across parchment in the unusual silence of the Auror headquarters, even here sunny and still on a Sunday afternoon. It was just them and Shacklebolt now, Harry thought: Shacklebolt never went home, though sometimes he might go to Sinistra’s Sinnin’ Spot.
“He probably just puts himself in a cupboard when he winds down,” Malfoy said, leaning against Harry’s chair to supervise his report writing and catching Harry’s glance at the boss’s office. “He’s an evil robot, you know.”
“I heard that somewhere,” Harry murmured.
“So a vital question occurs to me about the whole Veela thing,” Malfoy said, leaping between topics like a frog jumping from one insanely inappropriate lilypad to another.
“Oh?”
Harry tensed a little. He thought they’d had that out, one night a couple of weeks ago, just after the return from the Amazon. The television had been on in a darkened room, casting a silvery light and buzzing because the volume was turned down low. Harry didn’t really need the television with the toaster imploring them to try marmalade and Malfoy’s voice, going on and on, beloved and ridiculous and always there, always company: the sound of it in a room like being told you never had to be alone again.
Just then, Malfoy had been lying with his head against Harry’s knee, head tilted so that the silvery light of the television reflected off his eyes. Harry’s fingers were tangled in his hair, and he’d been waiting a bit anxiously for Malfoy’s response.
“I don’t know,” Malfoy had said slowly. “The Veela thing—maybe it helped. I don’t know. I’m glad it did, does that make a difference?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. It didn’t matter, he supposed: it wasn’t like he was letting Malfoy go.
“It’s just—a bit of you, like the bad temper and the jumpers. I can’t—separate it out from the rest of you,” Malfoy said. “Well, I can separate you from the jumpers, thank God. But… I know I wanted to be with you, even if I didn’t want to be—well, when there was Katie. And also when we were kids and I wanted to be friends. That wasn’t impelled by Veela urges, since you were eleven. And such a complete little git.”
“Takes one,” Harry murmured, laughing.
His hands slipped out of Malfoy’s hair as Malfoy sat up, face pale and eyes intent in the flickering light streaming from the television, and kissed him.
Harry’d thought they’d settled that then.
“What is it?” he asked reluctantly now, not looking at Malfoy.
“Well, it’s Horace,” Malfoy told him. “The chest monster,” he supplied helpfully, lest Harry had forgotten. Harry had certainly been trying to.
He groaned. “What about him?”
“Well, he just hasn’t been consulted in this decision-making process at all,” Malfoy rambled, talking like an earnest maniac and obviously on course to ramble away for hours. “I wonder what he thinks of it. Maybe he doesn’t even like me.”
Harry tipped his head back so it rested on Malfoy’s forearms, folded against the back of Harry’s chair and bare since he’d rolled his sleeves up in the sunlight. It was almost time to leave the office, Harry told himself, he could wait another few minutes, but he reached up and clasped the nape of Malfoy’s neck anyway, turning his head in towards Malfoy’s, breath against the curve of Malfoy’s throat. Harry heard Malfoy’s own breath catch. He shut his eyes for a moment, warm and safe: ridiculously happy.
“You’re an idiot,” he whispered in Malfoy’s ear. Veela and human sounds were blending together in his voice, making it rough and tender at once. “Of course he loves you.”
The End