At a quarter to nine, Draco's office door rattles in its frame as Potter bursts through. "You prat!"

"Can I help you?" Draco asks, utterly nonplussed.

"I don't know, you miserable sod, can you?"

That's when Theia arrives in the doorway, panting. She looks from Potter to Draco with wide blue eyes, waiting for some kind of instruction.

When Draco hired her, he'd made sure she wouldn't be afraid to block indignant wizards from storming into his office to have a go at him. But it is one thing to be capable of handling oneself in a fight and another for that fight to be against the Saviour of the Wizarding World.

"You can go, Theia. He's not here to kill me."

"You can stay, actually, because I'm not making any promises." Potter turns his glare on Draco. "Fix it."

Draco stares blankly at him. "Sorry?"

"Fix it, Malfoy."

"You're really going to have to be more specific than that."

Theia is still looking between them with her mouth parted in concern.

"My eye, would you fix my bloody eye? It was working perfectly and then I get into one argument with you and I start seeing things. I was actually starting to think you'd grown up, you tosser."

Draco stands immediately, moving to Potter's side to examine the eye at closer range. It swivels towards him.

"What are you doing?" Potter asks.

"I didn't curse you."

Everything looks normal, but when he tries to remove the eye to get a better look, the metal base is stuck on Potter's face. "Why isn't it coming off?"

"You tell me."

He jerks at it harder, and Potter grimaces. "Would you fuck off, already?"

"Potter, I promise you this, I'm just as concerned as you are."

"It's my bloody eye."

"It's my bloody spellwork. What are you seeing?"

Potter grits his teeth in silence for a moment. Draco can see the tense working of his jaw back and forth. Then he says, "Words. At least, I think they're words. I can't read them, but they're everywhere. Signs aren't right anymore. My walls are covered. Everything."

Draco looks at Theia again, and her eyebrows are drawn up in concern.

"Close the clinic for the day," he says. "I need to have a look at Mr Potter's eye."

Theia grimaces. "You know what'll happen. I do that, yer other patients will be furious with me."

"Ask them kindly to reschedule, please. I'll work overtime for the next month to fit them in if I have to."

She seems to understand the gravity now, because she nods sharply and walks away, leaving Draco alone with Potter, who still looks like he's pondering violence.

Draco pulls him into the office and shuts the door behind them, pressing Potter's shoulders until he takes a seat in one of the uncomfortable chairs.

He looks haggard today, nothing like he had at the charity auction. His hair's even more of a mess than usual, and his clothes look slept in.

"When did you say the problem started?"

"I didn't. Yesterday afternoon."

"Not immediately after the gala, then."

Potter crosses his arms over his chest. "If you think that pathetic excuse for a defence is going to fool me—"

"I'm not trying to convince you I didn't do it. I'm just putting a timeline together." He takes a seat behind his desk, somewhere he can be farther away from Potter's — everything. He shuffles around for a quill and some parchment to take notes. "Did you go anywhere else between the auction and the time you noticed the problem?"

"No. I didn't see anyone else, either."

Draco exhales slowly, resisting the urge to tell Potter to simmer down a little. It's not as if hearing that kind of thing is especially helpful, in his experience.

"Did you eat anything unusual, try a new potion?"

"For Merlin's sake, Malfoy, I thought of every last thing before admitting it has to be you. It has to be! No one else was chasing after me at the auction, pissed off about something I'd done. No one else has extensive, in-depth knowledge about the workings of magical eyes."

"I need you to cooperate with me here. I have to figure out what's going on."

He doesn't want to say it, but Potter is the third patient who's mentioned a problem today. He'd told the other two to meet him at the end of the workday so he could take a look, but now it seems as if this won't be such a simple fix.

"I'm not helping you," Potter says. "You cursed me. Twice!"

If he were in Potter's shoes, would Draco believe himself? Probably not.

He doesn't have anything to disprove it, either. Except...

"You're not the first patient reporting a problem today. There've been two more. I wouldn't curse my other patients just to get back at you."

Potter seems to defrost the slightest bit. "What problems were they reporting?"

"I didn't get specific details. I thought they were just routine malfunctions."

"But you've got proof that what you're saying is true? I can see the letters?"

Draco taps a finger on his desk. "Well, they're confidential..."

"Right." There's a tone playing in Potter's voice that's as sharp as the edge of a knife. "I'll just be leaving, then. I can find some other ocularist to remove it."

"There aren't others. Not magical ones, at least, not in the UK."

"I guess I'm fleeing the country."

As Potter turns, Draco calls out, "Wait."

Potter stalls, but his body is still strung with energy. He looks like he's trying not to burst out of his skin. Draco recognises that demeanour from back in their school days. It usually means he's about to do something extraordinarily ill-planned.

"Why didn't you go to another ocularist first? Or a Healer, even?"

Potter does not turn around as he speaks. "I wanted to give you the chance to prove me wrong. Or at least reverse the spell yourself so whoever treats me doesn't turn you over to the Aurors."

Draco's chest aches. It isn't much, it isn't real trust, but it would have saved him if he'd done this to Potter. It might still save him.

Why does he want so badly for Potter to believe him? The idea that Potter tried to find another explanation — even just for a second — is more important than anything he did to protect Draco from the law.

"Just a few more minutes," Draco says. When that doesn't feel like enough, he adds, "Please."

"What will a few minutes get you?"

"I don't know yet. But I'm going to use them the best I can."

Potter finally turns. He looks at the wall clock, then back at Draco. "Five minutes. If you've still got nothing, I'm leaving."

~

Draco rushes to the front of the clinic. When he gets there, he stops short. There are at least ten owls clustered on the ground, flapping their wings moodily at being ignored. Theia looks up at him, harassed, a stack of letters torn open on the counter. A few of them are Howlers, stains of blood red in a field of snowy white envelopes.

"Bit of a problem, Mr Malfoy," she says.

"Malfunctions with their prostheses?"

She nods frantically.

A thought occurs to him all of the sudden, one he almost pushes away too fast to take a proper look at.

Perhaps Potter is responsible for the tampering, and he's covering his own arse.

Draco has been an ocularist for nearly two decades now, but he'd never seen a problem this scale before Potter came along. Not to mention that the only thing holding Draco's reputation together well enough to support Scorpius's endeavours is his clinic — the trust his patients place in him.

No. It's too diabolical to be one of Potter's plans. Would he really do something that could negatively affect innocent people? How would he have even gone about it?

But if anyone would be capable of getting past tamper-proof magic...

Draco knows someone who might be able to quell both his and Potter's doubts, though.

"Theia," he says, "get Teddy Lupin here as fast as you can."