[July Celebration fics]: Partners Unpartnered, Harry/Draco, R, 2/3

[lomonaaeren]

Part One.

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“But you’re sure you’re all right.”

Ron leaned back in his chair behind his desk and gave Harry a sweet smile. “I know that I’m perfectly all right to hit you as hard as I can if you ask me that one more time.”

Harry smiled in spite of himself, and leaned back in his own chair, tipping it so that he could rest his feet on the desk. He had cleared it of paperwork, for once, because he hadn’t had much else to do while Ron was in hospital, and his restless energy had needed an outlet.

One that didn’t come from intense sparring sessions with Malfoy. Sure, that had been wonderful and exactly what he needed at the time, to fight someone who was his equal and would fight back, which the wall wouldn’t, but he couldn’t count on that every time. Even if he had secretly looked over his shoulder for Malfoy each time he went into the sparring room after that.

“Someone told me that you’d been spending a bit of time with Malfoy,” Ron said abruptly. He had his head bowed as though the reports that had piled up during his absence were fascinating, but Harry knew him, and could see the way that Ron’s cheeks puffed out and his hands tightened on the paper in front of him. “While I was in hospital, I mean. Is he thinking he could take my place?”

Harry laughed outright. “You think Malfoy will ever be my best friend? Not likely, Ron. How many times have you saved my life by now? How many things have we shared? Malfoy and I are barely polite to each other even if we did save each other’s lives. My friend isn’t going to be someone I can barely exchange a single civil word with.”

Ron flushed and looked down, not really able to hide the pleasure that glinted in his eyes. Then he cleared his throat. “That’s not what I meant. Someone said…I mean, there were a few things you said, too, that made me think you might want him as your partner instead of me.”

Harry stared at him, then shook his head. He thought of the way Malfoy had come to him in the sparring room, and the looks that he sometimes gave Harry now, as if he still couldn’t believe that someone who would stand up for him existed. He thought of the way that Malfoy had nodded at him when he went to get tea that morning, his face briefly reflecting amusement. Harry had put it down to buttoning his robes wrong again, which always happened.

“No,” he said at last. “No, Ron, I don’t think so. It’s-maybe we’re getting a little more friendly, but I think I still mostly amuse him.”

“Do you?”

Harry started and looked up. Malfoy was leaning against the doorframe of the office, considering Harry with his eyes large and stormy and his arms folded so tightly that Harry could make out the muscles of his chest pulled into tight definition. There was no reason for him to be staring at that, though, and less reason for the tightness in his throat, so he looked up at Malfoy and raised his eyebrows instead.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Aren’t you the only one who can answer the question of whether I amuse you? Since you’re the only one who knows what goes on in your head.” He strove for a light tone, but he felt his skin pulling taut on the back of his neck nonetheless. Other than the times that one of them had helped the other in front of witnesses-and that when they were just as focused on the people attacking as on each other-this was the first time one of their little confrontations had happened with someone else in the room.

And it was strange. Not necessarily a bad kind of strange, but still, strange, in a way that made Harry shift from side to side and only stop when Ron cleared his throat behind him and Malfoy’s gaze sharpened still more.

“You don’t,” Malfoy said. “Except in the way that everyone does, because there are certain things that one can’t help but find amusing.” He raised a brow, but didn’t look away from Harry as he added, “Don’t you agree, Weasley?”

Harry felt his throat drying out. He told himself it was only because he was thinking of a duel between Ron and Malfoy and how he would break it up, and how he didn’t want the responsibility.

He knew he was a liar.

“I don’t really know, Malfoy,” Ron said, his voice deepening into a rumble. “I don’t think we’re likely to find the same things amusing.”

“Oh, that doesn’t strike me as true,” Malfoy said, finally sweeping his face away from Harry’s, and his eyes locked on Ron’s with much the same intensity. Yes, it’s the same, Harry told himself, and didn’t fan his face, because that was stupid. “When it comes to Harry, I think what we think is amusing might be the same thing.”

“Harry?” said Ron. Harry nearly repeated the word after him, but told himself that would look stupid and managed to keep it in by biting his lip. “Of course, if you want to take my place as his friend, you would say that-” He started to get up, despite the way that his legs swayed beneath him.

Harry turned and put his body in between them both. If he had to give his opinion on a fight between Malfoy and Ron right now, his opinion was that he would prefer it not to happen.

Malfoy caught his eye for a moment and gave him a funny smile. Then he said, “I’m perfectly in the right to call him what I want provided that I’m respectful, Auror Weasley,” and he turned away with an extra swagger to his step. Harry blinked, wondering if it was because he had irritated Ron or because he had been able to see Harry…

And wondering why he was wondering.

“Why did you let him get away with that, mate?” Ron groaned, and dropped into his chair. “I nearly had him, you know. If he’d tried to thump me, I would have thumped him!”

Harry turned and looked at Ron until Ron cleared his throat and had the sense to look embarrassed. “You’re still trembling from the hex you took,” Harry pointed out. “Anyway, this is the way it works. Malfoy’s decided that he wants to be a little friendlier to me. Fine. As long as he doesn’t hurt me, then it’s fine. And you know that he never was any good at long-range planning.” He sort of hoped that Malfoy was lingering nearby to listen to that. “All his plans at Hogwarts when he tried to get me in trouble sucked. And look at the incompetent way he tried to kill Dumbledore. If I start choking on poisoned ale, then you have my permission to thump him, all right?”

“It wasn’t incompetent as a way of killing me,” Ron muttered, but sighed when he saw Harry’s glare. “Fine, mate. I just don’t know why you put up with him even this much.”

“Because,” Harry said, his eyes going back to the definitely empty doorway and the corridor behind it that might not be so definitely empty, “I want to.”

*

“What do you want with the Wizarding World’s Savior, anyway?”

Draco snorted. He had expected a question like that before now, from Pollinac or one of the other incompetent Aurors who didn’t see him as one of them-well, maybe not from Pollinac, who was keeping a wary distance from Draco since Potter had attacked him-but it had come from Theo instead.

Draco looked up across their twin desks and at Theo, who was peering at him hostilely around the nearest stack of paperwork. Paperwork was always stacked there. Theo was no better about completing it to deadline than he had been about completing Hogwarts essays. “You sound like a Daily Prophet reporter,” Draco said mildly. “Changing careers on me, partner?”

Theo scowled and looked at his hands. Draco concealed a sigh. It had all seemed like the perfect plan, years ago, before he knew how cowardly Theo was. Partner with the only other Slytherin to become an Auror. Have someone at his back who understood what he had been through and wouldn’t hex him. Those people were in remarkably short supply among their class of trainees.

And if Theo had cheated on a few of the exams to get through, well, so what? Draco had done the same. It was all people expected of him, and he did so like obeying expectations when they put him at an advantage. And he knew that he would stand up to the real test in the field, which was all that mattered.

Theo, though…well, he couldn’t. But he remained the only other Slytherin in the Aurors, and it was workable. So Draco stayed.

“I just want to know why you’re spending so much time hanging around Harry bloody Potter lately,” Theo muttered. “Because word’s spreading that you’re looking to assassinate him, and I’m not going to be party to that, okay? I’ve barely built my reputation back since the war.”

Draco snorted. “Why would I want to kill someone who actually stands up for me?”

“Because it insults your pride?”

Draco paused. That actually wasn’t a bad guess. But pride was so far from the feelings that ran through him when he looked at Potter that he had to think about it for, he knew, longer than he should have paused. Theo was staring at him.

“It would have insulted my pride, when I was younger and more stupid,” Draco said thoughtfully, leaning back against his chair and letting it swivel beneath him. That was the one thing he liked about the standard Auror furniture, the chairs that rolled and turned the way you wanted them to, without the aid of charms. Theo had whispered that they were adapted from Muggle designs, but Draco didn’t care. “Now, no. If it helps me survive and keep my job when certain people around me want me to lose it-”

“I never said I did!”

Draco eyed him sideways. “I wasn’t talking about you, Theodore. I was talking about the people who still think that Slytherins can’t do anything worthwhile.”

“Oh, right.” Theo nodded. “Those bastards. I hate them.”

Draco concealed a sigh and went on. “It’s nice to know that someone doesn’t mind if I’m there, and will defend me to others. It’s nice to have someone at my back I can trust who isn’t just my partner.”

He remembered the look in Potter’s eyes when Draco had stood in his office doorway, considering him, and gave a lazy smile despite himself. Yes, that had been delicious, more than he had thought it would be.

“But you’re not going to do any more of it?” Theo asked. “I mean, you’ll stay away from him unless he actually saves your life again? All the debts are paid?”

Draco looked up. “He didn’t actually save my life,” he pointed out. “It was the other way around. These other times, he was standing up for me or refusing to let someone else insult me. And I’ll react to that the way I like, Theo. Unless you’re saying that I shouldn’t?” He let his voice fall and his hand drift towards his wand.

Theo winced. “No. No, I didn’t mean anything like that. I’m sorry.”

Draco sniffed and closed his eyes, deciding that he had other things to think about than Theo for right now. What Harry Potter would look like if Draco could get him alone and stare at him the way he had in the office, for instance, until Potter was red and spluttering and took some mad action to stop the staring.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be thinking about that. But as long as it doesn’t interfere with my job, I see nothing wrong with it.

*

Harry hesitated as he passed the door of Malfoy and Nott’s office. It was open, and a steady stream of cursing came out of it, in a voice that Harry thought he would know now down to the depth of his bones.

It was probably nothing, he told himself. If he could recognize that voice, then he could also recognize the emotions in it, and Malfoy just sounded frustrated. Nothing more. Not angry, or hurt, or scared.

But he put his head around the door and knocked anyway.

Malfoy looked up. His face was bright pink, probably the closest it could get to red, and his hair hung around his ears in disarray, reminding Harry for a horrible moment of the way Bellatrix had looked. Then he shifted and held up a sheet of parchment in front of him, waving it around, and the resemblance vanished. Harry relaxed and smiled at him.

“What is it?” he asked, and although he didn’t think his voice sounded perfectly sympathetic, Malfoy used it as a springboard into his rant anyway.

“Fucking Nott,” he snarled. “He was supposed to sign this bloody thing this morning so it could go on Shacklebolt’s desk by noon, and he’s nowhere to be found! Not to mention that his half was riddled with errors that he never checks, so I had to fix all of them! Who spells ‘hideous’ wrong every single time? I ask you.”

Harry started to open his mouth to ask if it was such a big deal if the report wasn’t on Kingsley’s desk by noon, and then winced and shut his mouth again. Yes, it was. Even he could see that, if he thought about it long enough. Kingsley kept a closer eye on those Aurors who had been prominent during the war, and closest of all on the one with a Dark Mark on his arm. Something that wouldn’t matter for Harry or Ron or half a dozen other Aurors would be another mark on the record against Malfoy.

“Is his signature the only thing you need?” he asked.

Malfoy snapped his open mouth shut again and stared at Harry for a few seconds. Then he leaned back in his chair and gave a cool little smile. “What, is Powerful Potter here to save me from the curse of an incompetent partner?” he asked. “Sweet of you, Potter, but short of dragging Nott back here from the Azores, where he appears to have gone, there’s nothing you can do.”

“There is so,” Harry said, and drew his wand. He didn’t miss the way Malfoy tensed, but then, the last time he had seen Harry with it out was during their mock duel, which felt less mock to Harry every time he thought about it. He ignored the flinch the way he had ignored the taunts, and asked, “How does Nott usually sign his name? Legible, illegible? With his full first name, or as Theo?”

“I’ll show you,” Malfoy said abruptly, and pulled a sheaf of parchments out of a neat drawer. He fanned them out before Harry, and Harry bent down, blinking a few times as he studied the scrawl, neat on the first name-yes, the full Theodore-and then narrowing down to an illegible point on the last “t.”

“Got it,” Harry said, and turned to face the report that Malfoy was agonizing over. “Where was he supposed to sign?”

Malfoy stared up at him with his lips slightly parted, and Harry found himself gazing back in a way that even he knew was more intense than it should have been. Harry smiled slightly. “Trust me?” he whispered.

Malfoy swallowed, didn’t say anything, licked his lips, nodded.

Harry nodded back, and then swirled his wand over and down in the motion that Hermione had spent such a long time teaching him, and only after they were out of Hogwarts and she was assured that he wouldn’t copy homework anymore. “Scriptionem creo!”

The parchment beneath his wand flashed, and so did the original parchment with Nott’s signature. In seconds, ink flowed out of Harry’s wand and splashed over the place where Nott was supposed to sign like a paintbrush guided by an artist, reforming and copying the letters down to the last flourish.

Harry relaxed his concentration only when he was sure that the signature was perfect. It wasn’t a particularly challenging spell, but it took a lot of focus, since it drew on the caster’s own memory of the signature, and an imperfect memory would result in an imperfect copy.

“There you go,” he started to say, glancing up.

Malfoy’s gaze was locked on his face with the muscles tight around the eyelids, and Harry started to freeze, wondering if Malfoy suspected-what? That Harry had done this to copy Ron’s signature several times, that Harry might use this to forge something against him, that maybe Harry was getting away with stealing money from the Ministry?

Instead, Malfoy said, “This wasn’t a life or death situation. It wasn’t even a situation where someone insulted me. It was just a situation where I was annoyed.” He sounded as if he was talking to himself.

“Right,” Harry said tentatively.

Malfoy stood up and circled the desk. Harry told himself not to raise his wand, because if Malfoy could trust Harry to point his wand in more or less his general direction and not curse him, Harry should be able to trust an unarmed Malfoy.

Instead, Malfoy’s hand encircled his wrist and rubbed his fingers up and down the pulse. “You did this to help me,” he said. “Not because it could possibly make you look like a hero.”

“I did it for the same reason the other times, too,” Harry snapped, and started to pull away.

Malfoy retained his hand with such an easy, natural gesture that Harry found himself unable to resent it, and settled for looking at him instead, watching as Malfoy brought the hand to his mouth. Harry flushed, but instead of kissing the back, Malfoy ran his tongue lazily along Harry’s knuckles, watching him all the while.

Harry had to close his eyes for a moment.

“Good,” Malfoy said, his voice light and quiet.

*

Draco stepped into Potter’s office. He had reason to believe that Potter was in and Weasley out, or he would have carried on walking past.

But Weasley was the only one in, and before Draco could speak, he was on his feet with a wand pointing in Draco’s general direction. Draco watched it, and confined his breathing to the same easy pace that he had used when he first came in. The last thing he intended to do, in any world they lived in, was to show Weasley that he was afraid of him.

“You came here looking for Harry, didn’t you.” Weasley didn’t make it a question. He moved around to the side of his desk, and then stopped there. Draco didn’t smile because that wouldn’t be wise, but it did seem as though Weasley was afraid to approach him. He watched the blood traitor’s eyes and wand and hands, and said nothing.

“You’re always after him now,” Weasley said, too softly for anyone walking or waiting in the corridor to overhear them. “Don’t think that I can’t see what you’re doing. You’re waiting for him to venture too far, and then you’ll convince him that he’s in love with you and you’ll take over his life. Well, I won’t allow that. You’re not going to reject him, abandon him, leave him pining.”

Draco snorted in spite of himself then, and Weasley’s eyes fixed on him. Draco shook his head. “If you think Potter is capable of pining, then you don’t really know him.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t,” Weasley said, looking more than a little relieved that Draco was speaking to him, as if that somehow made things better. “You’re the one who doesn’t know the way he pined over Ginny, when he found out they wouldn’t get married.”

Draco smiled lazily at him. “That was what he did then, when you knew him, when he was first your partner. Now? Do you think that you know him as well as I do?”

“Draco.”

The word went through Draco like a thrown spear. He had been waiting for Potter to say that to him, and he wished it hadn’t happened in front of Weasley. He turned around and met Potter’s eyes for a few moments, silent, absorbing, drinking, and watching the way that Potter looked from him to Weasley with a faint frown, as though wondering why they were in the same room together.

Then Draco nodded and said, “I came to bring you news. That prat Tusker’s had it out for you ever since you attacked Pollinac. Now he’s planning to set up a trap for you.” He reached into his pocket, aware of the way that Weasley’s wand behind him wavered and then pointed, and that Potter watched his face more than his hand. “He’ll leak a few secrets about the Department’s recent cases to the press, and the note he’s planning to send is in your handwriting. This is a copy.”

“A copy?” Weasley burst out. “Why didn’t you bring the original, you bastard? Assuming any of this is true?”

“Tusker would have known it was gone.” Potter was the one who spoke, although his mind resonated so much in tune with Draco’s that they were nearly the same words he would have chosen. “And this way, Draco is leaving it up to me to choose what I want to do with the information, rather than making the decision for me. Isn’t that right?” He looked at Draco with calm, patient eyes, and stepped forwards, reaching out for the parchment.

“Yes,” Draco said. “That’s the way it is.” He brushed the last two fingers of his hand along Potter’s palm as he handed the note over. Potter stiffened a little, and his nostrils flared. He couldn’t keep himself away from the glance that he cast down Draco’s body, and Draco wouldn’t have wanted him to. He smiled lazily and moved for the door.

“How can you know that he didn’t write it himself, Harry?” Weasley asked. “Since the charm copies your handwriting anyway.”

“I know it,” Potter said, and Draco turned his head for a glimpse of him reading the parchment, because that was what he wanted, and he doubted that Potter would begrudge him that.

Weasley was meeting his eyes with a literal snarl on his face, though, and Draco decided that he didn’t want his glimpses ruined by sights like that. He gave a fastidious shudder and passed through their office door, back out into the corridor.

He had done his good deed for the day. As Potter had said, what he did with the information was up to him.

*

Kingsley was the one who had sent out the Patronus to summon Draco. Now Draco walked into the courtroom with his head up and his shoulders back, his robes flowing gracefully around him, the silver lynx pacing in front of him. It was easy, Harry thought, to miss the signs of nervousness if you didn’t look for them: the fixed nature of his smile, for example, or the way that Draco took a seat on the very edge of the witness’s chair.

“At ease, Auror Malfoy,” Kingsley said, although he still frowned at him. “We brought you here to question you about the part Auror Potter says you played in his accusations against Auror Tusker.” Tusker scowled from the far side of the courtroom; his face was bristly and jowly, suitable to his name. “What I want to know is if you’re willing to testify.”

Draco’s head rose a little, and his hands splayed across his lap, fingers loose and shining. Harry tried not to picture those fingers on his body, because it would cause him to pay too little attention to what anyone was saying. “Yes,” Draco said.

Kingsley had opened his mouth to continue explaining exactly what Tusker had accused Harry of, but now he shut it and stared at Draco. “That’s a very quick agreement, Auror Malfoy,” he said at last, voice heavy, “when you don’t know what you’re promising.”

“I know who Auror Tusker is,” Draco said, and his eyes darted across the room. “And I know who Auror Potter is.” He turned back to Harry, his face relaxing in all the right ways to make Harry want to shift and clear his throat. “And I think I know what this is about.”

Kingsley blinked. Harry realized suddenly that he had never thought Harry’s accusations against Tusker would come to anything, that he had been sure Harry was lying from the beginning about the parchment Draco had brought him with the Department secrets on it.

Then why grant me the trial? Harry thought, but followed that up with the answer a moment later. Because I’m Harry, that’s why.

He stifled his sigh, and waited for Kingsley to catch his breath and resume his place in the trial proceedings. Kingsley shuffled his papers and his feet and finally said, “Ahem. Yes. So. It is Auror Potter’s claim that you brought him a piece of parchment with his own handwriting on it, but claimed that Auror Tusker had actually written it. Can you tell us the contents of that piece of parchment?”

“Yes, sir,” Draco said, sitting up and smiling at Harry for a whole second before he turned back to Kingsley. “It concerned the placement of the Department’s new wards around the holding cells, and which particular criminals we intended to go after next. Do you want me to recite their names?”

Kingsley paused again. Then he said, “Yes, Auror Malfoy.”

Still testing, Harry thought, and kept himself from touching his wand with an effort. Always testing, always making sure that Draco is who he is says he is and that he’s not a Death Eater, even though he should bloody well know that by now. Draco’s not going to make the kind of mistakes that get him caught and sacked. Even if he does think that he would, Kingsley is looking all the wrong places.

Draco tilted his head, and Harry dared to hope that he might have caught the edge of that thought, despite telepathy not being real. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Charles Lincoln, who calls himself the Salsford Strangler. Romulus, or the Avenger of Werewolves, if you go by the name that he gives himself. Laurette Giddens, whose crimes are speculative at the moment, but-”

“That will be sufficient,” Kingsley said, as if he wasn’t the one who had asked Draco to demonstrate his knowledge of the names in the first place. He shuffled some more parchments on the table, and then turned to Tusker. “So far, their knowledge of what they claim has happened seems authentic, Auror Tusker. What is your counterclaim?”

Tusker stared at Harry in silence. Harry looked back without comment. Tusker was Pollinac’s partner, and on the one hand, it made sense that he would want to avenge the kind of insult to his partner that Harry had dealt.

On the other, a piece of bigoted shit like Pollinac wasn’t worth defending. And a plan to spread Auror secrets to the press was stupid, no matter what the motive.

After a moment, Tusker swallowed and looked down, and said, “No, sir. It was-the way they said it was.”

“It was?” Harry sincerely hoped that Kingsley’s incredulity came from the fact that Tusker was admitting it instead of trying to come up with a lie, and not from the fact that what Harry and Draco said might be true.

Tusker shrugged. He had never been good at making up lies on the spot, which was one reason Harry had demanded formal proceedings for his complaint. “It’s true, sir. Sorry.” He looked up then, and his eyes went straight to Draco. “But we never should have employed someone like him, sir. Never. He corrupts all good Aurors.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” Kingsley said, and it really sounded like he would. He shook his head and turned back to Harry. “Your claim is upheld, Auror Potter, and Auror Tusker will be reprimanded. Thank you for your time and help, Auror Malfoy. Dismissed.”

Harry stood up and nodded to both Tusker and Kingsley, then turned towards the door of the small courtroom where Kingsley always held this kind of thing. He didn’t dare look at Draco. He didn’t think he’d be able to stop.

But Draco followed him, and the hand that touched the middle of his back, then between his shoulder blades, made Harry burn. He swallowed and stepped into the first open room he came to. Luckily, it was an interrogation room not in use at the moment.

Draco followed him, and shut the door.

Harry turned to face him, not at all sure what he would see on Draco’s face, although he could think of all sorts of things he wouldn’t welcome. But Draco was simply watching him with wide-open eyes, which Harry couldn’t help feeling pleased by. He didn’t think he’d ever had so much of Draco’s attention outside a Quidditch game before.

“You know that Shacklebolt despises me,” Draco said.

“And he shouldn’t,” Harry said. “You’re a good Auror, and if you can get past the grudges that prevailed in school, then anyone can. Especially since they like to say that they’re better people than you are anyway.”

Draco gave him a sideways smile and said, “Why would you think I’m a good Auror? I don’t work well enough with my partner to get his signature on vital documents. I could have saved your life because I knew you were the most powerful wizard in the room, and our best hope to survive that battle.”

Harry shook his head. He felt lightly odd, and oddly light, especially in the back of his head. “You also had good enough investigative skills to make a copy of Tusker’s note without him realizing what you were doing, and to find out that he intended to frame me in the first place. You can get along with me, and you’ve managed your partner well so far. And you didn’t get angry when Ron insulted you the other day. That means you can be diplomatic.”

“They might be right anyway,” Draco said thoughtfully.

“Because of your past?” Harry sneered at him and shook his head. “Then I would have to despise myself for using Unforgivable Curses during the war. I don’t. It was what I did at the time, and I wouldn’t do it again, and I’m glad that it’s over, but it doesn’t define me forever, either that guilt or the lack of it.”

“No,” Draco said. “Because of my desires, and some of the things I want.” He stepped nearer and trailed his fingers down Harry’s cheek.

Harry swallowed, tilting his head back to consider Draco, and launched himself out into space. “You never know. Sometimes people want the same things.”

“Not always,” Draco said, and then he bowed his head and kissed Harry, one hand coming to rest in the middle of his back again, the other urging his head further down and up against the wall, until the angle hurt Harry’s neck.

Harry gasped aloud and kissed back, shoving his tongue down and past Draco’s, stroking into his mouth until Draco close-to choked, and stepped back, panting and staring at him. Harry reached up and stroked Draco’s chin, touched with a thin string of saliva.

Draco swallowed, and half-bowed his head, and said, “What I want and what you want aren’t always the same thing. You might be the only one around here who thinks I’m a good Auror.”

“I know,” Harry said. “And I wish they would open their eyes and look. Being a good Auror has to do with good investigative skills and good fighting skills and a devotion to the duty. Someone like Tusker who leaks secrets isn’t a good one, no matter how unmarked his arms are.”

Draco’s eyes flashed open, and Harry wondered, somewhere deep under the surface where Draco wouldn’t see it and hate him for it, how long Draco had been waiting to hear someone say that.

“I-know,” Draco said. “But precious few people do.” He trailed his fingers down the side of Harry’s neck, and then smiled and stepped away from him. “How long can you wait for what you want?”

Harry blinked, then grinned. Draco wanted to play it that way, did he? Well, Harry didn’t exactly blame him. People would be suspicious that Draco had some sort of control over him-hell, they already were-if they slept together too quickly. And the longer they waited, the more chance he had to make people see that Draco was a good Auror, and a good man.

And there was more time for this thrill between them, this burn, this thing like a hot spiderweb tugging tight.

“A bloody long time,” he said, and let his hand brush Draco’s as he moved towards the door. “Just not forever.”

“No one can wait that long,” Draco said, and lingered behind as Harry opened the door, so that no one would see them leaving together.

Harry nodded to him without looking back, and then walked towards his own office, where Ron would be waiting to hear the results of his confrontation with Tusker. His legs felt lighter and more flexible than usual, and he was walking with a strange sway in his step, as though he and Draco had already fucked.

Because that was all Draco was talking about, surely. People would despise him for his desires because they would think that he was corrupting their precious Savior.

But another thought tickled at the back of his mind, another wish for what Draco could want, and it tickled up and down and wouldn’t hush, even though Harry couldn’t have put it into words if he tried.

*

“Imperio.”

The moment he heard the word, or at least the moment between when he heard the word and when his thoughts fled, Draco knew he had made a mistake to underestimate Theo. Someone could be a coward and still take risks, if forced into it or because he thought there was something greater to be gained.

And apparently, facing Draco’s ultimatum that he change his behavior or Draco would find a different partner was one of the two.

Draco stood up when Theo told him to. His mind felt odd, both heavy and bendy at the same time, he thought, like carrying a gallon of water around in his skull. Theo stepped up to him and pushed his wand into his hand.

“I knew this would probably come to it,” Theo whispered. “They’ll ask you questions about why you want to stop being partners with me, and they’ll put you under Veritaserum and ask the questions that you wouldn’t know how to ask, and-oh, I know how it is. They’ll ask you, and you’ll answer, and they’ll know.”

Draco thought, somewhere in the back of his head, behind the water, that Theo must have been doing something else, something that would disturb the Aurors if they found out about it, something that Theo thought he’d noticed little bits of here and there. And now Theo was going to execute him so that Draco couldn’t tell the secrets that he might or might not have known. If Draco had had control of his body, he would have snorted. In some ways, Theo and the Aurors who hated him were on the same side.

“It has to look like an accident,” Theo whispered, backing up and turning his head feverishly around the office. “Where?”

Draco stood there, passive, his mind swimming, and could say nothing, because Theo hadn’t told him to. That turned out to be an asset when the door opened soundlessly behind Theo and Potter stepped through.

Theo hadn’t been a Slytherin or through Auror training for nothing, though. He stiffened, then whipped around and cried out, “Imperio!” again.

The spell hit Potter. Potter smiled, and stepped through it. But the smile was more like a grimace of pure fury when seen close, and Draco found himself glad that he wasn’t Theo as he watched Potter Stun him and lay him down on the floor of the office. It was only too clear that Potter wanted to do other things to Theo, and wasn’t going to allow himself to.

Then Potter came to him and touched Draco’s forehead as he gently whispered, “Finite.”

Draco relaxed, grimacing, and then reached up and curved his hand around Potter’s jaw and kept him there. “How did you know?” he whispered.

Potter waited patiently until Draco had released his jaw before he tried to speak. “You always walk to lunch at this time,” he said. “I needed to speak to you. And then you didn’t come, and I had seen Nott get back a little while ago, and there was that thunderstorm feeling you get in the air when someone does an Unforgivable Curse.” He turned and stared at Nott, and Draco took a firmer, more restraining grip on him.

“You shouldn’t kill him,” he murmured. “And I want to know what you mean by that thunderstorm feeling.”

Potter turned and blinked at him. “You can’t feel it? I can’t believe that. You must. Everyone does. It’s a tightening on your skin and a popping in your eardrums. It makes you feel as if you’re about to go swimming in tar. You have to feel it,” he added, a little uncertainly, when Draco shook his head and stepped closer to him.

“I don’t have to,” Draco whispered in his ear, “to believe that you do. And to thank you for saving me.”

He didn’t kiss Potter, although by the way Potter lifted his head and parted his lips, he seemed to be expecting that. Draco just ran his fingers up and down Potter’s jaw until Potter shifted uncomfortably, and then stepped back and bent down to pick up his wand, which he had dropped earlier. “We’ll need to talk to Shacklebolt,” he said.

Potter grimaced. “And this will only make him think that he was right all along, and Slytherins shouldn’t be Aurors. Fuck.” He glanced at Draco. “This is going to make everything harder for you. I’m sorry.”

“I can endure,” Draco said. “It does mean that I’ll be without a partner for a short time, though, and that’s harder for me. I can make more of a mark when I’m out in the field, earn more people looking at me.”

Potter’s smile was tired, but still reached his eyes. “And that’s what you care about, of course. Stubborn Slytherin.”

“You do understand me,” Draco said, and let some of the real warmth show in his eyes and face.

Potter smiled back, flustered and flushing, and then turned to bend over Theo again. Immediately, he resembled an Auror again, and Draco could have forgotten that he had seen him blush, if he wanted to.

He didn’t want to. He watched Potter’s arse on the leisurely walk to Shacklebolt’s office, and composed, in his head, the words of explanation he would give, and the words of persuasion. Nothing too open at first. Nothing too pressing.

But he would put the words out there, and he would glance at Potter sometimes, and see if he could make him blush. Then he would let Shacklebolt’s suspicions do the rest.

It would take some time. He would have to resign himself to not working in the field until then, he thought, because Shacklebolt’s other suspicions went too far.

But he would have what he was increasingly convinced he wanted, at last.

Part Three.

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