Chapter Text
It turned out you could fall through the magical fake sky outside the Ministry office windows.
Harry learned this first-hand when he was flung through one, shattering the glass and then suspended in some strange, eternal weather event like an all-inclusive meteorological tour of violent earthly delights—wind, rain, snow, sun, sprinkle of glass—smashing into him. A bureaucratic-flavoured apocalypse.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing to happen that day.
—
Just hours before this madness, Harry was staring at a tick going off in Robards’ cheek.
Harry, for not the first time in his strange little life, found himself in audience to the deteriorating sanity of a superior assigned to his person, examining Robards with a kind of clinical curiosity.
He had never got the tick before. Sweat, redness sure, but he had finally crossed a line into madness. That was one for the books. What was next, a full-blown psychotic break?
The man really needed a holiday.
Robards’ stern face, grown old and tired from the punishing sport of baby-sitting adults, surveyed Harry across his desk in the Head Auror’s office.
Harry thought to tell him. You know, he imagined himself advising sagely, stress is a silent killer.
It didn’t really matter. None of this did. Harry knew the lesson from this already, before he had even walked through the door.
He really needed to be more discreet. This time his partner was found gagged and tied up in a ditch at the bottom of a hill after Harry busted a gang of Snatchers in a warehouse nearby.
Bit hasty, really, by his usual standards. Sloppy.
Next time he wouldn’t be caught.
“But I got him! I mean, we got him!” Harry pushed his hair back hotly, sitting so far forward in his chair he was almost out of it. He would make Robards see reason. They were reasonable men. “The Snatcher confessed and everything, and that led to a breakthrough in the case, remember? Once we linked him with his connection in Wales we uncovered a tonne more Snatchers all with networks to this ring and—”
“But—why, god, why,” Robards forced out, pinching his nose, “was he tied up.”
Harry hesitated. Took on a very professional pose, hands clasped.
“Stewart didn’t think this was an avenue worth exploring, and—and he was ready to drop off for the night, but I had a feeling, so,” Harry said very reasonably, “he needed to stay.”
Robards looked at him.
“Stay still,” he finished.
Robards huffed. “Why was he gagged?”
“He was mouthy.”
“Excuse me?”
“He was—protesting,” Harry amended.
Robards surveyed him.
“It was a danger to the security of the case,” Harry added quickly.
His stare was deadly.
“We would have certainly been caught if I hadn’t,” Harry jabbered on. “Sir. I did great!”
“Great, you say. Like the last time you were reassigned, because you and Sterling were doing … what, exactly?” Robards waited with an expectant look.
Harry mumbled something at the carpet.
“What’s that?”
“Dueling each other! Fine! But you have to admit, Sterling was a real killjoy, all that note-taking, he had it coming—I mean, he even admitted he got it easy, being paired up with Harry Potter so he wouldn’t have to pull his weight! I just wanted to get him off his fucking arse—really, he was an embarrassment to the department—”
“And the one before that?”
“Come on! That one’s not fair!” Harry threw his hands up. “Everyone thought Donaldson was a fucking nightmare! Always jumping in wands blazing, turning everything into a fight—I think she just felt sad she missed out on the war, being a bit older, honestly was pathetic if you really think about it, glorifying us as she did—”
“Half the new recruits are fans,” Robards said. “It’s great PR.”
“Of war?!”
“Of you.”
Harry blinked. “Sir. That’s fucked.”
“Potter,” Robards slammed his hands down on the desk. “That’s enough. This is entirely unprofessional. You are an Auror now. It’s a collaborative role. Once is understandable, considering the … circumstances.”
He gestured to Harry vaguely as if the answer lay there for his malfunction.
“Gee, thanks.”
“But going through three partners is problematic, to say the least.”
He had a point. But …
Harry remembered how it had been during the war. When it was life or death you threw everything you had at trying to save those in need. Rules didn’t apply in war, or in the aftermath. He didn’t care what Robards thought of him if innocent people made it out alive.
“It’s downright sloppy work, Potter. Dysfunction from a celebrity doesn’t compute naturally to the public. It looks intentional.”
“It’s not! I’m great at the job, sir, the actual job,” Harry said. “Look at my arrests! Think of all the people I’ve saved!”
Robards gave him a measured look. “Arresting the targets and gathering intelligence doesn’t make you good at your job; it makes you competent at your job, because that’s the job. Working as a team is part of that. If you can’t do that, you don’t belong here.”
Robards pressed his fingertips together in a tense little cage on the desk as he stared Harry down. Harry steeled himself for the blow. “Let me be frank. You get one last chance, Potter. One more partner. If you mess it up again, you’re out.”
—
“Why can’t I just be paired with you?” Harry said moodily, in the cafeteria after his meeting, stabbing at his potatoes. “We work great together.”
Ron raised an eyebrow at him. “No we don’t. I wouldn’t say no to you.”
“Exactly,” Harry said with his mouth full. “We’d be perfect.”
“No, Harry. I’d be compliant. Follow you into trouble again.”
“I thought that’s what made a good team,” said Harry grumpily, spitting bits of potato at him. “We’d get things done at least. Come on, you have to admit, a lot of this is ridiculous paper-pushing. They don’t know what it was really like out there.”
“I’ve been done following your orders since school, mate.”
“Oh.” Harry paused chewing. “Jesus, Ron.”
Ron shrugged good-naturedly. “That’s not how things run around here, if you haven’t noticed.”
Harry had noticed. They signed up together after the war ended while Hermione went back to complete her NEWTs, and spent the next three years in intense training. After busting their arses, they were now officially qualified. Over the last six months, Harry could say he enjoyed the job: it was exciting, fast-paced, thrilling. He was an enthusiastic new recruit, one of the best in the department at defensive magic. It felt like he was doing good and making their world a safer place.
The Auror department mostly got new recruits to clean up the messy little piles the war had left: rogue Snatchers and scattered Death Eaters or accomplices that managed to slip free of the Ministry. It was fun, sometimes, like being in the war again, running around getting the bad guys, tidying up loose ends, with less risk involved.
But it was a lot of—well, not much. Paperwork. Waiting around, gaining clearance. Things tended to take weeks to get approved. Long meetings where no one seemed to be saying anything. Weekly memos informing of departmental change or social announcements. Birthday tea in the cafeteria for someone Harry had been introduced to three times and still couldn’t recall.
Everyone worked like they were just waiting to go home at the day’s end.
Ron had been roping in compliments and attention from the higher-ups since he started, happy with the peace and stability the job provided. He was used to working in tandem with others and bustling around in a group that consisted mainly of Gryffindors, pleased to clock off, either joining the gang at the pub or the Burrow. He was settling into a nice rhythm.
Harry just wanted to get the job done; it wasn’t his fault that things got in the way. More than the job, he wanted to make a difference. Save people’s lives.
Harry was used to ruffling feathers and if there was one thing he knew to be true—that had been proven right in his life time and time again—it was that if the rules don’t work, break them.
Ron chewed thoughtfully and said, “You should work with someone with a firm hand who’s not too scared to tell you to get over yourself.”
“Oi.”
“And who will stop your crazy plans before you jump straight into the firing line.”
“Sounds just peachy. Can’t wait,” Harry said, stabbing one of Ron’s potatoes and shoving it into his mouth.
—
Harry sat waiting for his new partner in what would be their office.
A familiar claustrophobic feeling of confinement set in. An escape plan was already forming in his mind without his consent.
Maybe he could work as a free agent. He’d done it before. Maybe he didn’t need the payroll and the title and the team. He could just lead the charge, find the bad guys—
He took a deep breath, shaking his head quickly. Ron was a bit right: he was taking the piss. This was a Ministry job, it required a bit of decorum. Or something. He had chosen this. Had worked hard to get here. Broken half the bones in his body during training, regurgitated textbooks of knowledge he’d memorised.
It was time to turn a new leaf. He resolved to play the game.
But after some hours passed Harry was seething, checking his scratched watch.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
He jumped out of his chair and went back to Robards’ office.
He knocked on the door once to no answer. He knocked again with some force.
Swearing, Harry stormed through the department, poking his head in offices, but Robards was out, he was repeatedly told. He went back to his office, thinking of shooting Ron a memo asking to knock off early and meet him at the pub. It was the afternoon. His day seemed over anyway. Maybe they had given up on him. Maybe he just hadn’t received the memo yet. This drink could be the beginning of what would eventuate into his send-off party.
Harry opened the door, feeling unnerved, and then halted in the threshold.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.
It was the beginning of the end.
Draco Malfoy. Pale, and in all black, like death himself dragging Harry back into his clutches.
Still pointy as ever, chin kinked defiantly. The same superior tilt built into the set of his body, sitting in a kind of arrogant slouch: one foot up on the desk, shoulder drooped lazily.
“No,” Harry blurted at the chilling sight.
The second his eyes met Harry’s they flashed, and Harry’s nerves shot up, some alarm inside him blaring, gearing for a fight.
“Potter,” he said.
“Auror Potter,” Harry growled.
Malfoy smirked like the devil’s spawn, and it was so familiar something cold ran through Harry, right down to his fingertips.
“I’ll call you whatever the hell I want, sweetheart.”
The same drawl, slightly nasal and completely horrible. It crawled over the back of Harry’s neck like an old nightmare.
Malfoy’s smirk curled, growing, and the vision completed.
Harry’s jaw pulsed. “What the hell are you doing here?! This is—Jesus Christ.”
“Nope, unfortunately still not him. Why don’t you try again, squib?”
Good: enough of the foreplay. Harry got his wand out.
“Oh I get it,” Malfoy continued, undeterred, “you’re God in this scenario. It is your delusion after all. Tell me, has that scar finally cracked your brainless husk of a skull in half? Do you believe you have finally achieved divine status? Maybe try summoning him? I think there’s a parent’s day for the department coming up.”
It was all too much. The ranting, the melodrama, the cruelty. It was too familiar.
Harry gripped his wand tighter and felt fifteen. “Get out of here.”
Malfoy sighed, throwing a second leg up over the other on the desk. Harry bristled.
“I’ve heard you shouting down the house for almost an hour now. Is that how it’s going to be? You always were a headcase.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at him, arms akimbo, wand sticking out, examining. He hadn’t seen Malfoy since the trials almost four years ago. Hadn’t heard a thing about him since. He looked the same as ever, mostly: a bit older, the angularity of his face more pronounced, his pointiness less sharp and more mature. His eyes had lost that haunted look they wore all throughout the war and instead looked at Harry with a kind of careless disdain, like he was a bad stain on his shirt. This was unchanged. If anything, his scathing gaze had concentrated in intensity with time, as if it had been pickling in vinegar.
Knowing Malfoy, he had probably been practicing in a mirror.
Malfoy was giving him the same treatment, looking him up and down. Harry imagined he must look a bit different too, less harrowed than his war years, less smiles than his school ones, but stronger and bigger from years of training.
He even had a running regimen. He owned a house. Two houses.
Taller, too, he thought.
Malfoy sat with an unearned but indisputable adolescent confidence, spidery limbs spread everywhere, as if this were just another time his team had booked the Quidditch pitch from under the Gryffindor team. But—
Harry’s instincts kicked in.
There was something off about it all. Perhaps it was their age, the years gone by. Or perhaps it was the slight vacancy in Malfoy’s eyes, like he wasn’t quite committing to the bit. His black robes were oddly parted at his chest, too low, as if done up incorrectly.
But his glare. Undefeatable.
“My oh my, looks like you haven’t been told,” Malfoy said with a shit-eating grin. Even his voice sounded a bit deeper. “You must be suffering right now. You look like you’re about to explode. Merlin, it takes me back. Oh, it’s nice to feel young again—”
“Oh, I get it,” Harry interrupted suddenly, piecing together the ruffled clothing with the cunty nature of its wearer. “This is funny. The easiest arrest I’ve ever made. Then again, you’ve always been a bloody coward. You might as well roll over on your back.” He spat out a laugh. “What are you turning yourself in for this time?”
Malfoy gave him a look like Harry had personally disappointed him. He turned his head to watch what he was twirling in his hand. “You are psychotic, just completely delusional. Hurry up, will you, Potter, and get there already. We’re all pretty excited for the big reveal.”
He leaned back further in his chair, balancing on the back legs.
“Get out of my chair!” Harry yelled, horrified to hear it come out as a bit of a whine. “And—and, put your hands behind your back,” he finished lamely.
Malfoy sighed with a nasty little indulgent twist, and Harry realised he was enjoying this.
“They always said the job would come with surprises,” Malfoy said, shaking his head morosely. “Never know what the day brings, they said. It’ll be a blast, they said. This has got to be the smug universe tapping me on the shoulder … the time has come …”
Harry’s eyes narrowed as he spoke, inching forward, then straightened up in alarm.
“What the fuck, Malfoy! You can’t smoke.”
“Why not?”
“You shouldn’t smoke!”
“Why not?”
It was more the strangeness of it rather than its defiance of any kind of professional conduct that disturbed him. “It’s—they’re for Muggles!” Harry said: then heard it. “I mean, anyone can …”
Harry trailed off, wrong-footed, realising he was clearing up any misgivings about him promoting Muggle-Magic separatism to the son of Voldemort’s right-hand man.
Right. I’m going insane, Harry thought. This is a psychosis-induced hallucination.
“What I mean is that’s certainly out of character for you, no?” Harry said.
Malfoy looked at his cigarette with faux alarm, like he had never seen it before. He drew it to his mouth and gave it an experimental little puff.
“Wow,” his eyes widened. “That’s marvellous. I think I’ve finally found something I like enough to let kill me.”
His smirk returned, utterly delighted with himself. Harry was being mocked.
“Oh,” Malfoy said, squirming, getting comfortable. “This is going to be fun.”
Harry felt distinctly on the back foot. The universe out of order. “Stop it,” he said uselessly.
“This train’s going to keep coming. I’d either get out, or get the stick out,” Malfoy exhaled smoke in Harry’s direction, “of your arse.”
His control broke. Raging, Harry stormed forward to snatch the cigarette, but Malfoy yanked it high and out of reach, leaning back in his chair.
“I’ve a suggestion,” Malfoy smiled at him venomously, chin tucked into his chest, “Aurors use magic to take people down, not just mental dysfunction. Magic, dear little Harry, is a force that can be manipulated—”
“Aguamenti,” Harry said, and a torrent of water fell over Malfoy, extinguishing the cigarette and leaving his hair clinging to his face like a cat caught in a rainstorm.
Malfoy gaped at him, spluttering. “You fucker.”
Harry leaned forward with his teeth set, sneering, “You’ll do as I say. This is my office.”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want in my office,” Malfoy snarled.
“I’m sorry?” The ultimate proof Harry’s brain was presently being mangled beyond recognition.
Malfoy laughed coldly, sharp as a knife. “Oh Potter. I think we’re a bit beyond that, after all these years?”
His wand was out in a blink. Harry had always been quicker, but in a wild card move no normal person could have anticipated, he lazily ducked Harry’s quick Stinging Jinx and sent him flying out the fucking window with a flick of his wrist, glass exploding everywhere.
—
After a deranged hour of Magical Accidents employees’ screaming over the hurricane-level windstorm hurling wildly around him—a conversation mostly consisting of: “What?!” “What?!?!”—Harry stormed around the department, flinging water and slivers of glass and blood everywhere.
“But where is he?” Harry demanded at the same reply, spit flying, barely keeping his shredded robes on his body.
His colleagues grew tired of him, uneasily shifting their paperwork away from the dripping, but they did eventually tell him Robards was in a meeting upstairs.
“Potter,” Robards spat out in a scandalised whisper when Harry burst in. He shoved Harry back out of the door and closed it neatly behind him. “You are already on thin ice—I’m in a meeting. What is the meaning of this?”
It was a testament to Harry’s antics over the last six months that Robards barely blinked at his appearance.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS DRACO FUCKING MALFOY DOING IN MY FUCKING OFFICE?!”
“I’ll fire you,” Robards said with cold exactitude, unblinking as he stared him down. “I’ll fire you right then and there if you ever talk to me like that again. I don’t care who you are.”
Harry licked his lips and added in a quieter voice, “I just meant. Sir,”
Robards’ expression cleared with the clean compartmentalisation of a well-oiled bureaucrat.
So that was the cure for stress, Harry pondered absently. Roboticization.
“Mr Malfoy is your new partner.”
“No, he’s not,” Harry said quickly.
Robards frowned. “Yes, he is.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is.”
“No, he’s—”
“Mr Potter.”
“He can’t be—he can’t be, that’s insane—”
“Potter.”
“Besides, he isn’t even an Auror!” Harry spluttered. “He wasn’t in training—I would’ve, I would’ve known. I haven’t seen him in years—!”
“Potter!” Robards hissed angrily, and something in his face made Harry finally shut up. “You are acting completely out of turn. This isn’t up to you. You do not run the department. You do not know everything. I realise that you had a … tumultuous relationship in school.”
Harry couldn’t help it: “You make it sound like—this isn’t about school, he was a Death Eater! And he totally flunked it, too!”
“You are a professional now,” Robards snapped, “an adult.”
“Tell him that!” Harry yelled, flinging his arms around wildly. “He just sent me flying out the godforsaken office window into the eye of a bloody fucking storm!” Added: “With all due respect, or whatever, sir.”
Robards laughed merrily. “No, he didn’t. That’s not possible. The windows are impenetrable.”
Harry served him a long blink, hysteria rising. He looked pointedly at his robes, and Robards checked the memos waiting for him by the door to corroborate the story.
“Oh,” Robards frowned, reading. “Seems an Auror,” he flicked Harry a glance, “tripped and fell through a … crack, inflicting very expensive damage to a recently renovated office, and a very helpful,” Robards squinted, “handsome, I think is the word used here, hmm, passerby saved him from a … ‘fireable offence and thousands of Galleons in property damage’.” Robards looked up. “Checks out.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Eight witnesses have signed the report.”
Harry breathed, “Slytherin degenerate.”
Robards narrowed his eyes. “This is how I see it, Potter. You will assist Mr Malfoy with the cases I provide, or you will hand your resignation in.”
Harry opened and closed his mouth a few times, but he had been beaten.
“So,” Malfoy drawled when he pushed the door open so hard it slammed against the wall, “figured it out yet, Potty?”
The window was perfectly intact, as if nothing had happened. Malfoy was dry and smiling like a good little snake. And, oh god, there was a second chair at the desk. He hadn’t clocked it before.
“Fuck off and die, Malfoy,” Harry shot out, grabbing his bag and leaving the same way.
Malfoy’s laughter followed him out like a tired joke.
—
“You’re right, Harry, he definitely wasn’t in training,” Ron said over a pint later at their favourite pub, and Harry could kiss him. “Did you really leave work early without permission?”
Harry ignored the rebuke. “I knew it! It’s—what do you think he’s up to? How did he trick Robards?”
“Tricked Robards? Unlikely,” Ron said thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s been brought in as an expert in something? To consult on cases.”
Harry scoffed around his pint. “As if.”
He had earlier swallowed down three in haste, alone at the pub, and was starting to feel the effects, but wasn’t so far gone that he bought into consulting. They did bring in experts at times for particularly complicated cases, but Malfoy being one of them was laughable. What could he be an expert in—how to disappoint both sides of the war in one fell swoop?
“Or—maybe he’s being punished, somehow? I mean, it explains being paired with you.”
“Yes,” Harry said, his eyes widening: Ron was a genius. “Maybe it’s some kind of torture. Maybe I have to carry out some kind of, some punishment or—throw him into the front line and witness first-hand the shitstorm carried out by his people—”
“Maybe it’s part of his rehabilitation?” Ron said, easily ignoring him, looking around the pub in thought. “I mean, he got pardoned, remember?”
“No,” he said.
“Yes you do. We were at the trial. You spoke for him, as I remember.”
“As if,” Harry said again, pathetically.
“Oh boy.”
“I stopped caring about Draco Malfoy years ago.”
“Sure thing.” Ron rolled his eyes. “But there were conditions to his release, surely? I can’t exactly remember what. Maybe he has to serve the community or something? Work for the Ministry?”
Ron really was shaping up, Harry realised, these past few years; he was thinking like an Auror. And surely it helped to be around Hermione so much they practically shared a brain—Harry was some other rogue useless organ, like a spleen, floating nearby—in their squat little house they bought together: not quite inner-city, but closer to the chaos than Harry’s.
“Hmm, maybe,” Harry said grouchily to convey his scepticism, like a jaded hero about to embark on a long, ill-advised journey to victory or certain death.
Ron put his pint down.
“Be careful, Harry,” he said in a measured tone. “They’ve started saying things about you, the higher-ups.”
Harry rolled his eyes, finishing his drink. “What, you think this might be a test?”
“It’s one you can’t fail.”
“I won’t—” he started, picking at the wooden table, grumbled, “It’s only Malfoy.”
“I’m serious,” Ron said, lowering his voice. “I really think Robards means this is your last chance.”
Harry met his earnest gaze, thinking.
“I think he’s gotten taller,” he speculated, and Ron’s head fell hard onto the table.
—
Some truths emerged that night, as Harry paced his house in a strange fever dream.
Malfoy would be the end of him. Their partnership was an impossibility. It wasn’t going to be possible. The tenuous grip he had over his job would surely break.
He paced up and down the hall. The house watched back disconcertingly. It was a restored stone cottage just far enough outside London to feel like the countryside with minimal neighbours, tucked down a long, winding dead-end street and ringed by fields. He didn’t mind the place, was even learning to love its ramshackle personality over the past year or so: its warm colours and squishy couches and old charm, rickety window frames and uneven stone floor, low-hanging wooden beams. Doors that never quite closed properly, warm blankets and Weasley jumpers thrown over the couches. The slightly overgrown lavender bushes outside, tapping on the window in the breeze.
It felt emptier not having Hermione over, who was away on a fellowship in the US learning the ins and outs of International Magical Law: it had been several months since they’d last seen each other. He missed coming home from the pub with her and Ron, sharing takeaway on the floor. He wondered what she would say about this situation.
Ron would have plenty more to say about it, but most of what they talked about was work these days, anyway.
Coming out of the shower, Harry absent-mindedly touched the old scar left by the locket, burned into him. Harry had faced bigger threats than this before, and it was ridiculous really, the idea that snivelling Draco Malfoy was going to get him fired.
Malfoy was pathetic. An albino demon. Terrible genes. Harry wouldn’t let it happen. He would show them that he was still the man that summoned his courage against all odds, faced the enemy head-on and ended the war. If this was a test of his self-control, of his ability to rise to the occasion, he was going to prove it.
He could always quit. The thought was strangely exhilarating. But then he remembered the issue—Draco Malfoy—and sighed, almost self-loathing.
He was about to get very good at his job.
—
Or: an alternative came to mind.
He didn’t want to do it. He really, really shouldn’t have. But when he found himself at the door of the Auror Records room he just … went in.
Well, broke in.
Well, experimented with a complicated series of unlocking charms, before attempting to trick Hermione into telling him every single unlocking charm in existence. That, of course, didn’t work. She immediately texted back asking why he was trying to break into the Ministry’s Auror Records room to look up information about Draco Malfoy, putting two-and-two together—fuck that Weasley-Granger super-brain, strengthened by joint home ownership. So he then spent all night trying to find the right book in the Black library in Grimmauld Place while Malfoy’s ancestors’ things watched from the cabinetry until, after a mad, sleepless night covered in dust and Dark Magic, he eventually just went rogue the next day and lit a small Fiendfyre outside the Records room. It triggered a shrill alarm, evacuating the entire fucking building—all doors magically springing open.
“Yeah, sorry everyone, I’m here,” Harry laughed, evacuating the Ministry after everyone else, only a smidge scorched, Robards’ face raging at him in the distance, crossing names off. “Got lost. Did you say Fiendfyre, that’s wild.”
“Please,” Ron implored, standing on the street, “tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Draco Malfoy.”
Earlier, Harry told himself this was perfectly normal behaviour, as he squatted in the dark, dusty room with his lit wand in his mouth, flying rapidly through the files strewn around him as several dragon-shaped flames roared outside, and reciting the alphabet over and over as he shuffled through mountains of names.
Robards was a fucking fool. Harry was a great detective.
“Who? Oh, yeah, Malfoy,” Harry laughed airily, unconvincing. “No, of course not, this building is a labyrinth!”
“You know,” Ron philosophised, “if you gave Ginny this kind of attention you would have never broken up.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Malfoy’s file summarised his involvement in Voldemort’s campaign and his pardoning, dependent on strict conditions—largely because of the testimony of one Harry James Potter. These conditions were unclear. There was no information about his involvement with the Aurors.
Fuck. He’d have to fight or trick it out of him.
That wouldn’t be hard. Harry grinned to himself, thinking of their track record.
Harry always won, in the end.
—
The next day Harry opened his office door at 9 o’clock sharp—it turned out Fiendfyre was sort of a big deal, clearing the Ministry for the entirety of the previous day—head raised high, heartbeat steady. He cleared his throat.
“Malfoy, I know this situation isn’t ideal, but,” he started, pleased at his authoritative tone, but stopped. The room was empty.
Deflating, Harry toed around a bit before eventually hanging his things up. He shuffled papers at his desk, settling in. He waited, perched on the edge of his seat.
An hour later, Malfoy still hadn’t shown up.
Another hour, still nothing.
“For fuck’s sake,” Harry said under his breath.
By lunch time, he was livid—and Harry was the one on probation! This was unbelievable! Of course Malfoy had better things to do, couldn’t get off his fucking arse and show up to his job or his imprisonment or whatever.
After asking around the office for ages, he finally got a tip from the guy working the drinks cart, of all people—Harry vaguely recalled his name was Lenny or Larry or Latte or something—who looked at Harry with shining eyes like he had been waiting his whole life to answer this question.
Following his directions, Harry opened the door of a café down the road from the Ministry, feeling like he had been led astray. It was practically a bar, a seedy place with a cloud of smoke lingering over the dark tables, daylight blocked out by heavy curtains.
Harry found Malfoy easily. He had the singularly unpleasant thought that Latte was maybe a better Auror than he was.
Malfoy sat at the front bar hanging off a stool, head resting on the heel of his hand looking imperially bored, gnawing at his thumbnail, a half-drunk glass in his other hand.
Harry shoved him off the stool.
“Hey, watch it—!” Malfoy yelled, regaining his footing, eyes whipping around. They found Harry and his stunned face settled into something like tired amusement. “Oh goody. The cops have arrived. Harry Potter, as I fucking live and breathe.”
“You’re late,” Harry said, as Malfoy slipped back into his seat. He was smoking again, a cigarette perched between his fingers.
“Nope,” Malfoy said. “Quit.”
Harry stared.
“What?”
“I quit.”
“You quit.”
“Yep.”
Harry stared a bit more. He had been beaten. By forfeit.
Malfoy looked up, noticed Harry’s expression, and laughed. “I was kidding. Getting your hopes up so I have the satisfaction of stamping them out twice.”
Harry processed this. Malfoy wanted a reaction, he realised. Tough shit. Harry shored up his utter serenity, and said, “I’ve been waiting for hours.”
Malfoy puffed his chest out and said in a grumble, “For hours,” flapping his hands theatrically, and Harry realised he was being imitated, “for days, potentially, I can’t count,” and then: “God’s teeth, you’re thick.”
This time Malfoy said it without a mocking edge. “Excuse me, Malfoy, who’s teeth?”
Malfoy glanced pointedly at the bar's other patrons.
Muggles. It was still weird hearing it. “You’re going to get me fucking fired, you little shit—are you drinking?”
Malfoy glanced down at his glass as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh. No.”
“I can smell it.”
“Good boy. Nice to see you’re leaning into your truer instincts. In fact, why don’t we spin this little arrangement, that way I never have to hear you speak again. I could get a leash. A little bell.”
A furious gleam of heat. Harry opened his mouth but anger choked him. He remembered this. At Hogwarts Malfoy’s jokes always stretched too far, played into the circus of his own cruelty and—there was no other word for it—strangeness.
The weight of his conversation with Ron settled over him. Utter serenity. “Look, Malfoy,” he said in a steady voice. “This situation isn’t great, obviously. It isn’t what either of us want. But for whatever reason we’re paired together, so we have to make this work. We have to be adults about this. Robards said he’s not changing his mind. It’s done. So we have to get along and work together on this. What do you say?”
Malfoy, watching his speech with a lazy expression, let his loose gaze slip around the room and eventually settle on the drunk older man next to him at the bar, eyeing their conversation with mild curiosity. “I think he’s talking to you.”
“God I hate you,” Harry forced between his teeth, “just—”
In a sharp movement, Malfoy faced him squarely. “How do you know that?”
Harry blinked, startled by his sudden lucidity. “How do I, what?”
“That we have to get along. What do you know about getting along with others?” Malfoy smiled coldly. “No one stands up to you.”
Harry would ignore him. He would be the mature one. “Let’s go back to my office. We need our new assignment. They’ll be angry enough as it—”
“My office.” Malfoy took a long drink, turning away from him. Harry watched him suck on his cigarette mildly and fury ripped through him.
“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” he exploded. “Why are you in the Auror department, the weirdest career choice anyone could imagine from a fucking dirtbag like—”
“Ugh,” Malfoy screwed up his nose. “I’m not an Auror, gross. I may have been raised to follow orders from the powerful patriarch in the room but not the law, god forbid, where’s the appeal in that? You think I’d give all this up for that? Where’s the integrity?”
“All … this?”
Malfoy gestured vaguely to himself.
“What, what are you saying? Why are you talking all weird?”
Malfoy looked at him like he was concerned about Harry’s mental capacity. “Well, obviously I’m drunk.”
Harry considered his slightly slumped lean on the bar, the looseness in his face, his brain short-circuiting. It was simply too much to comprehend. Malfoy drinking mid-week in a seedy bar, swearing like a Muggle. Malfoy working with the Aurors. Working with him. Malfoy smoking.
“But. It’s barely noon.”
“You must be fun at parties,” Malfoy said, picking at the wooden bar boredly. “I knew you’d grow up to be a square. Perfect Potter. Is that why you’re working, climbing the bureaucratic ladder? Surely you could make off like some king, buy an island and disappear on it. Drag your fans over and raise a cult or something, I don’t know.” He shook his head despairingly. “Bloody conformist.”
The hypocrisy of this spiel coming from the biggest toff Harry had ever known rendered him temporarily speechless.
“Come with me,” Harry said at length. “It’s non-negotiable. You have to leave this bar now and follow me, otherwise I will blow it up.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’re patently insane.”
Harry leaned in closer. “I’ll show you how insane I am. Come with me.”
Malfoy squinted at him for a while. “Oh. I see. Are you asking me out on a date? Is that what this is?”
“What?!”
“Because I have to say, this pushiness, as flattering as it is, comes across a bit strong. Very violent, not very sexy.” Malfoy raised his glass to his lips.
He didn’t stop himself this time. Harry smacked it out of his hand; it flew across the room and shattered on the wall. Malfoy blinked.
The bartender didn’t even look up. London, Harry thought lovingly.
“It’s a Tuesday. You’re fucking pathetic.” Harry grabbed his elbow, wrenching him from the bar.
He could have slapped him, but something about doing that while Malfoy was tipsy felt wrong. Maybe when they were alone, yes, then Harry could do whatever he wanted.
It was always justified with Malfoy.
“We’re going back to work, you idiot.”
“Hey, someone stop him! He’s manhandling me,” Malfoy bristled with false urgency to his neighbour at the bar, “are you seeing this? Is this police brutality?”
“Not when it’s you,” Harry snapped, “then it’s just good sense.”
“Fucking fascist bastard,” his neighbour called drunkenly, while Malfoy raised his fist in support.
He laughed and turned to say in Harry’s ear, “If only he knew, right, Potter?”
“I remember. That’s what really counts,” Harry growled, pulling him to the door.