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lomonaaerenTitle: Sparkling, Glittering, Glowing
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo, mentions of others
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, Auror Harry, diplomat Theo, angst, brief violence, fake dating
Rating: R
Summary: Harry isn’t especially enthusiastic about the idea of babysitting Theo Nott, even if he’s the first British diplomat to the Fair Folk in five hundred years and needs to be protected from people who don’t want to see his mission succeed. But his boss isn’t giving him a choice about it. And Theo’s glittering presence makes Harry unwillingly fascinated—and maybe something more.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “More Harry/Theo In the World Project” stories, and should have three or four parts.
Sparkling, Glittering, Glowing
“Auror Potter. Charmed.”
The thin smile that made its way over Nott’s face showed he wasn’t charmed. Harry ignored it and shook Nott’s hand. It was slightly clammy. “Likewise.”
That made Nott cock his head and examine Harry with more attention. Harry stared back. He didn’t remember much of Nott from school, other than him being a quiet, pale boy who snickered at Draco’s jokes. Now he was tall—taller than Harry, the bastard—with a sharp jaw that fit his face in a way Draco’s pointiness still didn’t. He had hair as dark as Harry’s and hooded eyes of no particular color.
“Do I have something on my face?”
Harry flushed, but ignored the temptation to babble on. He’d finally managed to conquer it. “No. I was making sure that I know what you look like so I can pick you out in a crowd.”
“And I’m sure we’re all relieved about that,” Robards interjected. He was the Head Auror and desperate to remain relevant in every conversation no matter how short or who was involved. “Auror Potter’s pretty good at his job, Diplomat Nott. He’ll protect you.”
“Only pretty good?” Nott asked in a whisper that didn’t disturb his smile.
Harry was able to ignore that jab more easily than he once could have, luckily. Robards just didn’t like Harry and never would, and thought Harry had got his job as an Auror because of his fame, no matter how often Harry proved otherwise. Harry could rescue a clutch of baby phoenixes from people who planned to sacrifice them and only get a scolding for not closing the case faster.
(Nott could ask Harry how he knew that).
“What questions did you have about the mission, Auror Potter?”
Robards always asked that with the expectation that Harry wouldn’t have any. Harry lived to disappoint him. “You said he needs to be protected, sir. From whom? The description of the case was vague.”
Robards fidgeted in place. Harry stared. Well, that was something he’d never seen before. Robards always projected a façade of confidence no matter the situation or how unearned that confidence was.
(Nott could ask Harry how he knew that).
“This cannot go outside this room, Auror Potter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not even to your little friends Granger and Weasley. You’re not to tell them any of this, understand? Not even that you’ve been tasked with protecting Nott.”
Harry could feel Nott’s judgmental eyebrow raise without looking at him. He just nodded and kept his eyes on Robards. In fact, the Head Auror was the one who had ended up on the front page of the Prophet two years ago for telling some secrets to his lover that never should have left the paperwork he filled out in his office.
But Harry knew that fighting back when your boss hated you was a waste of time. Nott could either accept that Harry knew how to protect him, or he could go elsewhere.
Robards still cleared his throat a few times before he licked his lips and whispered, “Nott is our first ambassador to the Fair Folk since the 1500s.”
Harry blinked a little and glanced at Nott. Nott just kept staring. Harry reckoned that he didn’t have anything better to do with his time.
“Why didn’t we have one before, sir?” Harry asked, turning back to Robards.
“There were—complicated reasons. The British magical community at the time didn’t understand the full importance of abiding by fey protocol.”
“They massively insulted the Sidhe community and made most of them leave our world,” Nott said in a bland voice. “They continued to maintain communication from the realm they went to with other countries, but not ours.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Diplomat Nott.”
Nott shrugged. “I would.”
Harry cleared his throat, to shut off what could probably become an endless argument about something he didn’t understand as it stood. “And so we need to make sure that someone else can’t interfere and deliver that kind of insult again, sir?”
“No one in the modern British Ministry would do that, Auror Potter!”
Harry stared at him. Nott stared at him.
Robards cleared his throat again a moment later. “Yes, well, there’s the chance that someone would. But on the other hand, the more pressing concern is the Sidhe. Some of them don’t approve of reestablishing relations with Britain.”
“I’m in danger until I’ve managed to be formally presented to the Queen and got her to acknowledge my presence. I’ve been waiting in the Court for some time, but someone betrayed my presence there, and I had to leave. So I require protection in magical Britain until it looks as though I’m not returning to the Court.”
“And do you need me to accompany you in the Court itself?” Harry asked. He didn’t need to know all the details. He just needed to grasp some of the specifics of the mission.
Nott swiveled his stare towards Harry. “You don’t need to worry about that, Potter. They wouldn’t accept your presence.”
“Okay.” Harry serenely ignored the way that Nott’s stare sharpened like an ice pick. “Then you’ll need protection at Ministry events. At home? At other day-to-day events? Is this a constant, or are there places you don’t want it?”
“I’ll require it around the clock for at least the next seven days. That will be the time when the Sidhe try something, if they do. It’s because of internal considerations of the Court that you can’t understand.”
“Okay.”
Nott peered at him, but Harry sat there and didn’t ask questions. Nott thought he was stupid? Nothing Harry could do would change that impression, so he might as well make sure that they didn’t have a reason to get into an argument.
After a moment, Nott went on, although with a faintly disturbed expression on his face. “You’ll need to make excuses to your friends, since they can’t know that you’re protecting me and chance it getting back to the Sidhe.” Harry thought about complaining that neither Ron nor Hermione would do that, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “I thought we could spread the word that we were dating.”
Harry laughed aloud. Robards glared at him and Nott’s face turned a little icier, but Harry just kept laughing, shaking his head. “Are you stupid?” he asked. “Ron and Hermione know that I’m straight. And other people might not know it for sure, but they think they do, so they’d pay a lot more attention to me if I were dating a man. The story would fall apart under any scrutiny without more to back it up than that.”
“My friends tell me things, too.”
“So what?”
“So I know about that little affair you and Draco had a few years ago. Straight, perhaps, but only mostly.”
Harry could feel himself flushing again, and Robards staring. What had seemed like a good trait when he was dating Draco, Draco’s inability to keep his mouth shut, had turned into a horrible liability.
(Granted, the only thing that had probably kept Draco from spreading it around before now was the fact that Harry had broken it off instead of the other way around).
“You dated Draco Malfoy, Auror Potter? Are you aware that he’s currently under suspicion for smuggling Veela in and out of the country to—drain people to exhaustion? This is a matter of national security—”
“We were over long before that suspicion started, Robards,” Harry snapped. “And you might as well say fuck. He’s sneaking Veela into the country to fuck people because you and the rest of the British Ministry thought it would be a great idea to categorize people having sex with Veela as bestiality.”
Robards opened his mouth, then closed it. His ears were turning red. Harry blinked. He’d given up on snapping back at Robards long ago, on the theory that it changed nothing, but maybe he ought to try it more often.
“Well. You—you don’t know any Veela—”
“I do know Fleur Weasley, who was harassed under this new law, and who only escaped from further harassment because the goblins threatened to cut off business with the Ministry if you continued to try and arrest one of their Curse-Breakers.”
More staring from Robards. Probably from Nott, too. Harry didn’t turn around to look. He just met and held the Head Auror’s eyes, and held them, and held them, and Robards was the one to look down at the paperwork on his desk and clear his throat again.
“Regardless, we can have you dating Diplomat Nott only if you promise to keep your hands to yourself.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I can be strictly professional, sir.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Nott said in a voice like a blizzard. “You’ll need to portray at least some lust for me.”
“I can still do that while being strictly professional, Nott, because in this case, portraying lust for you is part of the job.”
“Prove it.”
Harry hid his smile as he turned around and faced Nott. Then he leaned forwards a little, widened his eyes, and focused his gaze, letting it stray slowly up and down Nott’s body. His jutting jaw could be seen as chiseled, and Harry could convince himself those largely colorless eyes were silver or blue, and he could picture his hands on Nott’s hips.
“That’s enough.”
Harry pulled himself back and tilted his head. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Nott was looking away from him. Harry still kept his smile internal. “So. This will work out, and you’ll tell your friends that this was part of a whirlwind romance, and we’ll portray ourselves the same way to anyone who might ask in the Ministry.”
“It’s good that you have it all planned out.”
Nott could undoubtedly tell what Harry really thought of this, but he let it go past. “Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow. Meet me in the western antechamber off the ballroom. We’ll pretend that we’re attending our first public event as a couple.” And he stood and strode out of the office.
It occurred to Harry that Robards had been unusually silent. He turned around, expecting to encounter an expression of disgust. Robards seemed, from some remarks he’d made, like he was disgusted by men dating other men.
But there was no disgust on the Head Auror’s face. Instead, he was pressing himself back in his chair and staring at Harry as if he’d been hit on the head by a Bludger.
“Sir?”
Robards seemed to snap back to life when Harry spoke his name, like one of those enchanted dolls Harry had bought last year to delight Rose (and torture Ron and Hermione). He looked away and cleared his throat. “See that you do exactly as you’re supposed to in protecting Nott, Auror Potter. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you how important it is that the Sidhe form a diplomatic relationship with magical Britain.”
Harry did actually wish someone would explain that to him, since he hadn’t heard of the Sidhe before, or that magical Britain didn’t have a relationship with them, or the Court Nott had talked about, or lots of other things. But it didn’t really matter. He would do his job, and cope with whatever happened as a result of their not telling him the truth.
They would have to do the same.
“Yes, Head Auror, sir,” Harry said, with his most demure expression.
“Get out.”
Harry rose and left the office, shaking his head. He could hear Robards yelling behind him, something about having his secretary get into the office and record something. Harry wouldn’t have been the man’s secretary for all the gold in Gringotts.
It seemed his duties for the day were done, given that he would have to escort Nott tomorrow. And that meant, sadly, that he would probably have to spend the time shopping.
*
“This looks fine on you, sir.”
One thing Harry appreciated about Madam Kelly’s, the shop that had taken the place of Madam Malkin’s, was that the shopkeeper never made more or less of a fuss over Harry than she did over anyone else. He was “sir,” and so was every other wizard who walked through her doors. And she had good taste.
Harry had to admit that the blue robes he was wearing did look fine, but—“I need to make sure that I look like I’m in love with a snotty pureblood who would probably be horrified to be seen with me in any other circumstance.” He didn’t mind telling Madam Kelly. She would never tell another soul.
Madam Kelly tilted her head in the mirror. She was an older witch who had appeared from nowhere when Madam Malkin was ready to sell her shop and simply bought it and taken over. She had bright white hair and bright yellow eyes that made Harry sure she would be a snowy owl Animagus if she’d mastered the spell. “How snotty a pureblood?”
“A Nott.”
Madam Kelly gave a single cluck of her tongue, and then nodded. “I have something, sir. I’ll return momentarily.” She swirled across the shop and vanished behind a curtain that jangled with pearls, the one extravagance in the shop.
Harry took another glance into the mirror, running his fingers wistfully over the robes for a moment. He liked this color, and he could afford them, but he wouldn’t have any place to wear them. He didn’t attend Ministry galas or similar events if he wasn’t involved in some job like this one, and in the field, he needed to wear the dragonhide-reinforced Auror battle robes. And he would get made fun of if he pranced around the office in these.
Harry sighed and took off the robes just as Madam Kelly returned with something green folded under her arm.
“No offense, Madam Kelly, but I don’t wear green. There are too many people remarking on how it matches my eyes when I do.”
“This doesn’t match your eyes, sir.” Madam Kelly unfolded the cloth with a snap that made ripples run up and down it. “And it should make a statement when it comes to impressing snotty purebloods and witnesses alike.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. No, the cloth was a different shade than the one that everyone would babble about matching his eyes. It was a dark green with subtle shades of blue and yellow snaking through it that Harry knew were the result of spells he’d never seen before. The ripples stilled, and the colors stilled, but Harry could imagine how they would look when he turned or moved fast enough.
He reached out to touch the cloth, and whistled a little. It was perfectly soft and comfortable, whispering through his fingers like silk without being silk. Silk always made Harry itch, even when he was wearing a shirt and trousers under the robes.
“Do you want to try it on, sir?”
Madam Kelly sounded emotionless most of the time, but she was smug right now. Harry couldn’t hold that against her. He turned and faced the mirror, letting her drape the green robe over his shoulders.
He had to smile at the picture he made. This was the kind of image that Hermione was always telling him he had to keep up, and sometimes Robards too. He should have known that Madam Kelly would find something perfect for him.
“I’ll take them.”
“Excellent, sir. These are ninety Galleons, of course.”
Harry winced a little, but then shrugged. He’d tried not to touch the gold in the vault his parents had left him ever since he’d become an Auror, just living off his salary. If he got sacked because of Robards’s opinions or something similar, he didn’t want to be destitute. He could afford a one-time purchase like this.
“Do you want me to hold any other robes made of the same cloth that come in until you can take a look at them, sir?”
Harry was tempted, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea, because then he would probably be tempted to buy them. “No, thank you. But thank you for finding this one.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
Right, Harry thought as he handed over the Galleons. And acting as a bodyguard to Nott and playing my part in the right way is mine. I’ll have the robes, and I can do the right look and behavior, and if he wants me to dance I can even do that. Thank Merlin Ginny made me take those lessons.
Thinking about Ginny was painful, as always, so Harry shook the thought away and marched out of the shop with the robes in a shrunken package under his arm. He checked his watch. He’d have to wait an hour or so, but then both Ron and Hermione would be done at the Ministry.
He wasn’t going to keep the secret of why he was “infatuated” with Nott from his best friends, of course. Fuck that. They could keep a secret, and they deserved to know.
*
“I swear, mate, only you.”
Harry laughed and leaned back on Ron’s couch with a glass of wine in his hand. There were unfortunate memories attached to Firewhisky for him now after a few cases where he’d had to pretend he liked it, but Hermione could always be counted on to find some new wine that she wanted him to try. “Yeah, well, at least it’ll only be for a short time.”
“And can you act as though you really love Nott? Or could?”
Harry tilted his glass at Hermione, who was sitting in a chair near the fire, with Rose asleep in a cot next to her. “He didn’t ask for love. Only lust. And sure, I can feign that pretty well. You saw what I did with that Veela ambassador a few years ago.”
“Harry…you were dating her at the time.”
“No, I wasn’t. Remember? It was an act to draw out the wizard who was stalking her. And it worked. He got so jealous that he attacked me, and I put him down, and then she was able to move on without having to look over her shoulder every second.”
“You never told us that!”
“Oh?” Harry blinked at Ron over the rim of his wineglass. “Sorry. I really thought I had.”
Ron stared at him for a second, then shook his head and collapsed against the back of his chair. “Okay. So I think you really can fool other people if you want to.”
“But you don’t want this assignment, do you?” Hermione asked, her eyes soft. “You would prefer that you didn’t have to do it at all.”
“No,” Harry agreed. “I can fool people, but I don’t really like doing it. It feels like playing into all the rumors that people used to spread about me. Still spread about me,” he added, because he might not read the Prophet anymore, but he still caught glimpses of stories in it as he walked through the Auror Department, and of course people were eager to tell him what it said. “And it seems that the times I’ve had to do this, I end up protecting haughty people who despise me for my blood. Human or Muggle, doesn’t make much difference. Not the kind of base for even a pretend relationship that I’d want.”
“You sound so unhappy being an Auror,” Hermione murmured.
Harry sighed. “I am. Not least because of bloody Robards. But I love the work when I succeed, and I don’t really know what else I would do if I quit.”
“You know that we’d love to have you in Protection.”
Hermione had more or less taken over the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and was responsible for the name it had now. Harry smiled at her wistfully, but shook his head. “I don’t have any special talent for that work.”
“Parseltongue makes you qualified.”
“And then I’d have to show people that I still have it, instead of losing it after Voldemort died the way I thought I did for a while. No, thanks.”
“I told you that spreading that rumor would come back to bite you—”
And off they went, arguing, while Ron watched them with a grin over the rim of his own glass. By the time that Harry left, his head was buzzing with good wine and good argument, and a vision of future possibilities that he hadn’t had in a while.
Maybe Hermione’s right. Maybe I don’t have to be an Auror if I don’t want to. I’ll at least think about it.
After the Nott case is done.
*
“Potter. About time you showed up.”
Harry ignored that, knowing he was precisely on time for the hour that he’d been told to attend Nott. “Are we doing the first dance, or only some of the latter ones?” he asked, as he stepped into the small antechamber off the ballroom where Nott had said to meet him. It had a mirror on one wall, and Nott was primping in front of it.
“The second dance is the only one…”
Harry raised his eyebrows. Nott had had no reason to trail off after turning around to stare at Harry, but for some reason, he had. He was gaping at Harry as if he’d never seen him before in his life, in fact.
Then again, Harry thought he knew what Nott was gaping at. After all, Harry was wearing the green robes that Madam Kelly had sold him, and his hair was the artful tangle that it got after a few drops of the potion that Hermione had given him as a Christmas gift (that had to be kept in a separate room from any other potion, and was so finicky that Harry almost never bothered with it). And Harry wore an illusion of a gold chain set with emeralds around his throat.
(Not the real thing, not when someone could cast a spell to make it choke him. But a good facsimile).
Nott gaped at him for what had to be a full thirty seconds. Harry, meanwhile, let his gaze run across the shimmering robes Nott was wearing, which would seem grey from a distance but sparkled into silver when he moved. They looked to be made of something near the same cloth that Harry had purchased. And Nott’s face was stern and pale and looked like some kind of old-fashioned king’s.
“You look nice.”
His words finally snapped Nott out of the stare. He turned back to the mirror and flung over his shoulder, “You look…acceptable.”
Harry smiled. He knew well it was more than that, but he didn’t see any reason to prod at Nott. They’d have to put on a coordinated act in the ballroom, after all. He turned to peer over his shoulder.
The ballroom was already full of people clinking together glasses of drinks with pompous names and making pompous conversation. Harry felt a little shiver of pleasure that none of them seemed to be wearing robes as expensive as his. Or Nott’s, presumably, although he’d probably already had the robes instead of buying them fresh.
“Why did you purchase those robes?”
“Madam Kelly recommended them.”
“Who is Madam Kelly?”
“The witch who owns the robe shop.”
Nott’s reflection closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned around and shook his head at Harry. “You notice that tells me nothing.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. You probably haven’t spent much time in Diagon Alley if you’ve been on diplomatic missions.”
“None of that,” Nott hissed, his eyes flashing, and they did have some dark blue color now. Harry wondered if it depended on the lighting. “No one is to know of my real position, remember.”
“Then what title should I call you by?”
Harry enjoyed the way that Nott visibly struggled for a long second. “You should call me Theo,” he finally managed, against what were probably ninety-five percent of his pureblood instincts.
“All right.”
“You can just do it? Like that?”
“Hey, I got over the way I felt about Draco in school long enough to fuck him. You and I were never friends, but we were never enemies, either. It’s easier with you.”
Nott’s face slammed shut like a door. “There will be no fucking,” he said, in a voice so cold that he might have stolen it from a glacier.
Harry laughed. “I know that, Nott. It’s fake. I’ve played this game before with a few other important Ministry guests.”
“Then why did Robards act like you’ve never done it before?”
“He wasn’t in charge during the first one, and with the others, he doesn’t think I did a very good job.”
“Why does he think that?”
“He hates me and thinks I never should have been an Auror.” Harry shrugged at the look of doubt on Nott’s face. “You can try to back out of this now and find another Auror, but the only way to do it would be to claim you’re sick or something. And I don’t know why, but I have the feeling you want to be on that dance floor.”
Nott looked towards the ballroom, and his mouth twitched in a harsh line. Harry stood still, waiting. He didn’t actually know what decision Nott would make, although he sort of hoped that he would get to wear these robes at least once in public.
Then Nott let out a breath as harsh as his not-smile and extended his hand.
“We have a dance to get to,” he said softly. “And yes, if you can hold up your part of the bargain, I can do the same thing.” He tilted his head. “Harry.”
He smiled, and Harry smiled back. He was glad that Nott wasn’t the kind of sniveling snot that Draco had been in school. It would have made things a lot harder, even if it was also the kind of challenge Harry would have enjoyed.
“Let’s,” he said, and led Nott out into the ballroom, the public, and the dance floor.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo, mentions of others
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, Auror Harry, diplomat Theo, angst, brief violence, fake dating
Rating: R
Summary: Harry isn’t especially enthusiastic about the idea of babysitting Theo Nott, even if he’s the first British diplomat to the Fair Folk in five hundred years and needs to be protected from people who don’t want to see his mission succeed. But his boss isn’t giving him a choice about it. And Theo’s glittering presence makes Harry unwillingly fascinated—and maybe something more.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “More Harry/Theo In the World Project” stories, and should have three or four parts.
Sparkling, Glittering, Glowing
“Auror Potter. Charmed.”
The thin smile that made its way over Nott’s face showed he wasn’t charmed. Harry ignored it and shook Nott’s hand. It was slightly clammy. “Likewise.”
That made Nott cock his head and examine Harry with more attention. Harry stared back. He didn’t remember much of Nott from school, other than him being a quiet, pale boy who snickered at Draco’s jokes. Now he was tall—taller than Harry, the bastard—with a sharp jaw that fit his face in a way Draco’s pointiness still didn’t. He had hair as dark as Harry’s and hooded eyes of no particular color.
“Do I have something on my face?”
Harry flushed, but ignored the temptation to babble on. He’d finally managed to conquer it. “No. I was making sure that I know what you look like so I can pick you out in a crowd.”
“And I’m sure we’re all relieved about that,” Robards interjected. He was the Head Auror and desperate to remain relevant in every conversation no matter how short or who was involved. “Auror Potter’s pretty good at his job, Diplomat Nott. He’ll protect you.”
“Only pretty good?” Nott asked in a whisper that didn’t disturb his smile.
Harry was able to ignore that jab more easily than he once could have, luckily. Robards just didn’t like Harry and never would, and thought Harry had got his job as an Auror because of his fame, no matter how often Harry proved otherwise. Harry could rescue a clutch of baby phoenixes from people who planned to sacrifice them and only get a scolding for not closing the case faster.
(Nott could ask Harry how he knew that).
“What questions did you have about the mission, Auror Potter?”
Robards always asked that with the expectation that Harry wouldn’t have any. Harry lived to disappoint him. “You said he needs to be protected, sir. From whom? The description of the case was vague.”
Robards fidgeted in place. Harry stared. Well, that was something he’d never seen before. Robards always projected a façade of confidence no matter the situation or how unearned that confidence was.
(Nott could ask Harry how he knew that).
“This cannot go outside this room, Auror Potter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not even to your little friends Granger and Weasley. You’re not to tell them any of this, understand? Not even that you’ve been tasked with protecting Nott.”
Harry could feel Nott’s judgmental eyebrow raise without looking at him. He just nodded and kept his eyes on Robards. In fact, the Head Auror was the one who had ended up on the front page of the Prophet two years ago for telling some secrets to his lover that never should have left the paperwork he filled out in his office.
But Harry knew that fighting back when your boss hated you was a waste of time. Nott could either accept that Harry knew how to protect him, or he could go elsewhere.
Robards still cleared his throat a few times before he licked his lips and whispered, “Nott is our first ambassador to the Fair Folk since the 1500s.”
Harry blinked a little and glanced at Nott. Nott just kept staring. Harry reckoned that he didn’t have anything better to do with his time.
“Why didn’t we have one before, sir?” Harry asked, turning back to Robards.
“There were—complicated reasons. The British magical community at the time didn’t understand the full importance of abiding by fey protocol.”
“They massively insulted the Sidhe community and made most of them leave our world,” Nott said in a bland voice. “They continued to maintain communication from the realm they went to with other countries, but not ours.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Diplomat Nott.”
Nott shrugged. “I would.”
Harry cleared his throat, to shut off what could probably become an endless argument about something he didn’t understand as it stood. “And so we need to make sure that someone else can’t interfere and deliver that kind of insult again, sir?”
“No one in the modern British Ministry would do that, Auror Potter!”
Harry stared at him. Nott stared at him.
Robards cleared his throat again a moment later. “Yes, well, there’s the chance that someone would. But on the other hand, the more pressing concern is the Sidhe. Some of them don’t approve of reestablishing relations with Britain.”
“I’m in danger until I’ve managed to be formally presented to the Queen and got her to acknowledge my presence. I’ve been waiting in the Court for some time, but someone betrayed my presence there, and I had to leave. So I require protection in magical Britain until it looks as though I’m not returning to the Court.”
“And do you need me to accompany you in the Court itself?” Harry asked. He didn’t need to know all the details. He just needed to grasp some of the specifics of the mission.
Nott swiveled his stare towards Harry. “You don’t need to worry about that, Potter. They wouldn’t accept your presence.”
“Okay.” Harry serenely ignored the way that Nott’s stare sharpened like an ice pick. “Then you’ll need protection at Ministry events. At home? At other day-to-day events? Is this a constant, or are there places you don’t want it?”
“I’ll require it around the clock for at least the next seven days. That will be the time when the Sidhe try something, if they do. It’s because of internal considerations of the Court that you can’t understand.”
“Okay.”
Nott peered at him, but Harry sat there and didn’t ask questions. Nott thought he was stupid? Nothing Harry could do would change that impression, so he might as well make sure that they didn’t have a reason to get into an argument.
After a moment, Nott went on, although with a faintly disturbed expression on his face. “You’ll need to make excuses to your friends, since they can’t know that you’re protecting me and chance it getting back to the Sidhe.” Harry thought about complaining that neither Ron nor Hermione would do that, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “I thought we could spread the word that we were dating.”
Harry laughed aloud. Robards glared at him and Nott’s face turned a little icier, but Harry just kept laughing, shaking his head. “Are you stupid?” he asked. “Ron and Hermione know that I’m straight. And other people might not know it for sure, but they think they do, so they’d pay a lot more attention to me if I were dating a man. The story would fall apart under any scrutiny without more to back it up than that.”
“My friends tell me things, too.”
“So what?”
“So I know about that little affair you and Draco had a few years ago. Straight, perhaps, but only mostly.”
Harry could feel himself flushing again, and Robards staring. What had seemed like a good trait when he was dating Draco, Draco’s inability to keep his mouth shut, had turned into a horrible liability.
(Granted, the only thing that had probably kept Draco from spreading it around before now was the fact that Harry had broken it off instead of the other way around).
“You dated Draco Malfoy, Auror Potter? Are you aware that he’s currently under suspicion for smuggling Veela in and out of the country to—drain people to exhaustion? This is a matter of national security—”
“We were over long before that suspicion started, Robards,” Harry snapped. “And you might as well say fuck. He’s sneaking Veela into the country to fuck people because you and the rest of the British Ministry thought it would be a great idea to categorize people having sex with Veela as bestiality.”
Robards opened his mouth, then closed it. His ears were turning red. Harry blinked. He’d given up on snapping back at Robards long ago, on the theory that it changed nothing, but maybe he ought to try it more often.
“Well. You—you don’t know any Veela—”
“I do know Fleur Weasley, who was harassed under this new law, and who only escaped from further harassment because the goblins threatened to cut off business with the Ministry if you continued to try and arrest one of their Curse-Breakers.”
More staring from Robards. Probably from Nott, too. Harry didn’t turn around to look. He just met and held the Head Auror’s eyes, and held them, and held them, and Robards was the one to look down at the paperwork on his desk and clear his throat again.
“Regardless, we can have you dating Diplomat Nott only if you promise to keep your hands to yourself.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I can be strictly professional, sir.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Nott said in a voice like a blizzard. “You’ll need to portray at least some lust for me.”
“I can still do that while being strictly professional, Nott, because in this case, portraying lust for you is part of the job.”
“Prove it.”
Harry hid his smile as he turned around and faced Nott. Then he leaned forwards a little, widened his eyes, and focused his gaze, letting it stray slowly up and down Nott’s body. His jutting jaw could be seen as chiseled, and Harry could convince himself those largely colorless eyes were silver or blue, and he could picture his hands on Nott’s hips.
“That’s enough.”
Harry pulled himself back and tilted his head. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Nott was looking away from him. Harry still kept his smile internal. “So. This will work out, and you’ll tell your friends that this was part of a whirlwind romance, and we’ll portray ourselves the same way to anyone who might ask in the Ministry.”
“It’s good that you have it all planned out.”
Nott could undoubtedly tell what Harry really thought of this, but he let it go past. “Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow. Meet me in the western antechamber off the ballroom. We’ll pretend that we’re attending our first public event as a couple.” And he stood and strode out of the office.
It occurred to Harry that Robards had been unusually silent. He turned around, expecting to encounter an expression of disgust. Robards seemed, from some remarks he’d made, like he was disgusted by men dating other men.
But there was no disgust on the Head Auror’s face. Instead, he was pressing himself back in his chair and staring at Harry as if he’d been hit on the head by a Bludger.
“Sir?”
Robards seemed to snap back to life when Harry spoke his name, like one of those enchanted dolls Harry had bought last year to delight Rose (and torture Ron and Hermione). He looked away and cleared his throat. “See that you do exactly as you’re supposed to in protecting Nott, Auror Potter. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you how important it is that the Sidhe form a diplomatic relationship with magical Britain.”
Harry did actually wish someone would explain that to him, since he hadn’t heard of the Sidhe before, or that magical Britain didn’t have a relationship with them, or the Court Nott had talked about, or lots of other things. But it didn’t really matter. He would do his job, and cope with whatever happened as a result of their not telling him the truth.
They would have to do the same.
“Yes, Head Auror, sir,” Harry said, with his most demure expression.
“Get out.”
Harry rose and left the office, shaking his head. He could hear Robards yelling behind him, something about having his secretary get into the office and record something. Harry wouldn’t have been the man’s secretary for all the gold in Gringotts.
It seemed his duties for the day were done, given that he would have to escort Nott tomorrow. And that meant, sadly, that he would probably have to spend the time shopping.
*
“This looks fine on you, sir.”
One thing Harry appreciated about Madam Kelly’s, the shop that had taken the place of Madam Malkin’s, was that the shopkeeper never made more or less of a fuss over Harry than she did over anyone else. He was “sir,” and so was every other wizard who walked through her doors. And she had good taste.
Harry had to admit that the blue robes he was wearing did look fine, but—“I need to make sure that I look like I’m in love with a snotty pureblood who would probably be horrified to be seen with me in any other circumstance.” He didn’t mind telling Madam Kelly. She would never tell another soul.
Madam Kelly tilted her head in the mirror. She was an older witch who had appeared from nowhere when Madam Malkin was ready to sell her shop and simply bought it and taken over. She had bright white hair and bright yellow eyes that made Harry sure she would be a snowy owl Animagus if she’d mastered the spell. “How snotty a pureblood?”
“A Nott.”
Madam Kelly gave a single cluck of her tongue, and then nodded. “I have something, sir. I’ll return momentarily.” She swirled across the shop and vanished behind a curtain that jangled with pearls, the one extravagance in the shop.
Harry took another glance into the mirror, running his fingers wistfully over the robes for a moment. He liked this color, and he could afford them, but he wouldn’t have any place to wear them. He didn’t attend Ministry galas or similar events if he wasn’t involved in some job like this one, and in the field, he needed to wear the dragonhide-reinforced Auror battle robes. And he would get made fun of if he pranced around the office in these.
Harry sighed and took off the robes just as Madam Kelly returned with something green folded under her arm.
“No offense, Madam Kelly, but I don’t wear green. There are too many people remarking on how it matches my eyes when I do.”
“This doesn’t match your eyes, sir.” Madam Kelly unfolded the cloth with a snap that made ripples run up and down it. “And it should make a statement when it comes to impressing snotty purebloods and witnesses alike.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. No, the cloth was a different shade than the one that everyone would babble about matching his eyes. It was a dark green with subtle shades of blue and yellow snaking through it that Harry knew were the result of spells he’d never seen before. The ripples stilled, and the colors stilled, but Harry could imagine how they would look when he turned or moved fast enough.
He reached out to touch the cloth, and whistled a little. It was perfectly soft and comfortable, whispering through his fingers like silk without being silk. Silk always made Harry itch, even when he was wearing a shirt and trousers under the robes.
“Do you want to try it on, sir?”
Madam Kelly sounded emotionless most of the time, but she was smug right now. Harry couldn’t hold that against her. He turned and faced the mirror, letting her drape the green robe over his shoulders.
He had to smile at the picture he made. This was the kind of image that Hermione was always telling him he had to keep up, and sometimes Robards too. He should have known that Madam Kelly would find something perfect for him.
“I’ll take them.”
“Excellent, sir. These are ninety Galleons, of course.”
Harry winced a little, but then shrugged. He’d tried not to touch the gold in the vault his parents had left him ever since he’d become an Auror, just living off his salary. If he got sacked because of Robards’s opinions or something similar, he didn’t want to be destitute. He could afford a one-time purchase like this.
“Do you want me to hold any other robes made of the same cloth that come in until you can take a look at them, sir?”
Harry was tempted, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea, because then he would probably be tempted to buy them. “No, thank you. But thank you for finding this one.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
Right, Harry thought as he handed over the Galleons. And acting as a bodyguard to Nott and playing my part in the right way is mine. I’ll have the robes, and I can do the right look and behavior, and if he wants me to dance I can even do that. Thank Merlin Ginny made me take those lessons.
Thinking about Ginny was painful, as always, so Harry shook the thought away and marched out of the shop with the robes in a shrunken package under his arm. He checked his watch. He’d have to wait an hour or so, but then both Ron and Hermione would be done at the Ministry.
He wasn’t going to keep the secret of why he was “infatuated” with Nott from his best friends, of course. Fuck that. They could keep a secret, and they deserved to know.
*
“I swear, mate, only you.”
Harry laughed and leaned back on Ron’s couch with a glass of wine in his hand. There were unfortunate memories attached to Firewhisky for him now after a few cases where he’d had to pretend he liked it, but Hermione could always be counted on to find some new wine that she wanted him to try. “Yeah, well, at least it’ll only be for a short time.”
“And can you act as though you really love Nott? Or could?”
Harry tilted his glass at Hermione, who was sitting in a chair near the fire, with Rose asleep in a cot next to her. “He didn’t ask for love. Only lust. And sure, I can feign that pretty well. You saw what I did with that Veela ambassador a few years ago.”
“Harry…you were dating her at the time.”
“No, I wasn’t. Remember? It was an act to draw out the wizard who was stalking her. And it worked. He got so jealous that he attacked me, and I put him down, and then she was able to move on without having to look over her shoulder every second.”
“You never told us that!”
“Oh?” Harry blinked at Ron over the rim of his wineglass. “Sorry. I really thought I had.”
Ron stared at him for a second, then shook his head and collapsed against the back of his chair. “Okay. So I think you really can fool other people if you want to.”
“But you don’t want this assignment, do you?” Hermione asked, her eyes soft. “You would prefer that you didn’t have to do it at all.”
“No,” Harry agreed. “I can fool people, but I don’t really like doing it. It feels like playing into all the rumors that people used to spread about me. Still spread about me,” he added, because he might not read the Prophet anymore, but he still caught glimpses of stories in it as he walked through the Auror Department, and of course people were eager to tell him what it said. “And it seems that the times I’ve had to do this, I end up protecting haughty people who despise me for my blood. Human or Muggle, doesn’t make much difference. Not the kind of base for even a pretend relationship that I’d want.”
“You sound so unhappy being an Auror,” Hermione murmured.
Harry sighed. “I am. Not least because of bloody Robards. But I love the work when I succeed, and I don’t really know what else I would do if I quit.”
“You know that we’d love to have you in Protection.”
Hermione had more or less taken over the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and was responsible for the name it had now. Harry smiled at her wistfully, but shook his head. “I don’t have any special talent for that work.”
“Parseltongue makes you qualified.”
“And then I’d have to show people that I still have it, instead of losing it after Voldemort died the way I thought I did for a while. No, thanks.”
“I told you that spreading that rumor would come back to bite you—”
And off they went, arguing, while Ron watched them with a grin over the rim of his own glass. By the time that Harry left, his head was buzzing with good wine and good argument, and a vision of future possibilities that he hadn’t had in a while.
Maybe Hermione’s right. Maybe I don’t have to be an Auror if I don’t want to. I’ll at least think about it.
After the Nott case is done.
*
“Potter. About time you showed up.”
Harry ignored that, knowing he was precisely on time for the hour that he’d been told to attend Nott. “Are we doing the first dance, or only some of the latter ones?” he asked, as he stepped into the small antechamber off the ballroom where Nott had said to meet him. It had a mirror on one wall, and Nott was primping in front of it.
“The second dance is the only one…”
Harry raised his eyebrows. Nott had had no reason to trail off after turning around to stare at Harry, but for some reason, he had. He was gaping at Harry as if he’d never seen him before in his life, in fact.
Then again, Harry thought he knew what Nott was gaping at. After all, Harry was wearing the green robes that Madam Kelly had sold him, and his hair was the artful tangle that it got after a few drops of the potion that Hermione had given him as a Christmas gift (that had to be kept in a separate room from any other potion, and was so finicky that Harry almost never bothered with it). And Harry wore an illusion of a gold chain set with emeralds around his throat.
(Not the real thing, not when someone could cast a spell to make it choke him. But a good facsimile).
Nott gaped at him for what had to be a full thirty seconds. Harry, meanwhile, let his gaze run across the shimmering robes Nott was wearing, which would seem grey from a distance but sparkled into silver when he moved. They looked to be made of something near the same cloth that Harry had purchased. And Nott’s face was stern and pale and looked like some kind of old-fashioned king’s.
“You look nice.”
His words finally snapped Nott out of the stare. He turned back to the mirror and flung over his shoulder, “You look…acceptable.”
Harry smiled. He knew well it was more than that, but he didn’t see any reason to prod at Nott. They’d have to put on a coordinated act in the ballroom, after all. He turned to peer over his shoulder.
The ballroom was already full of people clinking together glasses of drinks with pompous names and making pompous conversation. Harry felt a little shiver of pleasure that none of them seemed to be wearing robes as expensive as his. Or Nott’s, presumably, although he’d probably already had the robes instead of buying them fresh.
“Why did you purchase those robes?”
“Madam Kelly recommended them.”
“Who is Madam Kelly?”
“The witch who owns the robe shop.”
Nott’s reflection closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned around and shook his head at Harry. “You notice that tells me nothing.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. You probably haven’t spent much time in Diagon Alley if you’ve been on diplomatic missions.”
“None of that,” Nott hissed, his eyes flashing, and they did have some dark blue color now. Harry wondered if it depended on the lighting. “No one is to know of my real position, remember.”
“Then what title should I call you by?”
Harry enjoyed the way that Nott visibly struggled for a long second. “You should call me Theo,” he finally managed, against what were probably ninety-five percent of his pureblood instincts.
“All right.”
“You can just do it? Like that?”
“Hey, I got over the way I felt about Draco in school long enough to fuck him. You and I were never friends, but we were never enemies, either. It’s easier with you.”
Nott’s face slammed shut like a door. “There will be no fucking,” he said, in a voice so cold that he might have stolen it from a glacier.
Harry laughed. “I know that, Nott. It’s fake. I’ve played this game before with a few other important Ministry guests.”
“Then why did Robards act like you’ve never done it before?”
“He wasn’t in charge during the first one, and with the others, he doesn’t think I did a very good job.”
“Why does he think that?”
“He hates me and thinks I never should have been an Auror.” Harry shrugged at the look of doubt on Nott’s face. “You can try to back out of this now and find another Auror, but the only way to do it would be to claim you’re sick or something. And I don’t know why, but I have the feeling you want to be on that dance floor.”
Nott looked towards the ballroom, and his mouth twitched in a harsh line. Harry stood still, waiting. He didn’t actually know what decision Nott would make, although he sort of hoped that he would get to wear these robes at least once in public.
Then Nott let out a breath as harsh as his not-smile and extended his hand.
“We have a dance to get to,” he said softly. “And yes, if you can hold up your part of the bargain, I can do the same thing.” He tilted his head. “Harry.”
He smiled, and Harry smiled back. He was glad that Nott wasn’t the kind of sniveling snot that Draco had been in school. It would have made things a lot harder, even if it was also the kind of challenge Harry would have enjoyed.
“Let’s,” he said, and led Nott out into the ballroom, the public, and the dance floor.
