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lomonaaerenPosted in two parts due to length issues.
“He’s going to come out cursing.” Malfoy’s voice was no more than a murmur in Harry’s ear.
Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the dark doorway in front of them so that he wouldn’t miss the slightest flicker of movement. They’d finally tracked the poisoner they were investigating to his lair; they would need evidence that he’d brewed poisons and tampered with healing potions to make an arrest. But they hadn’t counted on the strength of his private wards or the fact that his house had only one entrance, meaning they couldn’t both go in at once from front and back the way they liked to do.
At least the house was far away from any Muggle or wizard dwelling, in the middle of a desolate moor, Harry thought, trying to think of something positive to say about this case so far. That meant none of the curses would hit anyone else.
“Any ideas?” Malfoy leaned his elbow on the boulder they were crouching behind—wound with spells that disguised their presence from the poisoner—and leaned in towards Harry.
Harry took a moment he knew he shouldn’t to enjoy the way Malfoy’s closeness made the hairs on his arms and neck rise, then said, “Brute strength. He isn’t going to come out unless the house is destroyed around him.”
Malfoy raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And destroy all our evidence?”
Harry grinned at him. He enjoyed moments like this, when Malfoy spoke as if Harry were stupid, or at least missing the obvious. He wouldn’t have enjoyed it in school, but that wasn’t the point. They were different people now, and this would give Harry the chance to prove himself.
“Watch,” he said simply, and pointed his wand around the rock, beginning a soft, steady chant. Malfoy watched, not making any attempt to interfere.
Harry had never thought he would see the day when Draco Malfoy trusted him.
The spell eddied out of his wand, surrounding the house with what looked like magical mud, blocking the shimmer of some of the wards. Harry altered the incantation a bit as he created the second layer, and Malfoy cocked his head. He still didn’t know what Harry was doing, despite his greater knowledge of Latin.
That was gratifying.
Harry told himself he wasn’t going to think about what else it was, and jerked his wand up in the air as he reached the end of the spell.
The spell glittered, the “mud” suddenly taking on golden highlights as if catching the sun, and then contracted. Harry heard the cracking and creaking of wood and raised a cautious shield around himself and Malfoy. Sure enough, splinters were flying through the air a moment later, some with force enough to chip off bits of the rock.
The spell was formed to destroy wood and ward energy, but nothing else. It would leave the poisoner undamaged—and all the potions in glass vials and metal cauldrons that he had with him.
“Magnificent,” Malfoy breathed.
Harry grinned at him again, and tried not to preen. For once, instead of greedily watching the spell’s effect the way he tended to, Malfoy had his eyes on Harry, and his gaze was warm and heavy-lidded. It made Harry tingle in odd places.
But then a weak cry caught their attention, and Harry turned his gaze back to where the house had stood. In a moment, he went still.
The poisoner was there, yes, a desperate-looking man with wild dark hair in a ragged purple robe. But someone else was there as well, a tiny boy with red hair and wide, tearless eyes. He hung limp against the poisoner, but whimpered when the man pressed his wand against his throat. Harry couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. None of their research had said anything about a hostage.
“I know who you are,” the poisoner said, eyes fastened on the rock despite their concealing spells. “Harry Potter. He never harmed a person when he could avoid it, they said.” He gave an eerie, hollow laugh. “Come out where I can see you and lay your wand down.”
Harry tried to trade an anguished look with Malfoy, only to see him looking calm and unaffected. He met Harry’s eyes and nodded. “Do what he says,” he mouthed. “Trust me.”
Harry shivered, and for a long moment his trust hung there in the balance, as he wondered whether or not he should actually obey Malfoy. Why? If Malfoy didn’t care about the hostage, as it seemed he didn’t, would he actually save the boy, or consider his death an acceptable price as long as they caught the poisoner?
But Malfoy didn’t flinch or scowl. He knelt there, as impassive as if he were waiting for Harry to trust him to Stun a prisoner.
Harry stepped into sight and laid his wand down.
The poisoner gave a nervous giggle. “Excellent.” With a flick of his hand, he Summoned Harry’s wand. Harry clenched his hands into fists. He hated the smart ones. “Now, Kevin here and I are going to take a little walk. You’ll stay right where you are and not attempt to trace us. Do you understand? I’ll kill him the moment I see any Auror coming after me.”
It took everything in Harry not to glance towards the place where Malfoy knelt and betray the plan. He settled for nodding tightly.
“Good.” The poisoner swayed on his feet, then recovered his balance. Harry, about to spring forwards, rocked back on his heels again. “You won’t follow us,” the poisoner repeated, his voice beginning to slur.
“Of course not,” Harry said, and hoped that he sounded righteous and indignant enough. By now he had a glimmer of what Draco was doing, and it was brilliant.
“Right,” the poisoner said, and wavered back and forth, blinking. Then he slipped to the ground with a little sigh.
Harry immediately raced forwards and snatched the boy from his arms. Kevin clung to him, whimpering, while Harry stroked his hair soothingly and then bent down and grabbed his wand.
“How did you cast the sleep charm without him noticing you?” he asked Malfoy, who was sauntering up with one of the collection bags they used to pick up evidence. He paused along the way to bind and gag the poisoner, and then Summoned his wand in turn and tucked it into his pocket.
“You were distracting him,” Malfoy said, baring his teeth a little. “You do that often, as I notice.” Harry just chose to nod and cuddle the boy closer, not responding verbally. “He wasn’t warding his mind to Legilimency. I managed to get a hook in place—” a hook, as far as Harry understood it, was a small hold on a victim’s mind “—and then sneak the sleep charm in under his awareness. It was like a powerful suggestion from his own mind.”
“Thank you,” Harry said. He whispered it, but he knew Malfoy would hear.
Malfoy paused with one hand above an iron cauldron. “You don’t think it’s too Dark?” he asked, without turning to face Harry.
“You’re something deeper and more powerful than Dark,” Harry said. “I know you use Legilimency in the service of—” He fumbled for a moment. He didn’t want to say “good,” because Malfoy would mock him, and he didn’t think Malfoy’s confession that he had become an Auror for the good of his family made his motives purely selfless. Nor had Malfoy only done this for the boy, since he hadn’t known about him until a few minutes ago. “The Ministry,” he said at last.
Malfoy bent down and placed a Stasis Charm on the cauldron, then shrank it and put it in the collection bag. “There’s another thing I serve,” he said.
“What?” Harry asked, joggling the boy a little as he started to cry.
“This partnership,” Malfoy said.
Harry was glad that he didn’t look up as he spoke, but simply continued his collection. He didn’t want to explain to Malfoy why he was going a little weak-kneed and staring openly at his back.
*
“You don’t really believe that.”
There was something about the tone of Malfoy’s voice that made Harry put the report he was writing aside and look at him. Malfoy leaned back in his chair behind his desk, which stood opposite Harry’s. He would never go so far as to put his feet on the desk, Harry knew, which he had Transfigured to be mahogany and considerably cleaner than the standard-issue desk the Ministry had given him. But his legs were crossed and his hands resting in his lap, signals of relaxation for him. He stared, with an eyebrow raised.
“Don’t really believe what?” Harry tried to remember what they’d been talking about. Some variation of the Gryffindor-Slytherin argument. He hadn’t had his mind on it, but on the report about the Dinsmore case, which was already a week overdue.
“You don’t really believe that having a child in Slytherin would be the end of the world,” Malfoy said. “Even though you just recited that, and all the reasons why.”
Harry blinked. He reckoned he didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. He took one side of the argument and Malfoy took the other. That was the way it always was. Harry hadn’t thought either one of them believed it anymore. It was one of the loads of bollocks they used to pass the time.
But he would sound stupid if he said that—he couldn’t keep up with the quick way Hermione phrased things, or the light, gentle way Ginny did. “How can you tell?” he asked instead.
“By your tone of voice,” Malfoy murmured. “You always sound distant when you don’t believe something.”
Harry eyed him. Malfoy was leaning forwards, one hand on the desk now. He looked as though he was on the point of standing up from the chair, in fact. And that alarmed Harry, because it meant the conversation was about to get serious. He’d been good at avoiding rows with Malfoy so far. He wanted that to continue.
Then Harry realized what he was thinking, and frowned. Idiot. This is the perfect way to make Malfoy stop respecting you and ask for a different partner, and you’re letting it go to waste.
“Well, actually,” Harry said, “I would rather that my children be in Gryffindor than Slytherin. It would mean less teasing for them and less bad perceptions of them in the future. I wouldn’t stop loving them if they were Slytherins, but that’s different.” He paused, because Malfoy hadn’t responded, and then added, “Not to mention all the bad habits, like lying, they’d pick up in Slytherin.”
Malfoy didn’t exclaim, or roll his eyes, or freeze his face into the mask of disgust that Harry had seen there whenever he had to speak to Ron or Ginny. He gave a faint, very cool smile, the kind Harry had learned to look forwards to seeing at the end of a case. “You don’t believe that, either,” he said. “Learning to read you is very useful, Potter.”
There was a long, moronic moment when Harry sat there gaping and found himself drawn into Malfoy’s eyes. Grey, yes, and cold, yes; that was what Ginny always complained about when she saw him. But they were more than that. They had a clarity at the bottom of them that—
You never think about Ginny’s eyes that way.
Horrified, Harry stood up and turned his back on Malfoy. He cleared his throat several times and then said, “All right, so I don’t, really. Two of the bravest people I ever knew were Slytherins, and one could have passed for one.”
There was a long silence. Harry thought Malfoy would let him get back to the report, and started to sit down again.
“Their names.” Malfoy sounded almost dreamy, almost content, as though he was making a request for Harry to pass the salt, or open a door, or something else that didn’t really matter.
“Snape.” Harry tried to make his voice sarcastic, tried to imply that Malfoy of course should have known that, because too late, he had seen what Malfoy had trapped him into. “And Dumbledore’s the one who could have passed for Slytherin, with all his plots and plans.”
“The third name,” Malfoy whispered.
And suddenly everything was tense and important.
Harry swallowed and decided that he would turn around and look Malfoy in the eye. He deserved no less. Anyway, he had to show that this wasn’t important to him, no matter what it looked like, and hope that Malfoy couldn’t read depth of truth in Harry’s voice the way he could read lies.
He turned. Malfoy stood with both hands on the desk now, his body bent into an arch with Harry as its focal point.
His gaze took Harry’s breath away.
“You, of course.” Harry tried to snort. Tried to smile. Tried to sound as though nothing was so tiresome as having to admit that Malfoy was brave. It didn’t work, and so, desperate, he dropped all the tricks and went straight for the plain truth, hoping to make Malfoy uncomfortable.
“After all I did,” Malfoy asked, “you don’t think I’m a coward?”
How did it come to this, that Draco Malfoy is asking me for reassurance? But the thought skittered across Harry’s mind and dropped off again like a bug on the surface of water. Things were the way he were, and it was hardly surprising that Malfoy would end up asking him, when they were—
Going towards something. It was the first time Harry had acknowledged it to himself. He didn’t know what the destination was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But it was there.
“Are you kidding?” Harry’s voice was shaky. He would have liked to look aside, but Malfoy’s wide, appealing gaze wouldn’t let him. “Of course you are. You did the best you could for your parents in sixth year. You stood up for me when I was brought to your house in that stupid disguise, even though you knew Voldemort would punish you if he found out you lied. You came into the Room of Requirement to hunt me down—”
“That wasn’t brave,” Malfoy interrupted. “I was terrified of the Dark Lord.”
“But you were afraid of me,” Harry said simply. “And afraid for your parents, again. Instead of cowering somewhere, though, like so many people did in the battle, you tried to do something about it.” It was a little easier to stand there and return Malfoy’s glance, now. “And you still wanted to take me alive instead of killing me. I’d argue that shows a little ambivalence on your part.”
Malfoy bowed his head. Harry admired the way his pale hair shaded his face, and waited for him to speak.
“Thank you,” Malfoy said. He raised his head partway, every movement grinding as if his neck was a creaking clock, and then stared past Harry. “Even then, I think I cared about what you thought of me. And I didn’t want you to die.”
There was silence. There was stillness. Harry knew he could end it by turning back to his desk.
Harry reached across the distance and touched Malfoy on the shoulder.
Malfoy looked up with a flash in his eyes like fire. Harry avoided him in turn, sitting down and going back to work on the report.
But maybe he had learned something about Malfoy, in turn. From then on, he found out, he could tell when Malfoy was looking at him.
*
“Down!”
Harry dived. He heard the whoosh of a spell pass over him, and then the sound of stone cracking as it hit the floor behind him.
He didn’t know what it had been, and he didn’t need to, although from the smell of electricity in his nostrils, he thought he could guess. He was already on his feet and shoving his way forwards against the offensive spells that hung in the air like a black haze, in search of Malfoy, who he could hear but not see.
It was one of those situations that ought to have been utterly routine and had turned out not to be. He and Malfoy had narrowed the investigation into an organized ring of wizards using the Imperius Curse on Muggles down to several suspects, and had gone to visit the first one at his home. Reports from friends and neighbors had said that he was calm and would be glad to speak with Aurors (none of them believed that he had done anything so horrible, of course).
Instead, he had met them with a spell that clipped Malfoy’s ear and then dashed into the depths of his house. They had followed, of course, only to find that he had trigged wards of some kind that filled the house with murk and made it hard to hear or smell anything more than a few feet away.
Malfoy was always accusing Harry of wanting to be a hero and live up to the hero stereotype, but he was the one who had run after Sover, the suspect, like a madman, without waiting for backup. Harry was going to remind him of that later.
Assuming there was a later.
Harry swore under his breath and pushed cautiously on. He had already slammed his shins on concealed chairs and tables, and he had cast a variation on a Bubble-Head Charm around himself to filter the air, because he didn’t know what breathing too much of it might do to him. It didn’t encircle his head as tightly as a normal one, though, because he wanted to be able to hear.
It had gone entirely silent now. Harry hated that. He ought to be able to hear Sower escaping if he was, or sounds of a duel if Malfoy hadn’t been incapacitated.
Then he broke through a barrier that fizzed and snarled in his ears, and the reason for the lack of sound became obvious. Sower had had yet another ward up, and beyond it, in a large room that probably served as a drawing room ordinarily, was the battle.
Malfoy spun and leaped, closing in steadily on Sower, who was hiding behind a barrier of chairs and firing around the edge. He had already used spells that left the carpet scorched and stinking around Malfoy’s feet, Harry saw. He used the Rearrangement Curse as Harry watched, which, contrary to its innocent name, would switch around the position of internal organs until it was unlikely that the person it hit would survive.
Harry yelped a warning, and Malfoy clasped his arms to his sides and dove straight down, so as to expose the smallest part of his body to the magic. At the same moment, Sower cast the Rearrangement Curse again.
This time at Malfoy, lying on the floor.
Harry raised a Flexible Shield without thinking. It was a spell he had never been any good at, because it was more difficult than a Shield Charm while using almost the same gesture, but it was the one that he needed in this situation, where the Rearrangement Curse was too powerful for a simple Protego.
He needed it, and the magic came in his need, creating what looked like a silvery mesh in front of Malfoy, hovering at hip height. The Rearrangement Curse struck it, and the Flexible Shield wrapped around it and absorbed its force. The shield was gone in the next moment, but so was the curse.
By then, Malfoy had cast from the ground and caught Sower as he leaned around his barrier, his mouth open in a soundless shriek. He flipped over twice and landed against the wall, caught up in ropes that looked subtly different from the ones that Incarcerous usually created.
Harry wasn’t going to trouble himself about that. He threw a Stunner at Sower and crouched next to Malfoy, who was rising to his knees, moving with a wince and a grimace.
“Malfoy?” Harry whispered. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Malfoy said, giving Harry an odd look that he couldn’t interpret. “He broke a bone in my foot. That’s all.” He examined the bound and unconscious Sower, then nodded and Summoned his wand. “Nasty little git.”
“That’s all?” Harry discovered his hands were shaking. He would have liked to try healing Malfoy himself, but he was still pants at complex healing magic. That was what St. Mungo’s was for. “How in the world were you walking?” He gathered Malfoy up in his arms and surged to his feet with him. Malfoy gasped, face going white, and Harry snarled at him and immobilized his foot. “Idiot.”
“I wanted to stop him.” Malfoy gave Harry that odd look again. “How did you stop that second curse?”
“Flexible Shield,” Harry said shortly, more interested in returning to the notion of how Malfoy was an idiot. “Do you realize you dashed off just like you’re always telling me not to do?”
“But you can’t cast those.” Malfoy steadied himself with a hand on Harry’s shoulder, seeming more shocked about the revelation than he was in pain from his injury.
“I managed this time,” Harry said. “It was the Rearrangement Curse, and you were on the ground. You couldn’t get out of the way in time. I knew the Shield Charm wouldn’t do it. I did what I needed to do.”
“Why did you need to so badly?” Malfoy leaned against him and gave a little hop. Harry snorted and conjured a stretcher for him, but jerked Sower into the air unpityingly with Mobilicorpus. He could suffer whatever wounds he took from this, the—
There was no word in Harry’s vocabulary bad enough for someone who would aim two Rearrangement Curses at his partner, so he just let the thought trail away, unfinished.
“Because you were in danger,” he said. “Why else?”
Malfoy’s eyes widened once, and he looked away. Harry waited, then asked, “Are you telling me that you would do less if I was in danger like that?” He didn’t know what he would do if the answer to his question was yes, but he did think that he needed to hear, no matter what.
“It’s not that,” Malfoy said. “Of course I would.” Harry felt tension relax in him like an uncoiling spring. “But I don’t regularly surpass my physical and magical limits to save you. Instead, you keep saving me.”
There was a resentment there that Harry knew could turn to bitterness if left untouched. He said, lightly—because too much care would also offend Draco—“Well, you’re the one who consistently comes up with clever solutions to our difficulties. I couldn’t have managed against the poisoner without you. And you kept Sower pinned until I could arrive. You’re going to end up saving my life soon. It’s the luck of the draw that it’s happened the other way so far.”
“I owe you so many life-debts,” Draco muttered, lying down on the stretcher Harry had conjured for him without any reluctance. He never showed any where his own comfort and life were concerned. Harry was grateful for that.
“And I owe you one for ‘failing’ to recognize me at Malfoy Manor, and I owe your mother one for lying to Voldemort about me,” Harry said. “I don’t brood on them.”
Draco swallowed once, then asked, “Could you please not use that name around me? I know you don’t mean to, but it sounds—it sounds like you’re mocking the fear I still feel.”
Harry blinked, hardly able to grasp what kind of gift Draco was offering him with this double vulnerability—talking about the fear in the first place, and then asking him for something—but he said, “Of course.”
Draco caught his wrist in a bruising grip and squeezed down, once, then pulled his hand back and closed his eyes as he settled against the pillow the stretcher spell automatically provided.
Weeks later, Harry was still trying to understand that gift, and why it had been so easy to transition to calling Malfoy by his first name, even before he gave it.
*
Harry wished he hadn’t come to this party.
Ginny had said it would be fun, and for her, it was; she was chattering easily with her partner, Anna Lebeck, whom she had taken to after all. Harry was glad they had become friends. She still asked when he would manage to switch out of his partnership with Draco and join her, but her questions were less persistent and frequent now.
Ron was there, with his partner Greyborn, and Hermione was there (largely to make sure that Ron went home on time and didn’t drink too much, Harry suspected). There were plenty of other former trainees, too. This wasn’t a Ministry function so much as an informal party suggested and hosted by new Aurors, which happened to be using the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as its place.
There were tables everywhere loaded with food, games of darts and wrestling and mock duels, dances up and down the narrow aisles between cubicles and the corridors between office doors, and plenty to drink. Harry wouldn’t have had trouble finding something to do if he wanted it.
Instead, he stood against the wall and watched Draco.
Draco was talking softly to a young woman named Astoria Greengrass, who Harry thought had come as a guest of one of the other trainees. All he really knew was that she hadn’t been through the training program.
Oh, and that she was beautiful, with long blonde hair and shimmering ivory skin of the kind that Harry knew he never would have achieved even if he had lived as pampered a life as Draco apparently had.
He knew that.
Harry turned away with his butterbeer—he didn’t think it would be a good idea to get too drunk tonight—and his grudge. It wasn’t worthy, what passed through him like a shudder when he looked at Draco. It was too near jealousy, so near that Harry couldn’t give it a different name in all honesty, and he should feel jealous over Ginny and the people she chose to speak to, not Draco. Several handsome men clustered around Ginny, after all, including Ron’s partner, who watched her with big calf eyes.
Think about your wife, Harry thought, tilting the butterbeer back and drizzling a long, warm stream down his throat. There’s no reason to think about Draco that way. Or anyone except Ginny.
There definitely wasn’t. His breathing got short when he thought about Draco kissing Greengrass, and he had to wipe off sweat, and he felt as if he were choking on oil. Those were all the signs of passionate jealousy he had read about.
Except that he didn’t get jealous of people like that. He knew that he didn’t. He was incapable of feeling passion.
He took another swallow of butterbeer and hunched back against the wall. He fastened his gaze on Ron, who was laughing at something Hermione had said, and thought about making his way over to join them.
But then he wouldn’t be able to see Draco as well, wouldn’t be able to notice if he slipped off somewhere with Greengrass.
That’s all the more reason to do it, he argued with himself, and walked over to his friends.
Their conversation rolled over him, meaningless, irrelevant. Harry stood there, smiled when he was required to and laughed when he thought it was appropriate, and felt as though he had a fishhook in his heart.
It made no sense. Why would he be feeling this now, for Draco of all people? He had tried thinking about blokes before, fantasizing about them, even dating them in a Polyjuice disguise. He knew he wasn’t bent.
Any more than you’re straight.
Harry checked over his shoulder again, and found that Draco and Greengrass were both gone.
Everyone said it was a strange accident, later, the way that Ron’s Firewhisky glass had splintered apart in his hand just as he was taking a drink, sending burning liquid and hot, sharp glass everywhere. Harry scrambled to clean up with the rest, but didn’t apologize, because then Hermione and Ron would want to know what could have caused him enough anger to lash out with directionless wandless magic.
He wasn’t ready to explain.
He wasn’t ready to acknowledge, even to himself, what had happened, keeping it locked in his heart like a hot stone, until after he had gone home with Ginny and made mild, passionless love to her. Ginny fell asleep with a happy smile on her face, and Harry rolled away from her.
He was hard again already, thinking about Draco’s courage, his intense stares and fleeting touches, the standoffish way he had of somehow making himself essential to Harry’s life.
He wanked, for the first time rubbing himself raw, and for the first time came with a cry that would have shattered the stillness except that he kept it back with his wrist across his mouth—that was one of the things Ginny complained about, that he made so little sound during sex—and a tightness, flooding out in hot, sticky relief, in his belly that showed him why so many people thought orgasm was wonderful.
Then he lay awake and, staring at the ceiling, unwrapped the hot stone: he was in love with Draco Malfoy.
But it’s all right, he assured himself swiftly, while his lips tingled with shame and his hands with numbness and his eyes with tears. It’s really all right, because nothing can happen. I have Ginny, and it looks like he’ll have someone else, and we both know that we’re not that to each other. We’re partners. He’s straight. He’ll never look at me twice. He has no reason to do so, because even if it turns out that I can fall in love with people after all—if it’s love and not just a stupid infatuation, which it probably is—I can’t act on it. I can’t betray Ginny like that.
And he’ll never find out. I’ll make sure of that.
He hated himself through most of the night, but come morning, he had made his peace with the fact. Being in love with Draco was all right, because nothing would ever happen between them because of it and no one would ever know.
Ginny’s words came back to him, the ones he had overheard in the kitchen with Hermione, saying that some people just fell in love once and no more.
Harry suspected he was one of those people, and that’s why he hadn’t felt any passion so far.
He just wished he had fallen in love with his wife.
*
That was the second step.
“He’s going to come out cursing.” Malfoy’s voice was no more than a murmur in Harry’s ear.
Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the dark doorway in front of them so that he wouldn’t miss the slightest flicker of movement. They’d finally tracked the poisoner they were investigating to his lair; they would need evidence that he’d brewed poisons and tampered with healing potions to make an arrest. But they hadn’t counted on the strength of his private wards or the fact that his house had only one entrance, meaning they couldn’t both go in at once from front and back the way they liked to do.
At least the house was far away from any Muggle or wizard dwelling, in the middle of a desolate moor, Harry thought, trying to think of something positive to say about this case so far. That meant none of the curses would hit anyone else.
“Any ideas?” Malfoy leaned his elbow on the boulder they were crouching behind—wound with spells that disguised their presence from the poisoner—and leaned in towards Harry.
Harry took a moment he knew he shouldn’t to enjoy the way Malfoy’s closeness made the hairs on his arms and neck rise, then said, “Brute strength. He isn’t going to come out unless the house is destroyed around him.”
Malfoy raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And destroy all our evidence?”
Harry grinned at him. He enjoyed moments like this, when Malfoy spoke as if Harry were stupid, or at least missing the obvious. He wouldn’t have enjoyed it in school, but that wasn’t the point. They were different people now, and this would give Harry the chance to prove himself.
“Watch,” he said simply, and pointed his wand around the rock, beginning a soft, steady chant. Malfoy watched, not making any attempt to interfere.
Harry had never thought he would see the day when Draco Malfoy trusted him.
The spell eddied out of his wand, surrounding the house with what looked like magical mud, blocking the shimmer of some of the wards. Harry altered the incantation a bit as he created the second layer, and Malfoy cocked his head. He still didn’t know what Harry was doing, despite his greater knowledge of Latin.
That was gratifying.
Harry told himself he wasn’t going to think about what else it was, and jerked his wand up in the air as he reached the end of the spell.
The spell glittered, the “mud” suddenly taking on golden highlights as if catching the sun, and then contracted. Harry heard the cracking and creaking of wood and raised a cautious shield around himself and Malfoy. Sure enough, splinters were flying through the air a moment later, some with force enough to chip off bits of the rock.
The spell was formed to destroy wood and ward energy, but nothing else. It would leave the poisoner undamaged—and all the potions in glass vials and metal cauldrons that he had with him.
“Magnificent,” Malfoy breathed.
Harry grinned at him again, and tried not to preen. For once, instead of greedily watching the spell’s effect the way he tended to, Malfoy had his eyes on Harry, and his gaze was warm and heavy-lidded. It made Harry tingle in odd places.
But then a weak cry caught their attention, and Harry turned his gaze back to where the house had stood. In a moment, he went still.
The poisoner was there, yes, a desperate-looking man with wild dark hair in a ragged purple robe. But someone else was there as well, a tiny boy with red hair and wide, tearless eyes. He hung limp against the poisoner, but whimpered when the man pressed his wand against his throat. Harry couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. None of their research had said anything about a hostage.
“I know who you are,” the poisoner said, eyes fastened on the rock despite their concealing spells. “Harry Potter. He never harmed a person when he could avoid it, they said.” He gave an eerie, hollow laugh. “Come out where I can see you and lay your wand down.”
Harry tried to trade an anguished look with Malfoy, only to see him looking calm and unaffected. He met Harry’s eyes and nodded. “Do what he says,” he mouthed. “Trust me.”
Harry shivered, and for a long moment his trust hung there in the balance, as he wondered whether or not he should actually obey Malfoy. Why? If Malfoy didn’t care about the hostage, as it seemed he didn’t, would he actually save the boy, or consider his death an acceptable price as long as they caught the poisoner?
But Malfoy didn’t flinch or scowl. He knelt there, as impassive as if he were waiting for Harry to trust him to Stun a prisoner.
Harry stepped into sight and laid his wand down.
The poisoner gave a nervous giggle. “Excellent.” With a flick of his hand, he Summoned Harry’s wand. Harry clenched his hands into fists. He hated the smart ones. “Now, Kevin here and I are going to take a little walk. You’ll stay right where you are and not attempt to trace us. Do you understand? I’ll kill him the moment I see any Auror coming after me.”
It took everything in Harry not to glance towards the place where Malfoy knelt and betray the plan. He settled for nodding tightly.
“Good.” The poisoner swayed on his feet, then recovered his balance. Harry, about to spring forwards, rocked back on his heels again. “You won’t follow us,” the poisoner repeated, his voice beginning to slur.
“Of course not,” Harry said, and hoped that he sounded righteous and indignant enough. By now he had a glimmer of what Draco was doing, and it was brilliant.
“Right,” the poisoner said, and wavered back and forth, blinking. Then he slipped to the ground with a little sigh.
Harry immediately raced forwards and snatched the boy from his arms. Kevin clung to him, whimpering, while Harry stroked his hair soothingly and then bent down and grabbed his wand.
“How did you cast the sleep charm without him noticing you?” he asked Malfoy, who was sauntering up with one of the collection bags they used to pick up evidence. He paused along the way to bind and gag the poisoner, and then Summoned his wand in turn and tucked it into his pocket.
“You were distracting him,” Malfoy said, baring his teeth a little. “You do that often, as I notice.” Harry just chose to nod and cuddle the boy closer, not responding verbally. “He wasn’t warding his mind to Legilimency. I managed to get a hook in place—” a hook, as far as Harry understood it, was a small hold on a victim’s mind “—and then sneak the sleep charm in under his awareness. It was like a powerful suggestion from his own mind.”
“Thank you,” Harry said. He whispered it, but he knew Malfoy would hear.
Malfoy paused with one hand above an iron cauldron. “You don’t think it’s too Dark?” he asked, without turning to face Harry.
“You’re something deeper and more powerful than Dark,” Harry said. “I know you use Legilimency in the service of—” He fumbled for a moment. He didn’t want to say “good,” because Malfoy would mock him, and he didn’t think Malfoy’s confession that he had become an Auror for the good of his family made his motives purely selfless. Nor had Malfoy only done this for the boy, since he hadn’t known about him until a few minutes ago. “The Ministry,” he said at last.
Malfoy bent down and placed a Stasis Charm on the cauldron, then shrank it and put it in the collection bag. “There’s another thing I serve,” he said.
“What?” Harry asked, joggling the boy a little as he started to cry.
“This partnership,” Malfoy said.
Harry was glad that he didn’t look up as he spoke, but simply continued his collection. He didn’t want to explain to Malfoy why he was going a little weak-kneed and staring openly at his back.
*
“You don’t really believe that.”
There was something about the tone of Malfoy’s voice that made Harry put the report he was writing aside and look at him. Malfoy leaned back in his chair behind his desk, which stood opposite Harry’s. He would never go so far as to put his feet on the desk, Harry knew, which he had Transfigured to be mahogany and considerably cleaner than the standard-issue desk the Ministry had given him. But his legs were crossed and his hands resting in his lap, signals of relaxation for him. He stared, with an eyebrow raised.
“Don’t really believe what?” Harry tried to remember what they’d been talking about. Some variation of the Gryffindor-Slytherin argument. He hadn’t had his mind on it, but on the report about the Dinsmore case, which was already a week overdue.
“You don’t really believe that having a child in Slytherin would be the end of the world,” Malfoy said. “Even though you just recited that, and all the reasons why.”
Harry blinked. He reckoned he didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. He took one side of the argument and Malfoy took the other. That was the way it always was. Harry hadn’t thought either one of them believed it anymore. It was one of the loads of bollocks they used to pass the time.
But he would sound stupid if he said that—he couldn’t keep up with the quick way Hermione phrased things, or the light, gentle way Ginny did. “How can you tell?” he asked instead.
“By your tone of voice,” Malfoy murmured. “You always sound distant when you don’t believe something.”
Harry eyed him. Malfoy was leaning forwards, one hand on the desk now. He looked as though he was on the point of standing up from the chair, in fact. And that alarmed Harry, because it meant the conversation was about to get serious. He’d been good at avoiding rows with Malfoy so far. He wanted that to continue.
Then Harry realized what he was thinking, and frowned. Idiot. This is the perfect way to make Malfoy stop respecting you and ask for a different partner, and you’re letting it go to waste.
“Well, actually,” Harry said, “I would rather that my children be in Gryffindor than Slytherin. It would mean less teasing for them and less bad perceptions of them in the future. I wouldn’t stop loving them if they were Slytherins, but that’s different.” He paused, because Malfoy hadn’t responded, and then added, “Not to mention all the bad habits, like lying, they’d pick up in Slytherin.”
Malfoy didn’t exclaim, or roll his eyes, or freeze his face into the mask of disgust that Harry had seen there whenever he had to speak to Ron or Ginny. He gave a faint, very cool smile, the kind Harry had learned to look forwards to seeing at the end of a case. “You don’t believe that, either,” he said. “Learning to read you is very useful, Potter.”
There was a long, moronic moment when Harry sat there gaping and found himself drawn into Malfoy’s eyes. Grey, yes, and cold, yes; that was what Ginny always complained about when she saw him. But they were more than that. They had a clarity at the bottom of them that—
You never think about Ginny’s eyes that way.
Horrified, Harry stood up and turned his back on Malfoy. He cleared his throat several times and then said, “All right, so I don’t, really. Two of the bravest people I ever knew were Slytherins, and one could have passed for one.”
There was a long silence. Harry thought Malfoy would let him get back to the report, and started to sit down again.
“Their names.” Malfoy sounded almost dreamy, almost content, as though he was making a request for Harry to pass the salt, or open a door, or something else that didn’t really matter.
“Snape.” Harry tried to make his voice sarcastic, tried to imply that Malfoy of course should have known that, because too late, he had seen what Malfoy had trapped him into. “And Dumbledore’s the one who could have passed for Slytherin, with all his plots and plans.”
“The third name,” Malfoy whispered.
And suddenly everything was tense and important.
Harry swallowed and decided that he would turn around and look Malfoy in the eye. He deserved no less. Anyway, he had to show that this wasn’t important to him, no matter what it looked like, and hope that Malfoy couldn’t read depth of truth in Harry’s voice the way he could read lies.
He turned. Malfoy stood with both hands on the desk now, his body bent into an arch with Harry as its focal point.
His gaze took Harry’s breath away.
“You, of course.” Harry tried to snort. Tried to smile. Tried to sound as though nothing was so tiresome as having to admit that Malfoy was brave. It didn’t work, and so, desperate, he dropped all the tricks and went straight for the plain truth, hoping to make Malfoy uncomfortable.
“After all I did,” Malfoy asked, “you don’t think I’m a coward?”
How did it come to this, that Draco Malfoy is asking me for reassurance? But the thought skittered across Harry’s mind and dropped off again like a bug on the surface of water. Things were the way he were, and it was hardly surprising that Malfoy would end up asking him, when they were—
Going towards something. It was the first time Harry had acknowledged it to himself. He didn’t know what the destination was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But it was there.
“Are you kidding?” Harry’s voice was shaky. He would have liked to look aside, but Malfoy’s wide, appealing gaze wouldn’t let him. “Of course you are. You did the best you could for your parents in sixth year. You stood up for me when I was brought to your house in that stupid disguise, even though you knew Voldemort would punish you if he found out you lied. You came into the Room of Requirement to hunt me down—”
“That wasn’t brave,” Malfoy interrupted. “I was terrified of the Dark Lord.”
“But you were afraid of me,” Harry said simply. “And afraid for your parents, again. Instead of cowering somewhere, though, like so many people did in the battle, you tried to do something about it.” It was a little easier to stand there and return Malfoy’s glance, now. “And you still wanted to take me alive instead of killing me. I’d argue that shows a little ambivalence on your part.”
Malfoy bowed his head. Harry admired the way his pale hair shaded his face, and waited for him to speak.
“Thank you,” Malfoy said. He raised his head partway, every movement grinding as if his neck was a creaking clock, and then stared past Harry. “Even then, I think I cared about what you thought of me. And I didn’t want you to die.”
There was silence. There was stillness. Harry knew he could end it by turning back to his desk.
Harry reached across the distance and touched Malfoy on the shoulder.
Malfoy looked up with a flash in his eyes like fire. Harry avoided him in turn, sitting down and going back to work on the report.
But maybe he had learned something about Malfoy, in turn. From then on, he found out, he could tell when Malfoy was looking at him.
*
“Down!”
Harry dived. He heard the whoosh of a spell pass over him, and then the sound of stone cracking as it hit the floor behind him.
He didn’t know what it had been, and he didn’t need to, although from the smell of electricity in his nostrils, he thought he could guess. He was already on his feet and shoving his way forwards against the offensive spells that hung in the air like a black haze, in search of Malfoy, who he could hear but not see.
It was one of those situations that ought to have been utterly routine and had turned out not to be. He and Malfoy had narrowed the investigation into an organized ring of wizards using the Imperius Curse on Muggles down to several suspects, and had gone to visit the first one at his home. Reports from friends and neighbors had said that he was calm and would be glad to speak with Aurors (none of them believed that he had done anything so horrible, of course).
Instead, he had met them with a spell that clipped Malfoy’s ear and then dashed into the depths of his house. They had followed, of course, only to find that he had trigged wards of some kind that filled the house with murk and made it hard to hear or smell anything more than a few feet away.
Malfoy was always accusing Harry of wanting to be a hero and live up to the hero stereotype, but he was the one who had run after Sover, the suspect, like a madman, without waiting for backup. Harry was going to remind him of that later.
Assuming there was a later.
Harry swore under his breath and pushed cautiously on. He had already slammed his shins on concealed chairs and tables, and he had cast a variation on a Bubble-Head Charm around himself to filter the air, because he didn’t know what breathing too much of it might do to him. It didn’t encircle his head as tightly as a normal one, though, because he wanted to be able to hear.
It had gone entirely silent now. Harry hated that. He ought to be able to hear Sower escaping if he was, or sounds of a duel if Malfoy hadn’t been incapacitated.
Then he broke through a barrier that fizzed and snarled in his ears, and the reason for the lack of sound became obvious. Sower had had yet another ward up, and beyond it, in a large room that probably served as a drawing room ordinarily, was the battle.
Malfoy spun and leaped, closing in steadily on Sower, who was hiding behind a barrier of chairs and firing around the edge. He had already used spells that left the carpet scorched and stinking around Malfoy’s feet, Harry saw. He used the Rearrangement Curse as Harry watched, which, contrary to its innocent name, would switch around the position of internal organs until it was unlikely that the person it hit would survive.
Harry yelped a warning, and Malfoy clasped his arms to his sides and dove straight down, so as to expose the smallest part of his body to the magic. At the same moment, Sower cast the Rearrangement Curse again.
This time at Malfoy, lying on the floor.
Harry raised a Flexible Shield without thinking. It was a spell he had never been any good at, because it was more difficult than a Shield Charm while using almost the same gesture, but it was the one that he needed in this situation, where the Rearrangement Curse was too powerful for a simple Protego.
He needed it, and the magic came in his need, creating what looked like a silvery mesh in front of Malfoy, hovering at hip height. The Rearrangement Curse struck it, and the Flexible Shield wrapped around it and absorbed its force. The shield was gone in the next moment, but so was the curse.
By then, Malfoy had cast from the ground and caught Sower as he leaned around his barrier, his mouth open in a soundless shriek. He flipped over twice and landed against the wall, caught up in ropes that looked subtly different from the ones that Incarcerous usually created.
Harry wasn’t going to trouble himself about that. He threw a Stunner at Sower and crouched next to Malfoy, who was rising to his knees, moving with a wince and a grimace.
“Malfoy?” Harry whispered. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Malfoy said, giving Harry an odd look that he couldn’t interpret. “He broke a bone in my foot. That’s all.” He examined the bound and unconscious Sower, then nodded and Summoned his wand. “Nasty little git.”
“That’s all?” Harry discovered his hands were shaking. He would have liked to try healing Malfoy himself, but he was still pants at complex healing magic. That was what St. Mungo’s was for. “How in the world were you walking?” He gathered Malfoy up in his arms and surged to his feet with him. Malfoy gasped, face going white, and Harry snarled at him and immobilized his foot. “Idiot.”
“I wanted to stop him.” Malfoy gave Harry that odd look again. “How did you stop that second curse?”
“Flexible Shield,” Harry said shortly, more interested in returning to the notion of how Malfoy was an idiot. “Do you realize you dashed off just like you’re always telling me not to do?”
“But you can’t cast those.” Malfoy steadied himself with a hand on Harry’s shoulder, seeming more shocked about the revelation than he was in pain from his injury.
“I managed this time,” Harry said. “It was the Rearrangement Curse, and you were on the ground. You couldn’t get out of the way in time. I knew the Shield Charm wouldn’t do it. I did what I needed to do.”
“Why did you need to so badly?” Malfoy leaned against him and gave a little hop. Harry snorted and conjured a stretcher for him, but jerked Sower into the air unpityingly with Mobilicorpus. He could suffer whatever wounds he took from this, the—
There was no word in Harry’s vocabulary bad enough for someone who would aim two Rearrangement Curses at his partner, so he just let the thought trail away, unfinished.
“Because you were in danger,” he said. “Why else?”
Malfoy’s eyes widened once, and he looked away. Harry waited, then asked, “Are you telling me that you would do less if I was in danger like that?” He didn’t know what he would do if the answer to his question was yes, but he did think that he needed to hear, no matter what.
“It’s not that,” Malfoy said. “Of course I would.” Harry felt tension relax in him like an uncoiling spring. “But I don’t regularly surpass my physical and magical limits to save you. Instead, you keep saving me.”
There was a resentment there that Harry knew could turn to bitterness if left untouched. He said, lightly—because too much care would also offend Draco—“Well, you’re the one who consistently comes up with clever solutions to our difficulties. I couldn’t have managed against the poisoner without you. And you kept Sower pinned until I could arrive. You’re going to end up saving my life soon. It’s the luck of the draw that it’s happened the other way so far.”
“I owe you so many life-debts,” Draco muttered, lying down on the stretcher Harry had conjured for him without any reluctance. He never showed any where his own comfort and life were concerned. Harry was grateful for that.
“And I owe you one for ‘failing’ to recognize me at Malfoy Manor, and I owe your mother one for lying to Voldemort about me,” Harry said. “I don’t brood on them.”
Draco swallowed once, then asked, “Could you please not use that name around me? I know you don’t mean to, but it sounds—it sounds like you’re mocking the fear I still feel.”
Harry blinked, hardly able to grasp what kind of gift Draco was offering him with this double vulnerability—talking about the fear in the first place, and then asking him for something—but he said, “Of course.”
Draco caught his wrist in a bruising grip and squeezed down, once, then pulled his hand back and closed his eyes as he settled against the pillow the stretcher spell automatically provided.
Weeks later, Harry was still trying to understand that gift, and why it had been so easy to transition to calling Malfoy by his first name, even before he gave it.
*
Harry wished he hadn’t come to this party.
Ginny had said it would be fun, and for her, it was; she was chattering easily with her partner, Anna Lebeck, whom she had taken to after all. Harry was glad they had become friends. She still asked when he would manage to switch out of his partnership with Draco and join her, but her questions were less persistent and frequent now.
Ron was there, with his partner Greyborn, and Hermione was there (largely to make sure that Ron went home on time and didn’t drink too much, Harry suspected). There were plenty of other former trainees, too. This wasn’t a Ministry function so much as an informal party suggested and hosted by new Aurors, which happened to be using the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as its place.
There were tables everywhere loaded with food, games of darts and wrestling and mock duels, dances up and down the narrow aisles between cubicles and the corridors between office doors, and plenty to drink. Harry wouldn’t have had trouble finding something to do if he wanted it.
Instead, he stood against the wall and watched Draco.
Draco was talking softly to a young woman named Astoria Greengrass, who Harry thought had come as a guest of one of the other trainees. All he really knew was that she hadn’t been through the training program.
Oh, and that she was beautiful, with long blonde hair and shimmering ivory skin of the kind that Harry knew he never would have achieved even if he had lived as pampered a life as Draco apparently had.
He knew that.
Harry turned away with his butterbeer—he didn’t think it would be a good idea to get too drunk tonight—and his grudge. It wasn’t worthy, what passed through him like a shudder when he looked at Draco. It was too near jealousy, so near that Harry couldn’t give it a different name in all honesty, and he should feel jealous over Ginny and the people she chose to speak to, not Draco. Several handsome men clustered around Ginny, after all, including Ron’s partner, who watched her with big calf eyes.
Think about your wife, Harry thought, tilting the butterbeer back and drizzling a long, warm stream down his throat. There’s no reason to think about Draco that way. Or anyone except Ginny.
There definitely wasn’t. His breathing got short when he thought about Draco kissing Greengrass, and he had to wipe off sweat, and he felt as if he were choking on oil. Those were all the signs of passionate jealousy he had read about.
Except that he didn’t get jealous of people like that. He knew that he didn’t. He was incapable of feeling passion.
He took another swallow of butterbeer and hunched back against the wall. He fastened his gaze on Ron, who was laughing at something Hermione had said, and thought about making his way over to join them.
But then he wouldn’t be able to see Draco as well, wouldn’t be able to notice if he slipped off somewhere with Greengrass.
That’s all the more reason to do it, he argued with himself, and walked over to his friends.
Their conversation rolled over him, meaningless, irrelevant. Harry stood there, smiled when he was required to and laughed when he thought it was appropriate, and felt as though he had a fishhook in his heart.
It made no sense. Why would he be feeling this now, for Draco of all people? He had tried thinking about blokes before, fantasizing about them, even dating them in a Polyjuice disguise. He knew he wasn’t bent.
Any more than you’re straight.
Harry checked over his shoulder again, and found that Draco and Greengrass were both gone.
Everyone said it was a strange accident, later, the way that Ron’s Firewhisky glass had splintered apart in his hand just as he was taking a drink, sending burning liquid and hot, sharp glass everywhere. Harry scrambled to clean up with the rest, but didn’t apologize, because then Hermione and Ron would want to know what could have caused him enough anger to lash out with directionless wandless magic.
He wasn’t ready to explain.
He wasn’t ready to acknowledge, even to himself, what had happened, keeping it locked in his heart like a hot stone, until after he had gone home with Ginny and made mild, passionless love to her. Ginny fell asleep with a happy smile on her face, and Harry rolled away from her.
He was hard again already, thinking about Draco’s courage, his intense stares and fleeting touches, the standoffish way he had of somehow making himself essential to Harry’s life.
He wanked, for the first time rubbing himself raw, and for the first time came with a cry that would have shattered the stillness except that he kept it back with his wrist across his mouth—that was one of the things Ginny complained about, that he made so little sound during sex—and a tightness, flooding out in hot, sticky relief, in his belly that showed him why so many people thought orgasm was wonderful.
Then he lay awake and, staring at the ceiling, unwrapped the hot stone: he was in love with Draco Malfoy.
But it’s all right, he assured himself swiftly, while his lips tingled with shame and his hands with numbness and his eyes with tears. It’s really all right, because nothing can happen. I have Ginny, and it looks like he’ll have someone else, and we both know that we’re not that to each other. We’re partners. He’s straight. He’ll never look at me twice. He has no reason to do so, because even if it turns out that I can fall in love with people after all—if it’s love and not just a stupid infatuation, which it probably is—I can’t act on it. I can’t betray Ginny like that.
And he’ll never find out. I’ll make sure of that.
He hated himself through most of the night, but come morning, he had made his peace with the fact. Being in love with Draco was all right, because nothing would ever happen between them because of it and no one would ever know.
Ginny’s words came back to him, the ones he had overheard in the kitchen with Hermione, saying that some people just fell in love once and no more.
Harry suspected he was one of those people, and that’s why he hadn’t felt any passion so far.
He just wished he had fallen in love with his wife.
*
That was the second step.
