Harry should have known from the moment Natalie McDonald dropped three Galleons onto his desk that he was in serious trouble.

"What's this?" he asked the PA.

She shrugged, bouncing unruly auburn curls that would have given Hermione Granger a run for her money. "The wager I owe you," she said nonchalantly, perching on the other side of his desk.

He blinked, his blood running cold. "That was six months ago," he said slowly.

"I thought you'd appreciate it?" she said, picking up one of the pencils Harry kept in a pot for when quills got too irritating, and twirled it deftly between her fingers.

"Nat," Harry said, a warning tone creeping into his voice. "The last time you owed me money, I had to physically wring it out of you."

She tapped the pencil nervously, and glanced over at the empty desk the other side of the office. If Harry hadn't been apprehensive before, he certainly was now.

"I just," she said, eyes on her hand fluttering the pencil. "Thought you might like to be paid your dues. You know. Before you kill me."

"McDonald," Harry growled, all pretence of niceties dropped. "You better not-"

"I'm here to tell you Robards wants you in his office and he has a case and he's super stressed and I'm pretty certain his wife just sent him a howler," Natalie garbled all at once. Harry though was too horror-struck to take in all the information. His brain had got caught on the word case.

"No!" he whined, shoving his hands into his hair. "No Nat, it's four o'clock, I was so close! I was really going to do it this time!"

"I know!" she cried, genuine dismay on her face. "Harry I know, I tried to fob it off on Nott and Boot, but he requested you two by name and..."

She pouted as Harry dropped his head onto the desk with a loud thud. "The universe hates me," he bemoaned into the wood.

She patted his head. "Look at this way," said his younger colleague brightly. "You'll still be spending the evening together! It just won't be at the pub."

"My life is so stupid," Harry grumbled with a few noises at the back of his throat that wouldn't have been out of place from a disgruntled toddler. "This is exactly like the last seven times I've tried to do this."

Natalie tapped his head, causing him to look up at her apologetic grimace. "Look, Harry," she said frankly. "I know your friends are probably too chicken to say this, but my debt is paid to you now." She nodded solemnly and pushed the three gold coins towards him. "And, the truth is – well there are plenty of times you could have asked, I think you just let excuses get in your way."

Harry scowled at her. "You know I defeated Voldemort. Several times."

"Yes," she sighed. "And yet the prospect of simple date has reduced you to the Boy Who Is Always Single."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, then realised he had nothing to go on. "I'm am such a loser."

The appearance of a tall, blond figure suddenly hanging on the doorframe caught his immediate attention, and Natalie snapped her head around too. "Oh good Potter," Draco Malfoy said, a little breathless. "You're here. Robards wants us in his office."

Harry's shoulders slumped in defeat, and he glanced at Nat. "I heard," he said flatly. "I'll be there in just a sec."

Draco nodded once, his brow creased in irritation. "Alright, well, don't dawdle. It's bad enough we caught this at the end of the day, I've heard he's already pissed off."

With that, Harry's handsome, belligerent, oh-so-complicated Auror partner vanished from sight, and Harry whined at a frequency probably only dogs could here and smacked both his hands onto his face, pushing up his glasses and sinking deeper into his chair. "Please kill me now."

"Well," Natalie said. "That would mean I could take my Galleons back, and no one would be any the wiser. However, call me crazy," she said in a martyred voice. "But I think if you died now, you'd only come back as a ghost to pine for the next hundred years after him, and still not have the backbone to just bloody ask him out."

Harry glowered at her. It was a good glower. He'd been practicing. "You're no help," he bit out between gritted teeth, but only because he knew she was right, and so did she.

"Come on," she said cheerfully, bouncing back to her feet. "I'll walk you back to Robards' office, and you can moan some more to me on the way."

Harry sighed. He didn't really want to moan, he wanted to cry.

He'd psyched himself up so many times to finally ask Draco out, to admit that his former rival had become his present crush, but every time something like this had come up, and all his plans had been thrown out of the window. He purposefully ignored the little voice in his head that argued that Nat was right, that if he really wanted to, the excuses probably wouldn't hold up. But he wished, just once, that he could try and behave like a proper Gryffindor and summon the courage to just do what he'd wanted to do for almost a year now, without any spanners being thrown into the works.

The younger Gryffindor looped her arm through his as she escorted him through the corridors, along to the office that her and Harry's boss Gawain Robards occupied as Head Auror. "Really," she admonished, shaking her head and shaking her curls. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"You remember that time I died?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied calmly.

"Worse than that."

One of the reasons he liked Natalie so much was he could talk to her about things like the Battle of Hogwarts, and she remained reassuringly level-headed about it all. They hadn't become friends until afterwards, when she had graduated a few years after Harry and taken her current position with Robards. But she was one of the only people that hadn't looked at Harry like he was the saviour. She looked at him the same way she looked at everyone: like they were adorable bunny rabbits who were a bit slow, but with her help, they would hop across the road just fine.

Harry wished the walk had taken longer, but in no time they were approaching the Head Auror's door, open to reveal Draco stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, glancing back apprehensively at Harry. Of all the people he could have been paired with out of training, Harry would never, ever have guessed he would end up with Malfoy, even if they had come to a truce after the war, what with saving each others' lives so many times. Plus Harry had just been tired of fighting, and so their relationship had become one of cool civility.

But someone up high (probably Robards) had decided to test that civility and have them work together in a way that simply forced them to get to know one another if they didn't want to die a sticky, grisly death out in the field. Harry smiled back at Draco as he came and stood beside him, and reflected that it had taken no time at all to realise he'd completely misinterpreted all those years of hostility between them, and come to understand that, in fact, he was completely smitten with the obnoxious prat.

Not that he'd managed to do anything about that yet, and if their flustered, red faced boss was any indication, he probably wasn't going to get to do anything about it tonight either.

"I just don't understand, McDonald," Robards huffed and puffed like he was gearing up to blow someone's house down. "All I said to her was that I was probably going to be working late tonight, and next thing I know this-" He snatched up a smoking red envelope from his desk. "Is screeching in my ear!"

Harry guessed that was probably the howler Mrs Robards had sent according to Natalie, and he cringed inwardly, not wanting to point out the obvious. But luckily, that was Natalie's job, and she was extremely good at it.

"Well," she said, her face one of positive optimism despite the circumstances. "I assume that's because it's Valentine's Day, and you promised her that you wouldn't do what you did last year."

"Which was?" Robards asked in a deflated tone. For such a large man, he suddenly looked a great deal smaller.

Natalie gave him a sympathetic smile. "Call at four o'clock to tell her you were working late and completely forget that you have dinner reservations."

"I do?" he asked earnestly, pulling hopefully at his walrus moustache.

"Indeed," she confirmed. "At Le Caneton Câlins at eight o'clock."

"Oh," said Robards, nodding. "I must have made a mistake?" he said.

Natalie waved him off. "Not a problem Auror Robards, I'll let Mrs Robards know right away with a quick note. Maybe attached to a dozen red roses?"

"Oh, yes," Robards agreed cheerfully. "Yes that sounds like a good idea."

"You only have good ideas," she assured him, then winked at Harry before exiting the office and closing the door quietly behind her.

Harry was thankful that his boss was no longer fuming, but he feared it wouldn't exactly help his predicament. Robards smoothed his hands over the pinstriped waistcoat straining over his belly, and, still nodding to himself, sat back down at his desk and rearranged some papers. "Ah," he said, looking up as if Harry and Draco had only just appeared. "Potter, Malfoy, so glad you could come at such short notice. Please, pull up a chair, I've got a tricky one I want you taking a look at right away."

Draco gave him a small smile as they took their seats, but Harry could see his jaw was clamped. He was obviously as unimpressed as Harry with this last minute case, and Harry's stomach dropped a little thinking as to why that could be. Did Draco already have plans that evening?

With someone else?

"What appears to be the problem?" he said aloud instead, trying not to distract himself with negative thoughts.

Robards shook his head and fished his monocle from his pocket to pinch it between his squinting eye. "Got some funny reports coming in from Battersea Park," he said, looking through the several sheets of parchment. "There's a Muggle funfair been set up there, and the place should be teaming with people. But it's dead, no one in sight as far as witnesses can tell, and anyone who's tried to enter so far has suddenly remembered they've left oven on and headed home."

"Sounds like someone's put repelling charms around the park," Draco suggested. Harry nodded. Battersea wasn't the biggest of London's parks, far from it, and it was half made up of dense woodland and a series of small canals. But if there was a fair set up there, on Valentine's Day, it should have been heaving with people on dates, not to mention regular families and teenagers out for a good time.

"Do you want us to go check it out?" Harry asked, his disgruntlement not exactly forgotten but his interest piqued in the light of a good case. Robards nodded.

"Take care though, whatever is going on, someone has risked exposing a great deal of magic to a large area of Muggles." He pulled up his waistband and nodded at Harry and Draco. "They could be desperate, volatile."

"Oh goody," Draco quipped, not trying all that hard to hide his irritation, and held out his hand for Robards to give him the file. "Well, I guess there's no sense hanging around," he sighed, glancing at Harry with an expression of resignation, but there was a tweak of a smile there too that Harry was glad for. "Let's go grab our coats." They were going to a Muggle area after all, robes would have looked conspicuous.

Harry rolled his eyes. "We'll be careful," he promised Robards, and he and Draco got to their feet.

"Have fun on your date," Draco said sincerely as they left, and Robards perked up again.

"Oh, yes, thank you m'boy!"

Draco's face fell as soon as they were back out in the corridor, walking so fast past Natalie's desk that Harry only had time to give her a quick nod of the head. "I guess that's our evenings ruined then," he said glumly, passing Harry the file and shoving his hands in his pockets again. "Did you have plans?" he asked, and Harry's stomach suddenly clenched.

"Erm, not really," he admitted. But Natalie was right, he had to stop letting excuses get the better of him. "But maybe this won't take so long after all, the day's not over yet?"

Draco gave him a non-committal noise, and they walked the rest of the way to their office in silence.

***

AN: "Le Caneton Câlins" roughly translates from French to "The Snugly Duckling", which is a reference to the film Tangled, for no other reason than I love that film and thought it was a funny name for a posh restaurant.