Malfoy acquiesced to Harry’s proposition surprisingly easily, so easily in fact that it was rather anti-climatic. The only point Malfoy insisted on was that they wait for Nott, to tell him in person that his hospitality won’t be needed after all. Harry was sure that when Nott came, he would be in for a fight where he would need all his arguments and determination, but Nott simply shrugged good-naturedly.
“Sure,” he said amiably. “Suit yourselves. Less trouble for me. I’ll be seeing you around, Draco.” And with that he ambled out the ward again, winking suggestively at a pretty nurse and making her titter.
It all left Harry feeling rather hollow and deflated, not to mention cheated. He realised he had been looking forward to fighting over Malfoy, and winning.
“I’m ready, take me home,” Malfoy suddenly chirped, shaking Harry out of his thoughts. He looked around to find that the blond had already changed out of his hospital gown and into a singed and well-worn pair of pyjamas. Harry frowned, annoyed that his useless musings had made him miss the change.
Upon seeing Harry’s expression, Malfoy looked down at himself self-consciously. “This is all I have left, everything else was burnt,” he explained, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I’ll have to go shopping tomorrow,” he added sheepishly.
“You can borrow some of my clothes,” Harry blurted without thinking, and then blushed awkwardly at Malfoy’s surprised expression. “Um... I mean if you want to, of course. You don’t have to or anything, just you’re near to my size and I have plenty to spare...” Harry trailed off, feeling distinctively stupid.
“That’s very kind of you, Potter. I think I will avail myself of your generosity,” Malfoy answered with a smile that was brief yet sweet, and Harry felt himself flushing.
What proved much harder was explaining his decision to Robards. He hadn’t really thought about what he would tell his superior and how the Auror Department would take his unexpected decision. Early Tuesday morning, as he was seated opposite Robards’ frowning face, Harry realised that he really should have given the whole matter more thought.
Twenty minutes and many halting explanations later, Robards was still frowning, unsatisfied and sceptical, but Harry was free to go and hide in his office.
He had barely closed his door and sprawled into his chair when Tonks cheerfully barged in, holding two mugs of steaming coffee. She placed one in front of Harry and then sat in the visitor’s chair, grinning all the while.
“So what’s this I hear about you and my wayward cousin? Offering him shelter in his time of need. Are you just a good person like that, or is there something you are hiding from me?” Tonks waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Harry blushed. “Shurrup,” he mumbled. “And please keep your voice down!”
“Aha! Just as I thought. Something is going on with Draco dearest, what with all those questions about the Manor. One thing you are not, Harry Potter, is subtle,” Tonks crowed sotto voce, before adding, “and I wish you would stop being so bloody paranoid about your big secret, it’s not really as big a deal as you make out. Anyway, surely quite a few people should have worked it out by now.”
“What? Like who?” Harry asked, suddenly anxious. “And don’t you try to deny that the Daily Prophet and all the other tabloids won’t hound me down once they find out their Hero is gay.”
“I’m not denying that they will have a field day, and that you might receive a couple of Howlers. But it will all die down eventually.”
Harry snorted. His coming out was a subject that he and a number of his well-meaning, but ultimately naive, friends agreed to disagree on. He didn’t believe that the furore about his sexual orientation would ever die down, just like his fame never completely died down. He was an intensely private person, and he wanted to keep his private business just that, private. So what if it put a cramp on his love life?
“Do tell us about my dear cousin. We don’t have much by the way of family reunions, but from our few meetings, I did guess that our Draco was rather bent,” Tonks said, bringing the conversation back to the subject she was the most interested in.
“There is nothing to tell, because nothing is going on between Malfoy and me,” Harry ground out.
“But you would like for there to be something, wouldn’t you?” Tonks shot back perceptively.
Harry opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it again with an audible snap. What was he doing? He wasn’t going to discuss this with Tonks! “Tonks, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work to do,” he said. “And I really have to get down to working on the haunted house file, so how about we talk about this some other time?”
“Sure,” Tonks replied easily enough, jumping up from her chair. “I’ll let you get your work done. Wouldn’t want you working overtime with a house-guest to take care of.” Once she was at the door, she turned and grinned cheekily. “I can’t wait to tell Remus that you succumbed to the Black charm. I always said we were irresistible!”
Harry groaned and sprawled back into his chair, staring unseeing at his ceiling. He knew he could only put her off for so long. Sooner, rather than later, she would be dragging the whole pathetic tale of his little crush out of him. Why did he have to have such nosy friends?
Taking a deep relaxing breath, he dragged the file on the haunted house to centre of his desk and flipped it open. He had yet to plod through the whole mire of paperwork on the case so he could finally get down to investigating the site. He always started with the best of intentions, but it was all so confusing and badly written, that it never took long for him to get distracted by daydreams and thoughts about Malfoy, Draco. Today was even worse than usual because last night the other man had slept in his house, in his pyjamas.
Once Harry had Side-Along Apparated them into his modest flat, he had immediately modified the wards to permit Draco entrance and to fortify them. Draco had curiously looked around the apartment, peering into cupboards and calmly walking into bedrooms without asking. He had been impressed by Harry’s wards. “Almost as strong as the wards we had at the Manor,” he had said, eyeing Harry approvingly. He was, however, less than impressed by the general state of the house. “How long have you been living here?” “You know, just because you’re a bachelor, doesn’t mean you have to live like a slob.” “Where did you get that sofa from?” He had scrunched his nose at Harry’s unmade bed, but thankfully refrained from commenting. Fortunately he had been rather satisfied with the guest-room. “It will do,” he had pronounced in its favour.
Later that night as they sat eating take away for dinner Draco had expressed his surprise upon finding Harry’s house so small. “I expected the Saviour of the Wizarding World to at least be living in a proper house with a garden and a house-elf.”
“I do have a house with a garden and a house-elf, but I’d rather not live there,” was all Harry offered by way of explanation.
After dinner, Draco had rifled through Harry’s drawers looking for pyjamas, and had soon come across a pair of slate silk ones Tonks and Remus had bought him one Christmas, “in case he had company over.” Harry never entertained company in his pyjamas and thus he had never worn them.
“Perfect!” Draco had exclaimed happily upon finding them, but almost instantly his expression of glee had turned to one of suspicion. “They’re not your favourites, are they?” he had asked worriedly.
“Not at all, you can take them,” Harry had rushed to answer.
“Wonderful. Thank you.” Sometimes it took so little to make someone happy.
The only problem was that Harry had not been able get to sleep that night for wondering how the other man looked in the borrowed pyjamas. He had even considered sneaking into the guest-room to take a look.
Next morning his curiosity was satisfied. Harry had been sitting in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee as he slowly woke up, when Draco sleepily shuffled into the room. His hair was soft and ruffled, making him look strangely young and cuddly. His sharp face was still damp from when he obviously washed himself, but not dried properly, and his eyes were half-closed. The soft fabric of the silk pyjamas draped over his figure almost obscenely, Harry thought. With a sudden jolt of shock, he realised that the other man was not wearing underwear and he could vaguely make out the outline of his cock through the grey silk. Harry’s heart stuttered and stopped.
Draco sleepwalked into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair. “Morning,” he said without opening his eyes. “Tea?”
Harry wordlessly Summoned the teapot and a cup and poured Draco some. The blond reached for the cup, cradling it in his hands with a hum of satisfaction.
Harry felt like he hadn’t drawn a single breath since Draco had appeared in the kitchen and his heart still hadn’t started beating again. His coffee lay forgotten on the table, as he stared at the other man slowly sip his tea and wake up, step by step. Harry could feel his pulse beat in his cock as it started to fill out.
With one last sip and drawn out hum of satisfaction, Draco placed his cup on the table. Then he opened his eyes, big and grey, the exact grey of the pyjamas, and smiled warmly at Harry. Harry drew one sudden sharp breath. His heart was beating, loud and fast – he wondered if Draco could hear it – and his cock gave a violent jolt and reached full hardness.
“Good morning,” Draco repeated, clearly this time. “I slept very well last night. The bed was nicely comfortable, not too soft, not too hard.”
“I’m glad,” was the only reply Harry managed to choke out. He had to escape before he made a fool of himself! He cleared his throat and said in a rush, “I have to leave. I’ll be late for work if I don’t. I hope you make yourself at home in my flat, but I really have to go now.” Harry got up suddenly, nearly toppling his chair over. “Well, I’ll be off then, see you this evening.” And without waiting for Draco to reply, he rushed to the Floo and made his escape.
Once in the Ministry, he took a couple of deep gulps of air and practically ran to the nearest lavatory to quickly take care of his problem.
Now, hours later, alone in his cubicle at Auror Headquarters with the door closed, sprawled indecorously in his chair, the folder of his latest case open and forgotten on the desk, Harry found himself yet again stroking himself to thoughts of Malfoy. He pressed down with the flat of his palm against the erection straining his Standard Auror Robes, as he brought to mind images of Draco from that morning.
He was seriously considering opening his robes to do it properly when he was startled by a sharp rap on his door and a deep masculine voice demanding, “Potter, are you in?”
It was Timple! Harry sat up straight immediately and patted himself to make sure he was in order. “Yes, I’m here,” he shouted back. “Come in.”
Timple opened the door and strode in. He was a tall, imposing man, with an intimidating expression, but Harry was never one to be easily intimidated by that sort of thing.
“What’s this I hear?” Timple began, going straight to the point. “You are harbouring Malfoy in your home?”
Timple’s attitude rubbed Harry in all the wrong ways. “I’m not harbouring Draco Malfoy, because he’s not a criminal to be harboured, but I am offering him my hospitality because he has nowhere to stay.”
“Humph...” Timple sat heavily in the same visitor’s chair Tonks has used a couple of hours previously. He took a notepad and quill out of his pocket and looked at Harry challengingly. “So how long would you say you’ve been friendly with the... subject?” he asked Harry.
“That is really neither here, nor there,” Harry responded, annoyed. “We were in the same year at Hogwarts.”
“Yes, I know,” Timple interrupted. “And I don’t recall the two of you being on the best of terms then.”
Harry scowled. He wished Timple would just pack it in and leave him alone. “Yes, well, people grow up and leave such childishness behind them. All you really need to know is that we are on perfectly good terms now. So much so that I’m perfectly happy to accommodate him in my home.”
Timple scribbled a couple of notes in his pad and returned to scrutinising Harry. “Potter, we really should arrange a meeting together with someone from Protection and Concealment to look over the wards on your house and replace some of them with more suitable ones.”
Harry fairly bristled. “Timple, I think you forget who I am,” he enunciated slowly, trying to remain calm. “My wards are impenetrable and highly secret. No one is going to touch them! No one is even going to breathe on them! It’s bloody well easier to break out of Azkaban than it is to break into my home, so you should just stop harassing me and start looking for the bloody culprits.” Harry’s voice had steadily risen the whole tirade until it had practically reached a bellow.
“There’s no need to get so upset, Potter, we won’t go near your wards since you insist. Please sit down again.”
Harry realised that he had stood up, both palms flat on his desk, and was breathing heavily, whereas Timple was still seated and calmly taking more notes.
“Oh,” he said, deflated, as he sat down. “Sorry about that.”
“If you just give me your address then, to put in the file, in case we need to speak to Malfoy,” Timple asked as if Harry hadn’t just been yelling at him a couple of minutes ago.
“Sorry, no,” Harry said. “I can’t do that. My address is still confidential. If you need to talk to Malfoy, you can simply find him during his work hours, or if it’s really urgent, inform Robards. He’s one of the select few privy to my address. Would that be all?” Harry suddenly felt very tired. He wished Timple would hurry up and leave.
Timple closed his notepad and placed it, together with his quill, back in his pocket. “That’ll be all then, Potter. I’d better get down to catching the culprits, shouldn’t I?” And then, finally, he got up and left Harry blessedly alone.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief before having a sudden thought. He jumped up, his mind whirling. He left his cubicle and walked, as nonchalantly as he could, to the coffee room, all the while looking around, trying to catch a glimpse of Timple. Craning his neck as he reached the door to the coffee room, he just about could see Timple’s door from the corner of his eye. It was slightly ajar. That meant he was still there. Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
His mind still working overtime, he went to make himself a tea. A very slow tea. And then, his ears and eyes alert, he leaned against the counter and sipped his tea, while watching various Aurors and secretaries going about their business.
His tea had gone cold and he was down to his last sip when he finally saw Timple leave his office and head towards the lavatory. Losing no time, Harry put his cup in the sink and hurried to Timple’s cubicle. The door was ajar. Harry quickly looked around; there was no-one in sight. He slipped into the small room and silently closed the door.
Whipping out his wand, he carefully cast a revealing spell. Suddenly the room was ablaze with green spell ideograms. Harry’s gaze fell onto a simple filing charm, a spell definitely performed by Timple, and he cast a localised spell to reveal the corresponding magical signature. It was bright and clear. Satisfied, Harry saved it in a conjured glass bottle.
After clearing the space of all revealed spells and signatures, he went to the desk. Just as he had thought, the Malfoy case lay on the top. Harry opened it and page by page he cast duplifying charms. Once he finished, he stuffed the new pages into his pocket and closed the file again. Suddenly anxious, he rushed out the office.
Not a moment too early. Timple was a couple of doors away, chatting with Dawlish. Harry looked around for a way out and spotted Tonks’ door. He rushed over and barged in, after a brief knock.
“Harry!” Tonks exclaimed. “To what do I owe this honour?”
“Have lunch with me,” Harry said simply, breathing a sigh of relief.
****
Malfoy was right, Harry mused, his sofa was awful. It was threadbare and sagging on one side. Maybe he should consider getting a new one, especially when he thought about the amount of time he spent sitting on it. At the moment he was sitting hunched, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his hands as he stared at the bottles lined up on the coffee table.
Harry frowned as he thought of the bottled magical signatures in front of him. They were seven in total, four unlabelled and three neatly labelled: Angelina’s – taken discreetly Monday morning in the coffee-room from her banishing charm, Timple’s – taken earlier that day from his office, and Malfoy’s – taken the night before from the scouring charm he had thrown at Harry’s sofa before sitting down. The bottles didn’t match up properly. What they did do was confuse Harry.
The muffled crack of Apparition echoing from the entrance hall, followed by footsteps coming closer, broke into Harry’s musings.
“Good evening, Malfoy,” he said without turning round.
“Evening,” Malfoy drawled genially enough. He walked to the sofa where Harry was still gazing at the bottles lined up on the coffee table. “What are those?” he queried, catching sight of them.
He walked over to the table and picked one of the unlabelled ones up. “Pretty,” he said, “but I doubt they are ornaments.” He put the one he was holding down and picked up the one neatly labelled D. Malfoy. “This one has my name on it. Won’t you tell me what it is?” He tilted the bottle to the side to catch the light better and gazed raptly at the swirls of colours that made up his magical signature.
Harry sighed. He hadn’t planned on telling Malfoy about the signatures until he had worked them out. But then again, he hadn’t been exactly careful about hiding them from him, so he might as well tell him now.
“They’re magical signatures,” he said. “The labelled ones belong to you, Angelina and Timple. The others were retrieved from your flat.”
Malfoy looked intrigued. “I’d heard of magical signatures,” he said, “but I’d never thought they’d be so beautiful. Are everyone’s so beautiful, or only some peoples?”
Harry laughed; trust Malfoy to try to find more ways in which to be superior. “Don’t flatter yourself, Malfoy. Magic is always beautiful, and so are signatures. But some signatures do have more colours than others. Compare yours and Timple’s, for example.”
Malfoy did as he was told, and was gratified to see that his had more varied colours than Timple’s. After a brief self-satisfied smile he put the bottles down and turned to Harry.
“So, what were you frowning about before I came in?”
“As I said, the unlabelled bottles are the signatures I retrieved from your flat,” Harry explained. “One of them, the bright one, matches exactly with Angelina’s and another matches exactly with yours. So far that’s as expected. The other two, though, are strange. For example, one of them is remarkably similar to Timple’s, yet isn’t exactly the same. What does that mean? That the person is a close relative, is similar in personality and magical character to Timple? Could Timple himself possibly have two magical signatures? This is a new field of Magical Science and we don’t know much.”
Harry didn’t mention that the last unidentified signature was eerily similar to Malfoy’s. He hadn’t a signature sample from Merryweather or Hobson, but the thought of either of them having one so alike to Malfoy’s was a very strange, and slightly off-putting, thought.
Malfoy picked up the two signatures Harry mentioned and studied them intently. “Hmm... You’re right. Remarkable likeness and yet you can see the differences too. If a wizard were to use a different wand would he produce the same magical signature or a different one?” he asked.
Harry sat up. That was an interesting thought. His own wand was such an intrinsic part of him that he would never even consider using another, but what if other wizards or witches would and did? “We should try that theory out,” he said. “Malfoy, can I borrow your wand?”
Malfoy lifted an intrigued eyebrow and handed his wand over. “This should be interesting,” was all he said.
The borrowed wand felt strange and foreign in Harry’s hand, nothing like the comfortable familiarity of his own. He weighted it and adjusted his grip, trying to get the feel of it. It was too light and flexible and felt all wrong as he tried to swish it. He could feel the other man’s eyes intent on him. It felt strangely intimate handling Malfoy’s, or rather Draco’s wand. He wondered what Draco felt, seeing it in Harry’s hand.
With a sudden sharp movement, Harry cast a simple heating spell towards the far corner of the room. He misjudged the reaction of the wand and ended up lightly singing the wall-paper.
“You can have it back now,” he told Draco and the other man wordlessly retrieved his wand and hastily pocketed it. Yet Harry could see he kept his hand in his pocket, no doubt to keep physical contact with his wand.
Harry picked up his own wand, with a sigh of relief at the naturalness, and cast another, perfect this time, heating charm in the opposite corner of the room. Draco watched with undiluted interest as Harry revealed first the spells and then the signatures, which he promptly bottled.
“I am very impressed,” Draco said. “That was quite a show of expert Auror spellwork. Can all Aurors do that, or do you remain ever the prodigy?”
Harry blushed, wondering if it was an honest compliment, or if he was just been teased. A quick look at the other’s face found no trace of sarcasm or sneering.
“I am rather good at it,” Harry mumbled, suddenly self-conscious. “But most other Aurors can do these spells too. They’re pretty new, but have become standard.”
Harry sat down on his sagging sofa, holding the bottles up to the light to compare them. Draco came over, curious, and sat next to him, shifting over until their thighs were flush together. Harry’s breath hitched and his vision went out of focus, as all his attention centred on the press of the other man’s bony leg. Draco leaned even closer, his body heat washing over Harry and making him shiver, and brought his face close to the glass bottles to peer at them inquiringly. A fall of blond hair obscured Harry’s view of the signatures, but he hardly noticed, all his attention focused on the proximity of the other man – on the scent of his body, the hum of his magic, the sound of his breathing – and on keeping his own breathing under some semblance of control. It was a strange dizzying feeling he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager.
“I’m brilliant,” Draco crowed, his voice reverberating oddly in such close quarters. “Do you see it, Potter? Almost exactly alike, but not quite?” He sat back with a flourish and a self-satisfied sigh, letting Harry breath a little easier. “Potter?” he asked, perplexed by Harry’s silence.
Harry tried to concentrate on the glass bottles, but couldn’t quite do it. “Um, yeah, I see,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the bottles, they did look almost the same, but not quite. It seemed like Draco was right after all.
“Potter? Are you all right?” Draco said, as he put his hand on Harry’s shoulder.
“Yes, sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” Harry answered quickly, with only a slight quiver to the end as he turned around to look at Draco, only to find his face just inches away from the other man’s. Big enquiring grey eyes were suddenly so close to Harry’s startled ones, that he stared mesmerised as he fell into the other’s gaze.
“Potter,” Draco repeated softly.
Harry simply sat there, unable to speak, his eyes flickering form Draco’s intense eyes to the tiny, almost imperceptible, freckles on his nose to his pink lips. Harry unconsciously licked his own as he wondered what would happen if he kissed that inviting mouth. Would Draco kiss him back or would he push him away? Harry felt himself start to slowly move forward.
Draco suddenly sat back. “You’re probably just tired,” he said, breaking the spell. “I bet they overwork you at the Ministry.”
Harry blinked and took a deep breath. That had been close!
Draco stretched lazily, pulling his arms over his head and Harry couldn’t help but stare at the lean line of his arms and the way the fabric pulled across his chest and stomach. With a brisk movement, Draco put his arms back down, and Harry looked up only to find the other scrutinising him.
“I’m assuming you didn’t cook anything. Do you have any preferences for dinner?” Draco finally said as he got up and moved to the kitchen.
“Um, no preferences. Why? Are you going to cook?” Harry answered, surprised.
“That was the idea, yes,” Draco threw over his shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen. Shortly afterwards noises started drifting out of the kitchen, cupboards being opened, food being chopped, saucepans banging.
Well that was certainly unexpected, Harry mused.
He sat more comfortably on his old sofa and looked carefully at the two magical signatures he was still holding. Draco was brilliant. As he stared intently at the two bottles, he saw a certain pattern emerging, the definite way they were different. He put his signatures down and picked up Timple’s and the one similar. After careful inspection he began to see similar patterns and became fairly sure that it was the same person with a different wand. He put them down, intrigued, and picked up Draco’s and his doppelganger’s, intensely curious.
*****
Draco managed to put together a surprisingly good, and fast, vegetable risotto with the contents of Harry’s badly stocked cupboards.
“Let me guess,” he asked Harry as they ate, “you mostly eat take away? It wouldn’t harm you to buy food that doesn’t come out of cans more often.”
Harry looked at Draco with a light frown. “You seem to have slipped into the role of the nagging wife astonishingly fast,” he informed the other man by way of answer.
Surprisingly, Draco threw back his head and laughed. A short bark of laughter that oddly enough reminded Harry of Sirius. He looked at Harry with a twinkle in his eye. “Point taken, husband dearest. I’ll try to behave, but I can’t give any guarantees.” The last was said with a sly glance, heavy with innuendo. Harry almost choked on his food.
As it was, he took a long sip of water before changing the subject. “So, Malfoy, I’d like to see that second, unregistered, wand of yours.”
Malfoy looked at Harry calmly, with a slight crease between his eyebrows. “What second wand?” he asked, with such genuine sounding confusion that if Harry wasn’t certain of what he was saying, he would have believed the other man. He made a note to himself not to forget what a good actor Malfoy had become.
“Save it,” Harry replied brusquely. “I have a pair of magical signatures in the living room that say you have a second wand. Don’t worry. I won’t turn you in, even though I do realise how severely you are breaking your probation orders.”
Draco gave Harry a searching look before speaking. “You’re correct. I do have a second wand. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ll be in if anyone found out?”
“I said, don’t worry,” Harry reassured him. “Your secret’s safe with me. Only if we are going to work together on this case, you are going to have to trust me. No more secrets.”
Draco swallowed and nodded. “All right, Potter. But it should go both ways. I’m sure you’re holding out on me too.”
“I’ll need to see that wand,” Harry insisted.
“You’ll have to wait a bit then. I don’t have it at the moment. I gave to the hag across the road for safe-keeping before they came to take me to St Mungo’s.”
“Tomorrow evening, we’ll go and get it.” Harry refrained from commenting on the fact Draco had trusted his neighbour with his illegal wand and not Harry.
They finished the rest of the meal in silence and then banished the dirty dishes to the sink and returned to the living room.
Draco threw himself into one of Harry’s squishy armchairs with feeling, avoiding the sofa that was “too uncomfortable for words.” Harry took his usual seat on the less sagging end of the sofa.
Draco had taken off his coarse work robes and was wearing a baggy green jumper and worn brown corduroy trousers. Harry squinted; the clothes seemed sort of familiar. Actually, the more he looked, the more familiar they became.
“Malfoy,” he asked, “are those my clothes?”
Draco’s cheeks took on a light pink tinge and he looked at the floor. “Yes, you said I could. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all. I was just surprised. I had completely forgot. You can borrow whatever you want.” When Harry had offered, he hadn’t really thought that Draco would take him up on the offer. It was strange seeing his own familiar clothes look so different on someone else. That jumper, for example, was not supposed to be so big.
“Malfoy,” Harry noted, “you really are too thin. I think I’ll have to make sure to feed you up a bit.”
The pink tinge returned to Malfoy’s cheeks. “It’s called willowy, Potter, not thin, and I happed to have a delicate bone structure,” he retorted indignantly.
Looking at the almost sunken cheeks and the sharp angles of the bones under his neck, Harry had to disagree.
“Now that we’ve finished admiring my fine form, let’s talk about my manor. Potter, I’m sure that you put to good use your fine Auror skills and made some headway.”
Harry remembered Penelope’s letter.
“Appart from the two Aurors, Timple and Merryweather, there’s also an Unspeakable in the plot, as I’m sure you knew, Aloysius Hobson. He’s a friend of Timple and Brown from Hogwarts.”
“I really like seeing networking in action, even if it’s against me,” Draco sighed appreciatively.
“In this case it’s very much against you. This Hobson fellow is clever and dangerous. He has a penchant for working on projects that flirt dangerously with the wrong side of the Dark Arts. There have occasionally been rumours about his activities, but he always manages to avoid ministerial censor.
In my opinion, there’s no doubt about it, they’re up to something. Only I’ve got no idea what it could be. You might find it interesting to note that no Dark Objects from Malfoy manor whatsoever have been passed into the hands of Archival and Storage of Dark Objects and Criminal Evidence since well before the war.”
Draco made a surprised noise. “The manor was full of Dark Objects; the dark Lord loved collecting them, and we had plenty of our own. But somehow I doubt that all this is is a trafficking ring for unregistered Dark Artefacts.”
“I doubt if they’re selling them,” Harry agreed. “But I do wonder if they’re using them. Or at least if Hobson is, for some experiment or project of his.
The only other information I found out about Hobson I doubt has any relevance to our case,” Harry continued. “His only living relative is a younger sister, a younger Squib sister. I was told that when he first joined the Department of Mysteries, he was obsessed with finding a cure for ‘Squibness’.”
Draco snorted. “Him and who knows how many other wishful thinkers over the past couple of hundred years. I even had a distant Black relative who tried his hand at finding a ‘cure’. The results were rather disastrous.”
“Anyway,” Harry continued, “the head of the department finally put an end to it. He told Hobson to concentrate the time and resources of the department on more feasible projects. That was years ago.”
“I still think we should break into the manor,” Draco said. “We have to see for ourselves what’s going on inside. All the rest is just conjecture and will not get us anywhere.”
Harry sighed. He agreed with Draco, but it wasn’t so easy. “If it was just Auror wards,” he said, “I could break through them, unless they were using a Key, which I doubt, tracelessly and get us in and out with no one any the wiser. Only thing is that Hobson has also added his own Unspeakable wards. With enough time and effort, I could probably break through those wards as well, but not without tripping the alarm system he has no doubt imbedded into them.”
Draco slid his thin hand through his hair, loosening it from its tie and letting it hang freely round his face. He looked almost girlish, like a sharp angled girl. “I suspected that would be the case,” he said wearily. He made as if to speak again, but closed his mouth and looked away, agitated.
Harry waited patiently, and was rewarded when Draco finally looked his way and slowly started speaking again.
“I know we said no secrets, but this isn’t exactly my secret to tell,” he began. “It’s a family secret, a well kept one. But I trust you. I trust you to keep it to yourself.” Draco cut off and stared at Harry intently. Harry nodded his assent, he could keep secrets.
“Okay,” Draco continued. “I told you about the maze of catacombs under the manor, but I doubt you understood exactly how extensive they are. A couple of the tunnels run for quite a distance and then lead back above ground. They constitute secret escape routes from the manor, to be used as a last resort in the case of an attack.”
“So that’s how Voldermort escaped the siege of the manor!” Harry broke in.
“Yes,” Draco confirmed. “My father led him and a couple of others out using one of the routes, the least hidden one.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about these tunnels during the war?” Harry demanded.
“They are a family secret! No one is supposed to know. Father should never have told the Dark Lord. I shouldn’t be telling you now. But even more importantly, telling you would have been the most effective way of blowing my cover as a spy. I have never had a death wish.”
Harry grudgingly agreed that Draco had a point.
“What I’m trying to say,” Draco huffed, “is that these secret tunnels can also be a way into the catacombs and the manor. A way in that Timple and co don’t know about and thus haven’t warded against. The only problem is that I can’t find the entrances. I have been looking for them for months now with no luck. They are so well hidden as to be practically invisible.”
“So why did you bother telling me if you can’t find any of them?” Harry asked, frustrated.
“I thought you should know. Besides, I might yet discover one. There’s a map, a map that shows the manor and the whole estate, including the catacombs, the tunnels and the traps for possible intruders – Malfoys have always been a little paranoid. The only problem is that the map is inside the manor, in the library. I was hoping we could at least break into the manor to take the map.”
“If the map was in the manor, they would have surely found it,” Harry reasoned. “I’m sure they were nothing if not meticulous when searching the house.”
Draco smiled smugly. “This map is invisible to any but a Malfoy. I’m certain it’s still hanging on the library wall disguised as an old, but unremarkable, map of Wiltshire.”
Harry hummed in response, his mind working furiously on finding a way to retrieve the map. He couldn’t think of anything.
“By the way,” he said instead, “Angelina is no longer on the case of your attempted murder. It has been given to Timple.”
Draco seemed too stunned to respond. His face was a pure mask of indignation.
“I know,” Harry said. “The coincidences are far too many to be ignored. They are getting brash. I’m hoping they’ll make a mistake soon and we’ll catch them out. I took the liberty of Duplicating Timple’s file on your case.”
Harry wordlessly Summoned the file from his back and handed it to Draco. “I’ve already looked through it. I couldn’t find anything interesting or useful,” he said.
The blond was already reading the file, an intent look an his face.
Harry leaned back and made himself comfortable with a satisfied sigh. He felt remarkably content. He felt like they were slowly getting somewhere and sooner, rather than later, they were going to solve this little mystery. It felt nice having a partner for once. Too often at work he worked alone. It was easier, but it also got lonely. What they were doing now with Draco, working together, discussing things, comparing notes, sharing information and ideas, felt very nice. More than that, it felt right.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Notes: Lots and lots of thanks to my marvellous beta Raisinous Fielding for much needed corrections and support. WARNING: may on occasion contain traces of DH spoilers but is not DH compliant