"D'you want a refill, love?"

Harry looks up from his ever-so-casual flipping through the pages of the Daily Prophet to see the older waitress hovering at his table with a stack of empty plates in one hand and several dirty cups clutched in the other. Her bright, friendly eyes flick from Harry's empty mug to his face as she waits for a response.

Harry sighs as he nods and holds out his mug. "Thanks." He can't quite believe he's been here long enough to need a refill, especially when he tried so hard to be just a little bit late. As it was, despite his best efforts, he still managed to reach the cafe with five minutes to spare. And now he's waiting for Draco. Of course he is.

He finds a smile for the waitress when she returns with his cup. It's not her fault that he's awkward and idiotic and too wound up to think straight. It doesn't seem to matter that there's nothing more to this than coffee with a man who thinks he's insane; he's nervous.

"Fuck's sake," he mutters, slumping back in his chair and watching the sulky waitress as she sweeps up crumbs and bits of soggy biscuit from beneath the table where a young family have been sitting. She's starting to feel like an old friend. Harry suppresses the urge to sketch a little wave in her direction and instead watches her more amiable counterpart bustling around behind the counter and humming to herself.

When the bell above the door clangs, Harry forces himself not to look. He blows on his coffee (casually, of course), heart leaping when there's a creak and a sigh and a wave of cold, citrus-scented air washing over him.

"You're late," he says, fighting a smile.

"Yes, well, some of us haven't packed in our jobs," Draco points out. "Yet."

Harry looks now, meeting harassed grey eyes and inhaling carefully at the sharp jolt of pleasure that spirals through his chest. "I take it you're having a bad day."

Draco's mouth flickers at one corner. "There are very few good days in the finance industry."

"Get out of it, then," Harry says carelessly.

Draco's rough bark of laughter is startling and unexpected, making the approaching waitress jump slightly and direct a withering glance at the side of his head. Harry casts covert glances around for her colleague, but she seems to have disappeared, leaving them to their fate. He wonders how this Draco will react to her individual brand of customer service.

He doesn't have to wait long to find out.

"Can I take your order?" she says, regarding Draco with disinterest and tapping her pen against her notepad.

Draco, who has been quietly absorbed in folding his coat over his lap, lifts his head at the sound of her voice and levels a cool glance in her direction. "You could sound more enthusiastic about it."

The girl sighs and looks at Harry, as though to enquire exactly who this man is and why Harry has seen fit to bring him here. Amused, he shrugs, and she rolls her eyes.

"Specials today are on the board behind you," she says. "I can recommend the garlic soup, it's very... nice." She pauses, dark eyes trained on Draco. "Will that do, or would you like me to do a little dance?"

Harry chews on his lip and watches Draco, idly wondering if he should throw up a Shield Charm in front of the girl, just in case.

And then Draco snorts. And smiles.

"That won't be necessary, but don't let me stop you." He picks up his coat and deposits it with care on the nearest empty chair, then crosses one leg over the other and settles himself, straight-backed, and regards Harry. "Just coffee, please. Large. Cream. Sugar. Whatever else it comes with."

"Er... right," the waitress mumbles, somewhat deflated.

"I told you—no one likes their job," Draco says, fixing Harry with a surprisingly satisfied smile.

Astonished, Harry nods mutely, scrambling to get his thoughts in order. Against all logic, the presence of the grumpy waitress seems to have improved Draco's mood; it's as though he feels a sort of frustrated kinship with her that his more fulfilled other self could never have understood.

"Apparently not. This doesn't look like a bad place to work, though," he says, thinking out loud as he glances around at the shiny little tables, the steady but undemanding flow of customers, and the warm, bright colours.

"Don't tell me you gave up being head of the Auror Department to serve coffee?" Draco demands, horror-struck. "Because if you did, I'll... oh, good grief, is that why you brought me here? Are you trying to drag me into your madness, too? I have never worn an apron, Potter, and I'm not about to start now."

Somewhere, buried beneath the rant, is a little glimmer of real panic and Harry seizes it, allowing himself to relax just a little.

"Harry," he corrects, "and no, I'm not trying to trap you into a life of cafe-based servitude." He pauses to return the look Draco sends his way, feeling brilliantly childish. "You're going to have to trust me a bit more than that."

Draco lifts an eyebrow. "Why is that?"

Harry just smiles. The waitress takes that moment to arrive and hand Draco his coffee with an impressive look of disdain. As he takes it and inspects it thoroughly, Harry watches him in speculative silence, taking in the pristine black shirt, trousers and waistcoat, the neat hair that makes his fingers itch, the narrowed grey eyes and the long, pale fingers turning a sugar cube over and over as though searching for undetectable flaws. He's tighter, more rigid, more cautious than the other Draco, but he's also intriguing and painfully beautiful. Harry throws down half of his second coffee in one gulp. It's going cold.

"Alright then," Draco says at last, apparently satisfied with his coffee and its accompaniments. "If you aren't trying to recruit me, why here?"

"Why not?" Harry shrugs. The truth is, he's become rather attached to this place, but he's not about to admit that to Draco.

One pale eyebrow flickers. "I'm beginning to remember why we didn't used to get along."

"Yeah. And I think we came to the agreement that we were both cocks back then," Harry points out.

Draco attempts to hide a smile behind his coffee cup. "I say a lot of things when I'm watching Quidditch. It's very distracting."

"Oh, so you remember, then?" Harry grins.

"I don't know what's more disturbing—the fact that I've seen you three times in as many weeks or that I'm starting to get used to you," Draco admits.

Heart thumping in approval, Harry smiles. "Maybe you're just becoming more tolerant with age," he suggests, and Draco's eyes narrow. "Sore subject?" he asks. "We're all getting older, you know."

"Yes, thank you. I was reminded quite effectively of that fact when I sent my son off to Hogwarts last September. Apparently he's old enough, though I find it hard to believe. Were we really so small?" he wonders, dropping almost beseeching eyes to his coffee.

Harry laughs. "Yeah, I think we were, but I know what you mean. I've got two of them there now, and Lily'll be off before I know it; she can't wait." He falls silent, struck by the simple candour of the words—it's as though he has forgotten to add the barbs and insults that have always been a part of the way they have spoken to each other, and it feels good. And strange.

"Three children. I always thought you were a little bit mad. What do you suppose I should do with this?" Draco says, frowning at the pink wafer biscuit that he is holding carefully between thumb and forefinger as though it might explode.

"I didn't get one of those," Harry says, indignant despite the fact that pink wafer biscuits don't really go with coffee at all. It's not the point.

"You can have it," Draco offers, regarding the wafer with deep suspicion. "It doesn't look natural."

Harry snorts. "It's a biscuit. Just eat it."

Draco sniffs at the pink wafer, brow furrowed, and Harry struggles to contain his smile. He twists in his seat, looking around for the moody waitress, eventually locating her near the door. She stops cleaning the glass panels and gazes at him with something approaching interest.

"Where's mine?" he mouths silently.

She purses her lips and shrugs before returning to her work. Harry sighs and turns his attention back to Draco, noticing for the first time the warm, herby scent of the window-cleaning solution. It's the same one he's been using at the new house, and its presence is oddly comforting. As, for some reason, is the flightiness of the young waitress' attentions—first Blaise, then Harry, and now Draco seems to be her favourite customer. He can live with that, especially if it means he can continue to enjoy Draco's wonderfully bemused expressions.

"It's not a biscuit," Draco insists, holding it up to his face and examining the layers. "Biscuits are hard... and... brown." He frowns. "I rather like the stripy middle, though."

Harry's heart leaps at the tiny connection, insignificant and wonderful as it falls into place.

"Stop being biscuit-ist. Just eat the bloody thing," Harry instructs. "You should be honoured that she's chosen to bestow pink wafers upon you."

Draco snorts. "Offerings from the moody bint. I suppose I should at least give it a go." With the expression of one who is walking unarmed into a Triwizard task, Draco bites into the wafer and chews tentatively.

Harry watches, strangely suspense-ridden for a man watching another man attempting to eat a little pink wafer biscuit. "Well?"

For a moment or two, Draco's face is impassive, and then it crumples into an expression of repulsion so intense that Harry laughs out loud. Draco glares at him, chewing hurriedly and swallowing before drinking deeply from his cup. Harry suspects that only his impeccable manners prevent him from spitting the remnants into a paper napkin.

"Why on earth did you let me eat that?" he demands, dropping the remaining half onto his saucer.

"I thought you might enjoy it," Harry says innocently. "I definitely didn't expect that reaction."

"It tastes like sawdust... and glue... sugary glue... in fact, bugger it. That biscuit is probably what death tastes like," Draco says, wrinkling his nose.

"That... really is good to know," Harry says solemnly, gripping his cup almost to splintering point with the effort of not reaching over and claiming the rest of the biscuit for himself.

Draco sighs and regards Harry carefully, as though he's some sort of curious specimen. "This is completely surreal," he says, and then brightens. "So, aren't you going to tell me exactly what you were thinking on Wednesday?"

Relieved to be back on familiar ground, Harry smiles. "You think I'm mad, don't you?"

"A little bit, yes."

"I can cope with that. I was thinking that it was time for a change," he says simply.

Draco crosses his arms and leans back in his chair until it creaks, eyes incredulous. "You were bored of being Head Auror? You were bored of occupying arguably the second most senior position in the entire Ministry?"

"I didn't say 'bored'," Harry points out. "But... yeah, I suppose that's part of it. I'm sick of sitting behind a desk; it makes me feel old... and pointless. My kids never saw me—and they were just used to that. I suddenly realised that I had no good reason to put up with it any more. I don't think any amount of seniority is worth wasting my life away doing something I don't want to do." Harry hesitates. Chews his lip. "Do you?"

Draco wraps his hands around his upper arms, fingers tightening in a subtle but familiar pattern—each in turn: little finger to thumb, one, two, three, four, five with the left and then with the right—Harry watches the tiny ritual, allowing it to calm him along with Draco.

"No," he says at last, voice tight. "Not any more. I do think you're mad, though. You're giving up a huge amount of security. Doesn't that bother you?"

Harry smiles, leaning back and mirroring Draco's posture. "No. Security can get to the point where it's suffocating, at least for me. I need a challenge. You remember that about me, I'm sure."

Draco's eyes flicker. "That's right—you were always mad, weren't you?"

The combination of lightness and exasperation in his voice lifts Harry, and his smile widens entirely without his permission. "Probably. I'd rather be mad than boring, though, and I think I might've been heading that way these last few years," he admits.

Draco's brow furrows and, just for a second, a flash of melancholy grips his features; just as quickly, though, it's gone, and the grey eyes are once more fixed upon Harry with now familiar calm interest.

"That's one way of looking at it," he says, fingers tightening in rhythm once again. "So, what are you going to do now that you've escaped from behind your desk? Lie on your back and watch the leaves change?"

Harry laughs. "What?"

Draco gazes out of the window, mouth twisted in what can only be embarrassment. He says nothing for several seconds, and Harry is content to wait, watching the play of the weakening afternoon sunshine across sharp features and pale hair.

"I have no idea," he says at last, turning back to Harry with a rueful smile. "It's just something my mother says. I had no idea I'd picked it up."

"It's quite a nice thought, really," Harry muses, partly because he really does think so and partly because just in that moment, he really doesn't want to mock Draco. He seems almost too fragile. "But no, I don't think so."

"Don't tell me you have a plan?"

"You actually think I'd walk out of my job without one?" Harry teases.

Draco just looks at him. It's a look that Harry has seen hundreds of times before, and he almost feels as though he could sink through the floor with the relief of seeing it on the face of this Draco, here in this cafe on a Friday afternoon in February.

"Forgive me, Harry, but you've never struck me as a planner."

Harry grins. "I bet you are, aren't you? I bet you're a planning fiend."

Draco quirks an incredulous eyebrow. "I am a financial advisor. What do you think?"

Harry stalls, examining his empty coffee cup and waving it hopefully in the direction of the grumpy waitress, catching her eye and baring his teeth in an appealing smile.

"I don't think you are a financial advisor," he says, as the girl shakes her head and weaves her way over to the table to collect their cups. "Not really, anyway."

"What are you trying to suggest, exactly?" Draco demands, just as the waitress says:

"Same again?" and "Well, you're not getting another biscuit."

"Yes, please," Harry says. "And I'll have a biscuit if there's one going. I always eat my biscuits."

"Coffee," Draco says. "And that wasn't a biscuit. Or, if it was, there was something wrong with it. Do you really think I'm making it up? I'm not; you can ask your ex-wife."

"What?" the waitress asks, bemused.

"Don't mind him," Harry advises. "He's talking to me. Mostly."

"I'm talking to both of you!" Draco insists, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table, eyes flitting between Harry and the waitress with obvious frustration.

The waitress exhales messily, lifting her heavy fringe from her forehead. "I'm going to leave you to it," she says, shaking her head and taking their cups back to the counter.

"Do you want to see my credentials?" Draco says after a moment, apparently wounded.

"No, I meant—"

"Because I do realise that it's hardly the career anyone imagined for me—least of all me—but I'm doing it, and I'm rather bloody good at it, too, and if—"

"Draco," Harry interrupts, and this time he falls silent, regarding Harry with 'there is something clearly very wrong with you' written all over his face. "I'm not trying to cast any aspersions; I'm just trying to say—not very well..." He pauses, changing tack: "Look, you said it yourself—it wasn't what you imagined for yourself, sitting around and talking about money all day."

Draco's expression turns indulgent. "Is that what you think I do?"

Harry wrinkles his nose. He has never cared or understood much about money, much less the financial world, but this is the first time his lack of knowledge has made him feel inadequate.

"Isn't it?" he challenges, opting to brazen it out.

Draco accepts his fresh cup of coffee from the waitress with a soft 'thank you' but he doesn't look at her, even when she releases a heavy sigh and puts a custard cream on Harry's saucer. The grey eyes, glowing with amusement, never leave Harry.

"I suppose it is," he murmurs. "It really is horrendously fucking dull."

Harry bites down on a triumphant smile. "I've got a biscuit," he says, holding it up for Draco to see.

Draco adds cream and sugar cubes to his coffee with impressive viciousness. "I've got a job," he counters, and Harry, who had been contemplating handing over the custard cream in an attempt to make up for the pink wafer disaster, now discards that idea and consumes the whole thing in two bites.

"You've got a boring job," he mumbles through a mouthful of biscuit.

"Ah, the self-righteousness of the newly unemployed," Draco sighs, inhaling the steam from his coffee and gazing disdainfully at Harry until he finishes chewing.

"Don't you think you could let me enjoy it for just a little bit?" Harry appeals, grinning. "A bit of tolerance, one divorced man to another?"

Draco snorts. "I don't know about that. Anyway, I'm not divorced yet."

Harry screws up his nose in sympathy. "How's that going?"

"Nowhere. The harpy is managing to sink to new lows, though—she tried to go behind my back and get to my mother the other day. Astoria was furious when she found out." Draco scowls and makes minute adjustments to his silver cufflinks. "Part of me thinks it will be marvellous if she just sacks the rotten shrew, but then, of course, the whole horrifying process will start all over again."

Harry winces. "I suppose if the end is in sight..."

"It's hard to know. I doubt Astoria even knows herself... unfortunately, she has a pathological loathing of confrontation, so she probably won't ask, either." Draco sighs bitterly, and then seems to gather himself. "As I said, I'm not divorced yet, and until then, I maintain that you are the unhinged one of the two of us."

Harry sips his drink, savouring the hot sting of the ceramic against his lower lip and the rich bitterness of the coffee. "That may be so," he concedes. "But not because I don't want to sit behind a desk any more."

"You actually are trying to recruit me, aren't you?" Draco murmurs, pretending to look around for traps or men with nets or whatever else might be going on inside his head. "I should've known you wouldn't invite me for coffee without an ulterior motive."

"Shut up," Harry sighs, settling his cup into his saucer with a clank. "I'm just... saying. Something. Oh, fuck knows. When you were younger... what did you want to be when you grew up?"

"Alive," Draco says drily.

Harry's heart quickens; he exhales slowly. "Okay, I should have expected that."

Draco arches an eyebrow. "I wanted to be head of the Auror Department."

"No you didn't."

"No, I didn't," Draco agrees. "Let's talk about something else."

"You are hard work," Harry opines, and Draco merely blinks. And he is, but Harry doesn't really mind.

"I have absolutely no sympathy for you," Draco says, picking up stray sugar granules on one finger and then reaching several inches across the table to repeat the process with his other hand.

Balance me, Harry thinks. He chews his lip in contemplation. "And why's that?"

"Because," Draco murmurs, eyes on his task, "you have known me for a long time. You should know what to expect. Any complications thereafter..." He pauses, frowns, dusts off his hands and looks up at Harry with an odd little smile, "are entirely your responsibility."

"You sound like a book," Harry advises, mouth tugging into a reciprocal smile. "So, do you want to hear about my workshop or not?"

Draco slides his fingertips into his hair and worries it slightly, eyes puzzled. "Your workshop?"

His confusion wraps around Harry like a warm blanket and he leans across the table on his crossed arms, glowing with satisfaction. "Yep. Well, it's not a workshop yet, but it will be—this little building on Diagon Alley next to the Dragondale Deli; it used to belong to this mad Greek family, and they were just using it to store stuff..." he trails off, realising he's waffling.

"You're going to paint?" Draco asks.

"No, I'd be useless at that. I'm going to blow glass."

"You know how to blow glass?" Draco says faintly, reaching for his cup and examining it as though the secret to Harry's madness lies within.

"I do," Harry confirms, puffed up with pride. "I'm not exactly an expert, but I have a good feeling about it."

Draco sets down his cup and regards Harry with undisguised bemusement. "Only you could stake an entire career change on a good feeling."

"Was that a compliment?"

"It was an observation."

"I see. Would you like to come and observe my new workshop? Lots of crates, lots of spiders," he teases, enjoying Draco's expression. "Lots of cleaning to be done..."

"Appealing though that sounds, I have to be in Portsmouth in a few minutes," Draco says, glancing at his watch and reaching for his coat. "That 'work' thing, you remember?"

Harry just pulls a face. For some reason that he can't identify, his heart is beating a celebratory rhythm, and he feels as though nothing in the world could upset him right now.

"I'm trying to forget," he says at last, reaching (still casually) for the newspaper once more. "Enjoy yourself."

Draco snorts. With definite reluctance, he stands, shakes out his coat, and slips his arms into it. For a moment, he stands there, gazing down at Harry, expression indecipherable.

"It's been interesting. And I still think you're insane, but thank you for the coffee. But not the biscuit," he adds, frowning.

Harry grins. "No pink biscuits next time. I promise."

Draco takes a breath. Harry forgets to exhale. "Is it true that Gryffindors always keep their promises?"

Harry laughs, more out of relief than anything else. "See you soon, Draco."

One eyebrow lift, nod to the waitress, bell clang and door slam later, Harry is alone at the table.

"On your own again?" comes the not-quite-as-bored-as-usual voice.

Harry opens the Prophet and stares at the Quidditch scores. "Yep."

"Do you want some more coffee?"

Harry hesitates, thinking of the afternoon of cleaning ahead of him. He holds out his cup.

"Yes please."

**~*~**

Eventually, after the third attempted reading of the newspaper, Harry abandons it, takes the empty cups to the counter and pays the older waitress, who smiles sweetly at him and tells him to have a nice evening. Harry thanks her with a wry smile, knowing that the activities he has planned for the next few hours aren't going to provide him with the most fun he has ever had. Still, they are necessary—he has Lily for the day tomorrow, and he wants to show her a clean, bright, workshop-in-progress, not a dusty old storeroom.

With that in mind, he strides quickly toward Diagon Alley, relishing the brisk air that whips through his hair and sends his scarf streaming out behind him, allowing it to lift away the part of him that wants nothing more than to sprawl on a bench and think about Draco's hands or his eyes or his surprising array of expressions. For now, at least, he needs to focus.

When he reaches the workshop, he fishes out his key and lifts a hand to greet Kari, who is waving a spatula at him through the open window. He smiles, shakes his head, and lets himself into the building.

"Where the hell to start?" he mumbles, scrubbing at his hair and turning in a slow circle, taking in the dirt and the wreaths of cobwebs and the abandoned sacks and crates on the floor. It's dark. Too fucking dark.

Right.

Harry strips off his coat and scarf and hangs them carefully over the edge of the nearest crate, then rolls up his sleeves and looks around for something resembling a cloth.

"Bugger."

Cursing his lack of preparation, Harry heads back out into the late afternoon sunshine. He returns five minutes later with a handful of soft cloths, a scrubbing brush, and a bucket of hot water and pine-scented cleaning fluid, courtesy of Kari, and a confusing lecture on the proper (Greek) way to clean windows from her father.

He leaves the door open, hoping to cleanse the musty smell from the workshop, and attacks the biggest window, first from the outside, clutching a cloth and plunging his hand into the bucket, barely caring about the scalding temperature of the water. Wringing it out roughly, he slaps the wet cloth against the pane, inhaling the fragrant steam and rubbing furiously at the dirty glass until every last scrap of grime has been washed away.

His hair is beginning to stick to his forehead by the time he swills out his cloth in the bucket and heads inside, but he presses on, scrubbing and wiping at the glass until its transparency is restored. Gratified, he stops for a moment and gazes out onto Diagon Alley, catching his breath before he attempts to clean the two skylights. For long seconds, he stares up at the ceiling, wand hand twitching at his belt, but in the end, he shakes off the temptation and reaches for his bucket. He has the strangest feeling that the little old man is watching him, just to make sure he's doing everything properly.

It takes the best part of an hour, a very creaky ladder and nerves of steel to get both skylights sparkling, inside and out, and by the time Harry has both feet back on solid stone, he's worn out and soaked in scummy warm water, but there's absolutely no doubt that he has done a proper job.

"Bloody windows," he mutters, lowering himself to the cold floor in a cross-legged sprawl. He draws his wand and applies a rough Drying Charm to his clothes before opting to make the task a little easier and vanishing the mess of crates and sacks with one satisfying flick of the wrist.

Dusk is turning to darkness as he works his way around the edges of the rooms, carefully removing the old, ragged cobwebs. He leaves the occupied ones in place and acquaints himself with each of his new spiders, and then swabs down the walls and sweeps and scrubs at the floor until, by the time he is ready to drop, the little workshop is spotless.

Harry leans on his broom and surveys the neat rows of empty shelves, ready to be filled with strange and fantastic things. He's aching and sticky and covered in dust, but he doesn't care—it feels like it belongs to him again.

**~*~**

"This is so much better than your office," Lily enthuses, turning in circles on the stone floor. The bright morning sun glances off the sequins in her knitted hat and scatters tiny circles of light across the bare walls.

Harry watches her from the door, smiling. "I think so, too."

She turns to him, face alight with approval. "It's got skylights!"

"Of course. I'm going to need lots of light for this."

Lily nods seriously. "You're definitely not going back to being an Auror, are you?"

"No," Harry says, anxiety rising despite having already had this conversation just days ago, without major incident. "No, Lil, I'm not going back. If you're worried about it—"

"I'm not worried, Dad," she interrupts. "I was just checking. I like it that you're happier now, and... maybe you'll have more time to do stuff."

Harry smiles, letting his unease slip away. "What kind of stuff?" he teases.

Lily pulls a face. "Fun stuff."

"Right. Well, maybe you'll have to help me with that; it's been a while."

Lily folds her arms and sighs. "Oh, Dad, we've got such a lot of work to do."

Her expression is so grave that Harry tries his level best to swallow the laughter bubbling up in his chest, but when she shakes her head and sighs, he loses the battle, loosing an inelegant snort and laughing breathlessly until Lily's frown begins to waver.

"I don't know what you're laughing at," she giggles, "this is very serious."

"I know, I know," Harry murmurs, schooling his features into a solemn mask. "What do you suggest?"

Lily blinks. "Well, I thought we could go to the pet shop... and then the ice cream parlour. And then you can choose if you want."

"Thanks," Harry says, amused. "Ice cream I can do, but what will poor Frank think about you going to the pet shop? He'll think you're looking for a replacement!"

"No," Lily insists, looking scandalised. "I'd never do that! I just like to look at the Puffskeins and lizards and things, but Mum doesn't like going in there because she thinks I'll talk her into bringing something home."

"I see, and how do I know you're not going to try that with me?" Harry challenges, eyeing his daughter sternly and thinking about the cat that is probably wreaking havoc on his house as they speak.

"No, Dad, I just want to look," she says, eyes wide. "I promise."

Harry chews on his lip in contemplation. Here it begins. He wonders if it has just occurred to Lily that her leverage for manipulating her dad has increased several hundredfold in the last few weeks. She's a very smart girl, but she's also a very kind girl, and he optimistically tells himself that it'll be fine. He just has to be on the lookout for the occasional batting of eyelashes and coveting of lizards.

"Well..." he muses.

"Please?" she wheedles.

Harry folds, just as he knew he would. Sorry, Gin, he says silently as he locks up the workshop and he and Lily head out into the Saturday morning crowds.

The Magical Menagerie is just as he remembers it from his visit with Ron and Hermione all those years ago. The first thing that hits him is the earthy, fusty, slightly damp smell of more animals than he can identify, closely followed by the amazing racket put up by squeaking rats, sombre ravens, wailing cats, and the constant low rumble of a large collection of toads in one corner. As he turns to examine a cage full of pure white rabbits, he almost collides with a vast green snail which is climbing slowly up the nearest wall.

"Ah!" he gasps, startled, and the snail's antennae swivel slowly in his direction.

"Ah!" it mimics in an odd, high-pitched tone, and disappears into its shell.

Behind him, Lily giggles. "Stop frightening things, Dad," she whispers.

"Not to worry, sir—those snails are very dramatic," advises a gravelly voice and Harry turns to see a bearded man of about his own age, leaning on the counter and poking a similar snail with his finger; this one seems to have attached itself to the till and is making a strange rattling noise as it crawls over the keys. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Thanks, but we're just looking," Harry says firmly.

Lily glances up from her rapt inspection of cage full of Pygmy Puffs and grins. "Just looking," she echoes.

Harry and the bearded man exchange glances, and he wonders just how many persuasive children he has at home. And, indeed, how many strange animals they have convinced him to take in. Feeling suddenly fortunate that he doesn't work in a pet shop, Harry follows Lily around the store. The place is small but so packed with tanks and cages and boxes (not to mention the array of creatures that appear to have free run of the shop) that it somehow feels as though there will never be enough time to see everything.

"Look at these stripy guinea pigs," Harry says, nudging Lily.

She smiles and gently presses her fingers against the cage. "They're like humbugs."

"What do you think Frank would feel about these?"

"Frank's pretty lazy," Lily says, laughing softly as one of the guinea pigs sniffles at her fingertip. "He'd probably just try to give it a wash."

"Probably," Harry concedes, thoughts drawn to the other Frank, who he doubts would regard a guinea pig as anything beyond a tasty snack. He really does miss him.

"Charlotte Ross says it's my fault you and Mum split up," Lily says suddenly.

Harry's heart hurts as he flicks a sidelong glance at his daughter. She doesn't look at him, instead focusing a little too hard on the tangle of stripy fur in front of her.

"Charlotte Ross doesn't know what she's talking about." He frowns. "Who's Charlotte Ross?"

"A girl in my class."

"I should know that," Harry sighs, mostly to himself. "When was this?"

"Last week. Her mum's on the PTA and they were talking about it—"

"They talk about people's divorces at PTA meetings?" Harry interrupts, aghast.

"I've never been to one," Lily says, meeting his eyes at last. "But I suppose so. Charlotte said it's always the kids' fault. And especially the youngest, because they take all the parents' attention and that's why they fall out and that's why they get divorced."

"Oh, Lily," Harry sighs.

"Oh, Lily!" cries a Mynah bird from atop a nearby cage.

"You shush," Harry reproaches. "And, Lil... you know that's not true, don't you?"

She shrugs, delicately fishing out a piece of carrot from the bottom of the cage and holding it out to the nearest guinea pig. "I know you said it's because you and Mum weren't happy, but she just kept going on about it." Lily sighs, scrunching up her freckled nose. "She's in my maths group, so I couldn't even get away from her."

Filled with a probably inappropriate level of ire, Harry closes his eyes briefly and draws in a serene breath. It's probably not the kid's fault, though he wouldn't mind five minutes alone with her mother.

"I'm sorry you had to listen to that, Lil, but I assure you—Charlotte Ross is talking complete rubbish. Your mum and I split up because of us, not because of you. If she knew how brilliant you were, she wouldn't dare." Harry pauses to nudge Lily with his elbow. "She's talking out of her arse."

Lily snorts, even though she looks as though she's trying not to. "I'm not brilliant."

"I'm afraid you are," Harry says with the utmost seriousness, slinging an arm around his daughter's shoulders. "And I have the final word."

Lily makes a thoughtful little sound and leans into him. "I've seen her say things before... to people who've parents have split up. I didn't really get how nasty it was until now. I should've said something to her."

Heart lifted, Harry hugs her tighter. "Maybe you will next time."

"Yeah." Lily smiles grimly and then brightens. "Jeanette put a note on her back when she wasn't looking."

"What did it say?"

Lily giggles guiltily. "I pick my nose and eat it."

Harry laughs. "I think Jeanette sounds like a good friend. And I think the other girl is silly and selfish and doesn't understand how things are. You should feel sorry for her. Her parents obviously haven't taught her any manners."

"That's not what Mum said," Lily says darkly.

"Oh?"

"She wanted to talk to Mrs Harbottle about it. And Aunt Hermione said that Jeanette is a bad influence, but I'm not sure if she really meant it."

"Your Aunt Hermione would know all about that," Harry murmurs, and Lily glances up at him, puzzled. "Never mind. Shall we have a look at these lizards?"

"Okay." Lily nods and relinquishes the bars of the guinea pig cage, turning and picking her way across the cluttered floor toward the warm hum of the charms encircling the reptile section. As he follows her, the air all at once becomes alive with the susurrant words of a hundred snakes engaged in lazy conversation with their tank-mates.

"Is it time?"

"That is not the way to do it..."

"She is sleeping."

"She is always sleeping."

"Who is watching?"

"That food is mine, flat-head."

"Dislike it so very much when the water runs out."

Harry seeks out the source of the final mournful voice and draws his wand, casting a muffled Aguamenti and watching with satisfaction as clear water fills the huge stone bowl in a tank several feet across the shop floor. Its occupant, a heavy black snake with iridescent scales, flicks its tongue eagerly and slides into the water in a tangled heap.

"Al wants a lizard, you know," Lily says, tilting her head as the vast, shimmering iguana-like creature in the tank in front of her does the same. "Or a dragon."

"Yes, I thought he might," Harry mumbles, distracted by a rather heated exchange between two brightly-coloured King snakes over the best sleeping spot. He thinks there's plenty of space for both of them on the hot stone they both seem to want so much, but decides it's best not to interfere.

"Dad? Dad?" Lily tries. Harry shakes himself, and then she is at his side, eyes wide. "Are they talking to you?"

"No. They're talking to each other," Harry says. "I doubt they're the slightest bit interested in what we're doing. Snakes can be a bit like that."

"Oh. I thought you liked snakes," Lily says, voice uncertain.

"I do. Doesn't mean they can't be a bit... say-urath-sah," Harry attempts, unable to locate the English equivalent for the word that somehow describes the best and worst qualities of serpents.

Lily bites on a ragged thumbnail and looks, just for a moment, very much like her mother. "What does that mean?"

Harry sighs. "It's not very easy to explain. It's just a word for... how snakes are."

Contemplative, Lily crouches and peers through the glass at a slender tangle of red and green stripes. "Can you teach me?"

"Parseltongue? I doubt it, Lil, I barely know how I can speak it myself, sorry. But I can translate if you like," he offers, dropping to his knees beside her.

"There's a lot of them in there," she murmurs, fingers pressed to the glass with the utmost care.

"They're just babies," Harry says, squinting to separate the snarl of heads and tails and flickery little tongues. "I'm sure the man will move them to different tanks when they're bigger."

"Ask them how old they are," Lily requests.

Harry scrubs at his face, hiding a grin behind his hand. He has a feeling that Lily isn't going to get a straight answer to her question, but he asks it anyway.

The response is an indecipherable confusion of soft hisses. Harry waits, and, after almost a full minute, his patience is rewarded. One small, patterned head rises above the rest like a periscope and fixes Harry with tiny beady eyes. A forked tongue darts in and out as the little snake slides to the front of the tank and sways gently from side to side.

"Hello. That is a strange question."

Harry grins. "She says that's a strange question. They're not really too bothered with time," he tells her. "But we can ask someone who works here," he suggests, twisting around to glance at the bearded man, who is examining a ferret's ear through a strange, whirring monocle.

"Oh!" Lily says, gazing delightedly at the little snake. "I'm sorry. How do you know it's a girl?"

"She sounds like a girl," Harry offers, for want of a more concrete explanation.

"Ask her what her name is?"

Harry obliges, shifting on the cold floor as he waits for a response. It's already obvious that this snake is rather different from Frank. Whether the eagerness and near-constant movement are due to youth or personality is unclear, but Harry is intrigued.

"She says they call her... it's difficult to say exactly, but it means something like... little river... little ribbon of water? Something like that."

Lily beams. "That's lovely."

Harry conveys the message to the snake, who turns herself almost all the way upside down to reply.

He laughs. "She says the glittering one is very kind." He nudges Lily. "I think she means you."

Lily adjusts her sparkly hat and flushes. "Do you think her brothers and sisters don't like talking? Can we ask her that?"

Harry does, and then he asks the little snake every question Lily can think of, because he's having a fantastic time and it doesn't matter that his knees are killing him or that he has a sneaking feeling that the Mynah bird has dropped something disagreeable down the back of his coat.

He has lost track of time altogether when the bearded man appears to feed the lizards, and jumps slightly at the sound of his voice.

"Have I to start charging you rent?" he jokes, scraping the nearest tank lid back to dump in crickets and other assorted treats from a big bag.

Lily looks up at him with an apologetic smile. "Sorry. Me and my dad were talking to the snakes."

The man laughs, continuing with his task. "Get much out of them, did you?"

"Lots," Lily says earnestly. "This one's really chatty."

The bearded man frowns, turning slowly to follow Lily's pointing finger. His bristly eyebrows shoot up as he takes in the energetically weaving little snake on the other side of the glass.

"Really? Did you? That's..." the man falls silent as he catches sight of Harry and stares as though seeing him properly for the first time. "Mr Potter! I almost didn't recognise you! I can't say I ever expected to see you in here... it's a lovely surprise, though," he enthuses, face lit with genuine pleasure as he crumples up his bag and peers down at Harry.

"Thanks," Harry says, astonished to find yet another person in this reality who is polite and friendly and respectful. With astonishment comes shame, but Harry shakes it away with some effort. "You've got some lovely things in here. Some of them have got a lot to say for themselves."

"Yes, we—oh, bloody hell, Colin," the man sighs, eyeing the back of Harry's coat and confirming his suspicions. "He does that on purpose, I'm sure," the man despairs of the Mynah, who has now made himself scarce. "Sorry about that, I'll just whip it away for you." A cool sensation slides briefly over Harry's left shoulder-blade and then disappears. "Can I interest you in one of those?" He points. "Unique variety of corn snake. About six weeks old. Bred them myself," he adds proudly as Harry and Lily finally get to their feet and brush themselves off.

Harry swallows against the pang of longing that carves through him. The idea of a little companion, small enough to carry in a pocket or around a wrist, and smart enough to hold a conversation, is extremely alluring. But he did not come in here to buy a snake.

"They're beautiful," he says, regretful. "But we're just looking."

"Dad," Lily whispers, tugging at his sleeve. "Dad, I think you should get one. It'll be good for you to have someone to talk to—I don't want you to be lonely."

Harry drops his eyes to the floor and rakes an awkward hand through his hair, thrown off balance by his daughter's frank concern. Embarrassed, he lifts his chin and smiles at the bearded man.

"I'm not lonely," he assures.

"I'm sure you're not," the man says gravely, but Harry can tell that he is trying not to smile.

Lily sighs. "Are we getting a snake or not?"

**~*~**

Less than half an hour later, Harry and Lily are back at the house, occupying opposite ends of the sofa and sharing a large tub of Fortescue's chocolate-cherry-crunch as they mull over their latest purchase: 'Unusual Names and their Meanings'.

The tiny snake coils neatly around Harry's wrist as he reads, resting her head against his watch strap and flicking out her tongue to taste the air of her new home, while Frank, visibly unnerved, watches from Lily's end of the sofa with wide eyes and whisking tail. Absently, Lily pats his head and digs her spoon into the ice cream, tucking her feet beneath her and glowing with the accomplishment of someone who has, against the odds, managed to get her own way.

Harry is trying not to think too hard about that part.

If he's totally honest, he's rather excited, and he's not about to let the prospect of what everyone else might say ruin it for him. Without taking his eyes from the page, he scoops a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth and hums contentedly, savouring the bitter sweetness of cherries and dark chocolate on his tongue and the crackle of cereal crumbs between his teeth.

"That smells cold," the snake offers, apparently curious. "A strange thing to eat."

Harry licks his spoon. "I don't think you'd like it."

"No, thank you." She tucks herself into his sleeve until only the very tip of her snout protrudes.

"Here," Harry says, handing the book to Lily. "You have a look. I've just been looking for names that have something to do with water. I thought we should try to match her proper name as closely as we can."

Lily takes the heavy book and holds it open on her lap. Harry watches the concentration furrow her brow until his attention is caught by Frank, who has begun a tentative slink along the side of the sofa. Uncertain of his intentions, Harry readies a hand to push the cat away, but as he draws within a foot or so of the little snake, the forked tongue shoots out inquisitively and the cat shoots under the sofa, where he crouches and lets out tiny plaintive noises.

"Frank's afraid," he says, and Lily sighs.

"Poor Frank. I don't think he's ever seen a snake before."

"Maybe they'll get used to each other," Harry says hopefully.

"Maybe. What about 'Tallulah'?" Lily suggests, looking up. "It means 'leaping water'."

Harry chews his lip and considers his mostly hidden new friend. "I'm not sure that's quite right."

Lily nods. "Okay. There's 'Talise' – that's 'beautiful water'. 'Ta-lees? Ta-lee-say?" Lily scrunches up her nose. "I'm not sure how you say it."

"Well, maybe it shouldn't be too complicated," Harry offers. "She's only a little snake."

"She'll get bigger, though, won't she?"

"Not very. Not like—er, not like a python or a boa," Harry improvises, just in time to prevent himself from utterly confusing his daughter by apparently comparing his snake to her cat.

"Such a warm place," the snake enthuses suddenly, wriggling sinuously against Harry's forearm. "A warm place for me. How wonderful."

Harry smiles. The gratitude makes a rather nice change.

"What does she say?" Lily asks, mouth full of ice cream.

"She's nice and warm."

Lily smiles and continues to flip through the book. Suddenly, her eyebrows draw together. "Didn't you already have a name book? From when you had us?"

Harry shakes his head, reaching for more ice cream. "No. We didn't need one; we already knew what we were going to call you."

"But what if we'd not looked like those names? What if I'd not looked like a Lily?"

"I don't know," Harry admits. "You just did. You looked so much like your grandmother – my mother – and you still do. Though," he adds, gazing at his daughter, "you look an awful lot like your mother as well."

Lily looks down at the pages and smiles. And then: "Didn't Mum want to choose any of the names?"

"She did. We both agreed on all your names."

"Oh." Lily presses her lips together in consideration. "But... I mean... James and me are named after your mum and dad, and Al is named after those two teachers." She glances at him uncertainly.

Harry sucks in a breath, unsure of where this is going. "Yeah, that's right."

"Didn't she want to call one of us after someone in her family?"

Harry's stomach twists uncomfortably and he avoids Lily's eyes, instead gazing down at his hands, where the little snake is weaving around his thumbs in a shock of graceful colour that is almost enough to distract him from his daughter's question. A fair question, at that, and just another of those things that he hasn't ever allowed himself to think about too hard. He's not sure he knows how to answer it without revealing himself to be utterly self-centred.

"I don't think it's that she didn't want to, Lil," he says carefully. "I think it's just that we'd lost a lot of people and we wanted to remember them. Like my parents, and Albus Dumbledore, and Severus Snape, and Sirius..."

Lily digs a whole cherry out of the tub as she thinks. "That Luna lady's alive," she says thoughtfully. "We went to her wedding, I remember, it was really weird and cool."

"Yeah," Harry concedes, a tiny smile escaping and breaking the surface of his self-reproach. "She's very, very much alive. I think that's why we chose her name. It's important to remember the living as well as the dead."

"What about Mum's brother?" Lily says suddenly. "Uncle George had a twin, didn't he?"

Throat tightening, Harry nods. "Yes, he did. Your Uncle Fred."

"What was he like?" Lily asks, curling her fingers over the edges of the book and staring at Harry. Her eyes are so wide and penetrating that Harry is powerless to do anything but answer her.

"He was brilliant. He and your Uncle George were like this double act... they used to finish each other's sentences, and come up with these insane schemes together. You never really knew what was going to happen when they were around, but it was always interesting."

Lily smiles. "I bet Uncle George misses him a lot," she says softly.

Harry nods, eyes hot. "We all miss him, but I think Uncle George misses him more than anybody."

"I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to James or Al," Lily says, and then: "Don't tell them I said that, will you?"

"I won't," Harry says solemnly, still mired in the guilt thrown up by Lily's original question. The thing is, he hadn't forced her; Gin had always known how much those names meant to him, and she'd never even tried to suggest anything different. And he'd gone along with it, knowing that she had losses of her own to commemorate, family members and friends to honour. Had she been so desperate to please him that she had become invisible? Had he been so damaged and egocentric that he'd let her?

He sighs, lifting a hand to rub at his eyes beneath his glasses. There isn't a lot he can do for his twenty-something self now, but he supposes it never hurts to recognise past transgressions. To feel them, and to atone for them by attempting, where possible, to be less of a selfish dick in future.

Pensive, he strokes the head of the little snake and listens to the scrabbling sounds of Frank's claws on the wooden floorboards as he scuttles around under the sofa. Lily licks chocolate sauce from her spoon and gazes at him calmly.

"I'm glad I've got an alive name, Dad."

Harry smiles. "Good."

She returns to the book, and for several minutes there is silence as she flicks through the pages.

"I think this might be it," she says eventually, finger tapping against the paper. "'Misu' – it's Native American and it means 'ripples in the water'. That's lovely, isn't it?"

"It is," Harry agrees, thinking that it suits the energetic little snake rather well, and, apart from anything else, he thinks it's time for someone else to choose a name. Even Lily's cat's name came from him. It's definitely her turn. "I think that's the one."

Lily beams. "Misu," she says softly. "Little Misu."

The snake rises into the air and waves slowly back and forth, following the movements of Lily's fingers as though able to understand her perfectly.

"What do you think?" he asks. "What do you think, little Misu?"

"Lovely, lovely. Shall we eat now?"

Harry snorts. It would seem that she and Frank—at least, the serpentine version—have something in common after all. He wonders if Misu likes bacon.

**~*~**

Misu, as it turns out, likes everything. She flicks out her tongue in approval for chicken, sausages, tinned tuna fish, roast beef, and even the garlic mushrooms from Harry and Lily's dinner, though she settles quite happily for the miniscule dead mouse supplied by the man from the Magical Menagerie. Her boundless optimism is not limited to food, either—the little snake enthuses endlessly to Harry about the warmth of the house, the exciting variety of smells, the staircase spider, and the small tank he has placed on his bedside for her, "just until you're a little bit bigger, and then you can sleep wherever you like".

"Goodnight," she says, coiling into a neat spiral under her Warming Charm. "Goodnight to you, and goodnight to the small glittering one, and goodnight to the beautiful spider, and goodnight to the frightened cat."

"Goodnight, Misu," Harry murmurs, turning out the lights and wondering just what he has managed to get himself into.

By Monday morning, one thing is very clear. The thing into which he has managed to get himself is a very noisy thing indeed, and not just during daylight hours, because Misu talks in her sleep.

Most of the time, the words that escape when she is unconscious do not make a lot of sense, but Harry finds there is something disconcerting about stirring awake at three o'clock in the morning to a snake's sleepy insistence that 'it is time for the pointed one'. Still, he suspects he will get used to it.

After a shower and a quick breakfast and caffeine fix, he installs Misu on his wrist and heads out to the Ministry to check that Ron and Helga remain intact after spending most of Friday afternoon alone together.

"Wicked," Ron breathes, dropping a good twenty years and all sense of Head Auror gravitas at the sight of Misu. "He's brilliant."

"She's a girl," Harry advises, perching on the edge of Helga's unoccupied desk and extending his arm toward Ron. "Ron, meet Misu."

"Brilliant," Ron grins. "Oh, wow... Mum's going to do her nut."

"I didn't know she didn't like snakes," Harry says, watching Misu's tongue flickering over the back of Ron's freckled hand.

"It's not that, it's just... well, she already thinks you've gone a bit mad, doesn't she? Suddenly buying a snake probably isn't going to make her think differently," Ron points out, still grinning.

"I suppose not," Harry concedes. "Just more fuel for the midlife crisis rumours, eh?"

Ron shrugs, momentarily distracted as Misu allows him to stroke her iridescent belly. "Sorry, mate."

"I'll cope. It's not my fault, anyway. Lily wanted to go to the pet shop."

Ron winces. "In that case, maybe you were lucky. It's just a snake—you could've come home with a Narwhal."

"A what?"

"Rose's latest obsession," Ron explains, showing Misu a ginger biscuit and laughing when she attempts to curl herself around it and tug it away from him. "And Al's as well, if I know those two."

"I'm sure I'll find out soon enough then," Harry sighs, and then: "I'd watch that if you want to keep it; she'll eat anything except ice cream and she's stronger than she looks."

Amused, Ron reclaims his biscuit, dunking it into his tea and shoving the whole thing into his mouth at once. "She's got good taste," he mumbles.

"That's not good for you," Harry advises as Misu winds sulkily through his fingers.

"Is it good for him?" she asks, and there's no sarcasm in her voice, only curiosity.

"Probably not, but he's big enough and ugly enough to decide that for himself."

Misu laughs, and it's a rather brilliant sound.

"Are you talking about me?" Ron demands, eyes narrowed.

"Why does everyone always think that?" Harry deflects. "Anyway," he continues, dropping his voice even though they are alone in the office, "how's it going with Helga?"

"Alright," Ron says, nodding. "She's a bit fierce, but she certainly gets the job done."

"I've got a few more bits of things to go through with you, but you know all the important stuff now," Harry admits, batting Misu away from his cup of tea. "Any problems, though... you'll let me know, won't you?"

"Yes," Ron assures, as though it's the thousandth time he has done so, and it's not all that much of an exaggeration, but Harry is determined to do this properly. "Stop worrying. You're a good teacher, and I've got Helga, who seems to know everything about the job anyway. Even Fitzwilliam's been down a couple of times to make sure I'm alright."

Harry nods, biting the inside of his mouth at the mention of Fitzwilliam's name. "Mm. Good."

"You're coming to this insane dinner Mum's doing tonight, aren't you?" Ron asks, appearing not to notice Harry's grimace. "Apparently we have to celebrate my new job with every single Weasley she can possibly assemble in one place at one time."

"Of course I'm coming," Harry says. "She said—"

"She has every reason to be proud of you, Mr Weasley," Helga interrupts, stalking into the office and seating herself behind her desk. "This is a very important job."

"Yeah, I... thanks, Helga," Ron mumbles, flushing slightly. "It's nice that she's proud, it's just a bit overwhelming sometimes, you know?"

Harry, who does know, flashes his friend a sympathetic smile, at the same time looking forward to being right in the middle of it, feeding into Molly's enthusiasm and delightedly helping her to embarrass Ron as much as is humanly possible.

"I don't know, Mr Weasley, my mother has never been remotely impressed by anything I have done," Helga says briskly, batting Harry off the edge of her desk with a wooden ruler. "Get your behind off my diary, Mr Potter."

Amused at the new shift in her loyalties, Harry obeys, stepping back to face her with Misu cradled to his chest. Waiting.

"For the love of all that is holy," Helga cries, reaching for her rosary, "tell me there is not a snake in my office."

**~*~**

Just after midday, Harry leaves the Ministry. Lifted by the time spent with his old friends and grateful to be able to walk away from the stifling bureaucracy and into the sunny afternoon, he smiles as he weaves his way along Diagon Alley, and when his stomach grumbles at the savoury aroma of fresh bread, he puts off his afternoon plans and diverts to the Dragondale.

He isn't surprised to see a queue, but he is surprised to see a tall blond man in a long black coat at the head of it, and he laughs, genuine pleasure spiking in his chest.

"Turkey salad on brown, please." Draco turns at the sound, hard expression softening just a fraction when he sees Harry. "You really are everywhere, aren't you?"

"Hi, Harry!" Kari calls from behind the counter and he waves sheepishly at her. "Do you want any cakes or pastries with that?" she asks Draco as she expertly throws together his sandwich. "We've got a really nice—"

"No," Draco interrupts, glancing back at her for a split second. "Thank you. Just the sandwich."

Harry squeezes himself toward the front of the crowded deli, smiling apologetically at the people in the queue, most of whom seem torn between 'Ooh, it's Harry Potter!' and 'He's pushing in, he is!"

"Still not sure about accepting sweet things from strange women?" he teases, and Draco, apparently remembering the pink biscuit, scowls.

"Who are you calling strange?" Kari demands good-naturedly. "Two Sickles twenty-five, please, sir."

Draco shoots bewildered glances between her and Harry as he exchanges several coins for his lunch and moves away from the counter, much to the relief of the old witch behind him in the queue, who immediately shuffles forward and launches into a description of a particular olive that is 'just murder' to find at this time of year.

"I'm just over there," Harry says, pointing at his workshop through the side window.

"Yes, I—good grief, what is that?" Grey eyes widen in surprise and then narrow to focus on Misu, who has fallen asleep in a loose ring around Harry's wrist, head tucked through her tail for security.

"This is Misu," Harry says, flattening himself against the wall to make room for a round little witch with a huge basket marked 'Quality Quidditch Supplies'. "My daughter decided I needed a pet, and I'm not all that good at saying no to her at the moment."

Draco's mouth twists ruefully, even as he sighs: "Manipulated by a ten-year-old," and shakes his head.

Harry snorts. "And I'm sure you're an immoveable object when it comes to your son."

"Obviously. Listen, I'd love to continue getting in the way of everyone here so that I can talk to you, but I have a terribly dull meeting in a few minutes, and I'd actually like to try eating lunch today," he says, holding up his sandwich, and though he clearly means his words to be scathing and sarcastic, Harry isn't quite convinced.

"Alright then," he concedes, chewing on his lip. "What time do you finish?"

Draco's surprise lasts approximately half a second, and then the familiar veil of weary harassment descends back over his features. "I'll be out by four. I'll meet you in the moody bint cafe."

Harry opens his mouth to respond, but Draco lingers long enough only to grant Harry a brief nod and then he's sweeping out of the deli and into the street, long coat swishing behind him. Harry directs his smile at the floor and rubs vaguely at the back of his neck. He's not entirely sure what just happened, but it has to be a step in the right direction.

"Everything alright, Harry?"

He looks up at the sound of Kari's voice, startled to see that the queue has now mostly dispersed and the shop is quiet but for the soft humming of a purple-robed old man who is leaning on the counter, waiting for his cup of coffee.

"Er, yeah. Fine. All good," he assures, feeling slightly off balance.

"Did you want something to eat?" she asks slowly, as though talking to a mad person.

Harry blinks. Suddenly he's not hungry. "No thanks."

Kari leans on the counter, dark eyebrows raised. "Did you need something else? Hot water? A sponge?"

Harry recovers himself and pulls a face at her. "Not today, thanks." He heads for the door and pulls it open.

"So, why did you come in?"

"That's a good question," Harry says. He grins at Kari and lets the door slam behind him as he crosses the cobbles to his workshop, compiling a mental list of useful things he can do before four o'clock.

**~*~**

"So, how was Portsmouth?" Harry asks, sipping his coffee some hours later.

Draco adds sugar to his tea and wrinkles his nose. "Wet."

"Is that all?"

"No, but it's about the most interesting thing I have to say about it," he admits. "The Gringotts clients are always, without exception, so dreary that I'm tempted to remove my own eye to have something to play with," Draco says matter-of-factly, the eyes in question filled with such despondency that Harry can't hold back his laughter.

"I'm glad you didn't," he manages, drawing an odd look from Draco. "And I can't say I'm shocked that you prefer working for yourself."

Draco shrugs. "Some of us aren't built to take direction."

Harry snorts. "Come on, then," he tries again, resting his chin on one hand. "Tell me what you really wanted to do. Take a risk on me."

Draco's eyes grow intense. He sits forward and adjusts his pristine cuffs, one after the other, and then repeats the action, just to be sure. "Harry," he says gravely, "I wanted to be a Hippogriff trainer."

Harry stares back for a moment too long, caught up, and then cuffs Draco on the arm before he can stop himself, mumbling, "Fuck off, you did not."

Draco blinks, subtly examining his forearm for damage. Quietly horrified at himself, Harry says nothing, wondering if any of Draco's other friends have ever hit him and lived. It wasn't hard by any stretch of the imagination, nothing compared to the friendly whacks Harry receives from various Weasleys on a regular basis, but still.

"Did you just hit me?" Draco enquires, grey eyes inscrutable.

"Only a little bit," Harry says, hanging onto his control as an inexplicable and unhelpful lick of amusement makes itself known amid his dismay.

"And now you're laughing at me?"

"Absolutely not," Harry splutters, averting his eyes and giving in, giggling like a loon into his hand until he's breathless. "Sorry," he manages at last, forcing himself to look up.

Draco is sipping his tea, eyes bright. "I think there is something wrong with you."

"Definitely," Harry says, reaching out and tapping Draco's other arm as he allows the remains of his sanity to float away with the sudden need to keep things balanced.

"Will you desist?" Draco snaps, though there's no bite to his voice as he draws both arms back toward himself and crosses them on the table top.

"Sorry," Harry mumbles, and is about to leave it at that when something inside him—something wicked and impetuous—presses him to add: "I noticed that you like to be balanced."

Draco pales. His fingers grip in sequence—one, two, three, four, five—around his upper arms as he stares at Harry. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Heart pounding, Harry stares back, attempting to wrestle the infuriating thing back into its box before it can do any more damage. "I just meant that I noticed... that thing you do..." He points weakly at Draco's hands, which still instantly. "Don't... I mean... I didn't mean to make you self-conscious about it—it isn't noticeable, not really—it's just that... someone I used to know did the same thing... er, a similar thing... so I... noticed. That's all. Don't worry, I'm just going to kill myself with this spoon now," Harry sighs, picking up the spoon from his saucer and covering his eyes.

For long seconds, there is silence at the table, and all Harry can hear is his own breathing and the muffled voice of the moody waitress as she recites an order back to another customer. Then the spoon is being tugged out of his hand and Draco is kicking him lightly under the table.

"That won't be necessary," he says, setting the spoon down, and when Harry allows himself to meet Draco's eyes, the cautious curiosity he finds there startles him.

"Such eyes, this other," Misu says, apparently noticing Draco for the first time.

"Yeah, I know," Harry replies without looking at her. "He's beautiful."

"It is important to have beautiful things around you," she says, flicking out her tongue.

Harry can't argue with that.

Draco frowns. "I honestly don't know what to think about you, Potter."

"Harry," Harry corrects automatically, stroking Misu's head.

"Yes, and that as well," Draco agrees, waving a distracted hand. "Sitting there talking to a snake as though it's the most ordinary thing in the world, and noticing things... noticing..." Draco pauses, looking oddly vulnerable. "You never struck me as particularly observant before."

Harry shrugs. "I'm not, really. Observant, I mean. And I made my peace with talking to snakes quite a few years ago... remember?"

Draco tempers a strange little smile. "Oh, yes." He pauses, meeting Harry's eyes with a brittle sort of resolve. "Anyway, it's nothing."

"I know," Harry says softly, even though he knows that's not true.

"Balance is healthy," Draco insists, addressing the remark to his cup rather than to Harry.

"I know," Harry repeats, trying to lighten his tone. "It's not something I'm very good at."

Draco makes a small, weak sound of amusement. "You sound like my mother," he says carelessly. "Before her therapy."

Harry hesitates, wanting so much to ask but all too aware that Draco's parents don't seem to be his favourite topic of conversation. Still, he has brought up the subject this time, hasn't he?

"I didn't realise she'd been in therapy," he says carefully.

Draco nods, gazing at the table. "She saw a Mind Healer for years. After my father came home from Azkaban, things were very difficult for her."

"I'm sorry," Harry says, partly because he is, and partly because he doesn't know what else to say.

"It's not your fault," Draco says, looking up sharply, and something in his expression twists Harry's insides with shame; knowing for a fact, as he does, that his intervention would have meant a happier future for all the Malfoys means that Harry can barely look at Draco now. Instead, he shrugs and stares down at his hands, where Misu is twisting gleefully, oblivious to it all.

"It's no one's fault but his own," Draco continues, eyes hard. "We all did some horrible things during the war, but my father did more than most. Azkaban really messed him up. His sanity was pretty fragile to begin with, but by the time that place had finished with him, his mind was ruined."

Harry swallows hard against the sudden wave of sickness that rises up inside him. "I'm really s—" he begins without thinking, and stops himself. "That's awful, Draco," he says at last.

Draco shrugs one shoulder. "Some would say he deserved it."

"I'm not sure anyone deserves that," Harry says. "Your mother looks after him?" he asks, suddenly remembering Draco's earlier words.

"Yes."

Harry takes a deep breath and shifts in his creaky chair, thinking of the serene, philosophical Narcissa Malfoy and her azaleas, and wondering just what horrors she has to endure from the man who was once her husband.

"I'm sorry she has to put up with that. And I'm sorry you do."

"It's not all that bad these days," Draco says, looking up. "He sleeps a lot, and he doesn't really recognise me most of the time."

Sounds pretty bad to me, Harry thinks, but he doubts that saying so will help.

"He saves most of his difficult moments for my mother," Draco says. "And then she just disappears into the grounds for a few hours. It was the Mind Healer's idea—taking up gardening."

"It seems to agree with her," Harry says softly, and Draco's answering smile tells him more about his relationship with his mother than any words could.

"She says she has found her place," he confides, eyes warm on Harry's for the longest time yet before the guards rattle back down.

"I'm glad," Harry says, and he means it.

**~*~**

Ron's celebration meal is chaotic, delicious, and extremely noisy. Ron hadn't been exaggerating about his mother's mammoth guest list, and she has succeeded in gathering so many Weasleys that the Burrow is full to overflowing with enthusiastic red-headed people carrying homemade gifts of food and wine for the newly appointed Head of the Auror Department. Harry and Hermione—both honorary Weasleys, but still capable of being overwhelmed by their energy en masse—watch from one end of the living room as relative after relative descends on Ron with their kisses and backslaps and parcels. Even Great Aunt Mildred is present, apparently recovered, and, according to Molly, more demanding than ever.

"Hello, Misu," Hermione murmurs, stroking the little snake's head as she peeps out from inside Harry's sleeve. "Hello. What will Grandma Molly think of you, I wonder?"

What indeed, Harry wonders, watching Molly as she nods and chats to a grizzled old man with a spectacular copper-coloured moustache; she's beaming with pride, eyes bright and hands clutched to her chest.

"Are you alright?" he asks, glancing down at Misu. "All these people?"

"All these people are so exciting!" she says, poking her head between his index and middle fingers.

Harry wonders what it would be like to borrow that kind of optimism, just for a little while. As it turns out, though, he doesn't need it. Molly is astonishingly enchanted with Misu. Lily, who is seated between Harry and her grandmother at the dinner table, finds it endlessly amusing to have Molly continuously leaning around her to ask questions about the little snake, or pat her gently on the head, or offer her delicious—if unhealthy—scraps from her plate.

"There you are, darling," she croons, holding out a bit of roast pheasant on a wrinkled finger, creasing her eyes in a smile as Misu takes it, and turning away before Harry sighs and tugs the chunk of meat out of Misu's mouth.

"Too big for you," he says softly, trying not to alarm his fellow diners.

"This one is nice, too," Misu says, twisting to look at Molly upside down.

"Nice," Harry mumbles to himself, "and a little bit merry."

"Mum! Your glass is empty!" George declares in a tone of mock horror, immediately plying the mead bottle and confirming Harry's suspicions.

When Hugo is excused and drags Lily off into the garden on some mysterious mission, Ginny leans in from Harry's other side.

"How're you doing, crazy man?" she asks, resting her arm on the back of Hugo's empty chair and swilling her wine around her glass absent-mindedly.

"Not bad at all," Harry says, warmed to see her calm, comfortable expression. "I take it Lily's been keeping you up to date with everything."

Ginny smiles wryly. "Oh, she likes to make sure that I don't miss anything."

Harry sips his blackcurrant wine and returns the smile with an apologetic tilt. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I'm interested. And anyway, it's been pretty entertaining so far," she admits, smile turning playful.

Harry laughs. "I see how it must look, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I know what I'm doing."

Ginny laughs, too, lifting her free hand and playing with the beaded necklace Harry gave her for Christmas. "If anyone does, Harry, it's you," she says, and Harry is reaching out to give her hand a quick squeeze before he really knows what he's doing.

"I thought you two had split up."

As one, they turn to see the source of the familiar puzzled voice.

"We have, Percy," Ginny sighs, shooting her brother a look that is pure sisterly exasperation.

"Oh." Percy frowns, adjusting his glasses and shifting uncomfortably on the spot. Harry finds a small smile for him; he's not a bad bloke, really, but he certainly hasn't learned any tact over the last couple of decades. "I just thought... well... I thought perhaps you'd changed your minds."

"No," Ginny says firmly over the top of her glass. "Definitely not."

"I think we just get on better when we're not together," Harry says baldly, looking up at Percy as he hovers behind their chairs, but not missing Gin's smothered snort of amusement. He suspects it's Percy's startled expression that's tickling her, but sometimes it's difficult to tell with Ginny, even after all these years.

"Right. Well, I'll just go and continue to the...er..." Percy points vaguely in the direction of the hallway and excuses himself without another word.

Harry grins, inhaling the mingled scents of wine, roast meats, and everyone's best robes. "I've missed tormenting Percy. We don't see nearly enough of him."

"Speak for yourself," Ginny says. "If he didn't have red hair and Dad's nose, I'd think Mum'd brought home the wrong baby."

Harry snorts. "She'll hear you."

"She will not," Ginny says, leaning to one side and shaking her head. Harry twists around to see Molly giggling and leaning on Arthur's shoulder, face flushed and glass held high. "She's off her tree."

Harry can't really argue with what is right in front of him. "She's proud," he says diplomatically.

"Yeah, as proud as a newt," Ginny laughs. "So, anyway," she says, pointing her glass at him and narrowing her eyes, businesslike. "How's Malfoy?"

Startled, Harry splutters on his mouthful of wine. "What d'you mean?" he manages, attempting a discreet cough and succeeding only in snorting wine into his nose.

"I'm not stupid, Harry," she says more kindly than he deserves.

"I know. I just sometimes forget how you seem to know everything."

Ginny smiles with one corner of her mouth and strokes Misu with a careful finger. "I don't know anything, but I've known you for a long time, and I'd be very, very surprised if you hadn't made some sort of impulsive move on this Malfoy thing yet."

"He's not a thing, Gin," Harry says before he can stop himself.

"You're not funny," she murmurs, but her eyes are warm on his and his gut aches, just a little.

"I'm hilarious. And he's... fine. He's fine," Harry rasps, throat suddenly dry.

Ginny gazes at him for long seconds. "You really have got it bad, haven't you?"

Harry glances back at the table, anxious, but no one is paying them any attention, and why would they, when everyone else appears to be competing to tell the most embarrassing story about Ron, who is covering his flame-red face and groaning at the head of the table.

"We've been out for coffee a few times, that's all," he mumbles.

Ginny's eyebrows shoot up. "Did you see him this afternoon?"

"Why?"

"Harry, don't be a pain. I'm trying to be understanding."

Harry smiles, refilling both of their glasses. "Sorry. Yes, I did. Can I ask why now?"

"I saw him sitting on the wall outside Gringotts. Eating a sandwich." Ginny frowns. "It was the strangest thing—he almost looked... happy."

**~*~**

Over the next few days, Harry finds himself developing a routine. The tomato clock wakes him every morning at seven thirty (a much more reasonable hour, he thinks) with a barrage of squelching noises and a beady stare. Harry stretches and yawns and stares right back, missing Al and idly wondering if he could teach the tomato to spew out coloured smoke.

He showers, dresses in comfortable but not brown clothes, stuffs coffee and toast into his mouth while skimming the Daily Prophet, retrieves Misu from her bedside tank, and heads for his workshop. It's all terribly civilised, and he likes it. He likes walking the cobbles of Diagon Alley when most of the shops are still preparing to open and the smell of fresh bread and ground coffee is just beginning to permeate the cool air. He likes the peace and the chance to chat with the morning-joyful Misu in his sleeve or his pocket or sticking out of his collar, and he likes the way that some of the shop-workers and early morning coffee-seekers have started to nod and smile at him in the street, as though seeing Harry Potter on the way to his workshop is a perfectly common occurrence.

Most of all, though, Harry is enjoying the chance to appoint his workspace according to his own specifications. His other self had some great ideas, he thinks, but he also spent a lot of his time carving insanely intricate bits of furniture, and this Harry has absolutely no intention of doing the same. He spreads out on the stone floor with huge rolls of parchment, sketching out plans while Misu tangles happily in the patch of sun from the skylight above and makes 'helpful' suggestions about what should go where.

Captivated by the idea of a workshop designed purely for glassblowing and sculpture, Harry screws up his original, somewhat conservative schematics and starts again, pencilling in three huge furnaces, several specially designed cooling racks, space for his tools and materials, and two whole walls of shelving for books, records, and finished pieces. He ignores the part of himself that's insisting that he doesn't really know what he's doing, because he's beginning to have faith that another part of him does, and that's enough for now. He's never minded flying by the seat of his pants, and if he can do it in the glimpse, with everyone watching and expecting, then he can do it here.

With a little help from his quickly growing library of glassblowing books, he places owl orders with a variety of companies, much to the surprise of the salesmen and women, most of whom respond with a personal visit to the 'shop and a burning curiosity as to why Harry Potter is spending several thousand Galleons on specialist art equipment.

"We just wanted to confirm your order," explains the wide-eyed young representative of Montague's Muggle-Style Furnaces. "It's standard procedure with the larger items, Mr Potter."

Harry doesn't really believe her, but he also doesn't really mind. As more and more items arrive, Harry spends his mornings arranging and rearranging, putting up shelves and deciding on the perfect spots for his two new work tables. On Thursday morning, he goes to see Richenda, who is as wonderfully flamboyant as ever and sells Harry a brand new record player and a stack of albums (including 'Veelas, Nymphs and Squibs', just because).

"I must say, Mr Potter, what a fabulously eclectic selection," she declares, crimson-painted lips parting in a dazzling smile. "It truly is tremendous to see you here again."

Harry smiles. "You remember? It must've been..."

"Fifteen years," Richenda says, polished nails clacking as she expertly wraps Harry's purchases in brown paper and then slides them into a string-handled bag. "Do you know—I remember every customer I have ever had." She beams at Harry. "Though some are more memorable than others!"

Harry feels himself flush every time he recalls her words, but it's worth it, because he likes to sing while he works, even though he's not very good at it. He sings while he arranges new books on his shelves, while he unpacks order after thrilling order of brightly coloured glass and copper pipes, and he sings while he fires up his new furnaces and gets it wrong over and over and over before he gets it right, staggering back from the heat, sleeves scorched and face smudged with smoke, much to Kari's amusement when she knocks lightly at the half-open door and lets herself in.

"You've got something on your face," she says drily.

Harry turns to her, wiping his forearm through the mess he's made with his own dodgy spellwork. "You think?"

She smirks. "You look a bit like Darius does when he's in one of his 'baths are a tool of the institution' phases."

"I had no idea Darius was so multifaceted," Harry grins.

"That's one way of putting it. I brought pantespani," she offers, holding up a small paper bag.

Harry's stomach rumbles in approval, and he is once again grateful for his food-providing neighbours. With Kari's family next door, he knows he will never go hungry, even when he does forget to feed himself. Kari knocks on the workshop door every day and brings cake and fresh bread and other treats straight out of the oven. He's never entirely sure if she does so because she worries about him herself or because her father continues to watch him from the upstairs window, fretting about the mad man who tries to make glass in his old storeroom. Either way, he's not complaining, even if Kari refuses his offers of payment with a quelling glare that could put Hermione to shame.

On Saturday morning, Harry and Lily are examining a new shipment—assorted chunks of birch and mahogany—when the knock at the door comes.

"Good morning," Kari says brightly, stepping into the workshop with a big white box in her hands. "I saw you had a visitor, so I brought extra."

Lily blinks, startled. "Hello," she says at last.

Kari smiles. "Hi."

"Lil, this is Kari from next door—she... er, she feeds me," he admits, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. "Kari, this is my daughter, Lily."

Kari tucks the box against her hip and shakes Lily's hand gravely. Lily sits up straighter, crossing her legs neatly where they dangle from the worktable, and shakes back, practically glowing with delight at being treated like an adult by a stranger.

"Hasn't your dad been blowing himself up today?" Kari asks.

Lily chews on her bottom lip. "Not yet."

"There's still time," Kari advises, granting Lily a mysterious look.

"Er, I am here, you know!" Harry puts in.

Lily and Kari merely exchange glances. When Kari is safely out of the door and back inside the deli, though, Lily turns to Harry, face serious.

"Dad?"

Harry prises open the box and savours the sharply sweet scent of honey. "Yeah?"

"Have you changed your mind? About... liking boys?"

Harry laughs. "No, Lil. What makes you say that?"

"Just... she was a nice lady... and she was really pretty." Lily shrugs and gazes at the door.

Harry's heart skips painfully. "I see," he says softly, abandoning the box of treats and jumping up onto the table next to his daughter. "Kari's a lovely girl... lady," he amends as Lily shoots him a disapproving little look. "But it isn't like that. And I haven't changed my mind."

"Oh," Lily says, eyebrows knitted.

"Are you disappointed?" Harry asks, uncertain that he wants to hear the answer.

Lily's face clears and she shakes her head. "No, Dad. I just wanted to make sure you weren't confused."

Relieved, Harry laughs and hugs her, then reaches for the box. "Come on. I need you to help me eat this baklava."

"Will help, too," Misu offers, poking her head out of Lily's cardigan pocket.

"You can wait until we get home and have something proper," Harry says, words somewhat mangled by his mouthful of nuts and pastry.

Misu waits, not altogether patiently, and when they get back to the house, Harry keeps to his word and provides a nutritious, if not particularly exciting, mouse. As she devours her meal, Harry and Lily collapse onto the sofa, Frank curling on Lily's lap as she tells Harry about her latest school project.

"We're doing about smallpox and whooping cough and TB," she says with relish.

Harry frowns. "Why do you seem to learn about nothing but diseases?"

Lily rolls her eyes. "That's just history. And science. And we do other things, but it's boring talking about maths and comprehension questions."

"Alright, I'll give you that," Harry says, "but—Lil—look!" he hisses, gesturing carefully toward her lap.

She looks, mouth curving into a smile, and lifts her eyes back to Harry's. "Wow."

"Wow indeed," Harry mutters.

On top of Frank's stripy head, curled into the tiniest red and green coil, is Misu. Both are fast asleep.

**~*~**

Harry spends most of his weekday afternoons at the Ministry with Ron, embroiled in training, which by now mostly consists of lounging in the spare chair, answering the occasional question, re-explaining some of the more unnecessarily complicated procedures connected with managing the Auror Department, and gnawing contentedly on Ron's near-constant supply of fantastic biscuits. He spares a thought or two for his waistline, but it seems that, despite Ron and Kari's best efforts, he is actually getting leaner, and, thanks to all that scrubbing and decorating and walking everywhere, he is starting to feel fitter, too.

By the second week of training, Harry has been appointed chief coffee-maker and Helga-distracter, and by the third week, he is both relieved and disappointed to realise that Ron no longer needs him at all. At least, not here, in this office which definitely isn't Harry's any more, with the Chudley Cannons rug and the permanent smell of baked goods, just like the one in the glimpse. On that final Friday, Harry goes for a businesslike 'well done, mate' handshake at the door, which lasts only seconds before Ron is pulling him into a vigorous hug, one hand grasping at the fabric of his coat and the other slapping his back so violently that Harry suspects there will be a bruise.

"Thanks," he mumbles into Harry's collar.

"Welcome," Harry mumbles back, releasing Ron and stepping back, grinning.

"Is someone dying?" Helga enquires, looking up from her desk.

Harry pulls a face at her, because he can.

Ron laughs and says, "Not today, Helga."

Back at the 'shop, Harry leans against his worktable, tips his head back into the late afternoon sunshine, and lets go of the Ministry, that last nagging little bit of his old life. Pushing out a long, slow exhalation, he smiles.

"What will we do now?" Misu asks, emerging from Harry's collar and looping over his left ear.

Harry pushes off the table, lights his furnaces—expertly now—and reaches for a box of green glass.

"We're going to make things."

**~*~**

As February draws to a close, Harry's rituals settle into place until he is calmer than he has ever been before. He makes strange, colourful, curious-looking objects, mixing glass, wood, and magic to create glimmering, amorphous representations of whatever happens to be occupying his head at the time. After a letter from Al, he makes a smooth, round bulb of glass studded with little green lights; by the fading light of a beautiful sunset, he blends red, orange, and golden yellow glass over a curving piece of oak until it seems to glow all on its own, and when he runs into Draco at the Dragondale or sweeping through Diagon Alley, the resulting pieces tend toward the sharp-edged and silvery, and are, like the man himself, Harry has to admit, starkly beautiful.

The man he is now meeting on a regular basis at what he calls 'the Moody Bint Cafe' is sharper, more caustic and more defensive than the man Harry came to know in the glimpse, but with each cup of coffee and casual insult, Harry finds himself liking this man just as much. He's different in many ways, but he's still Draco. He's his own person, shaped by his life, his experiences, by fatherhood and by marriage and by a job he doesn't love, just like Harry. And beneath the cutting remarks and the scowls, he's clever and funny and he sees through Harry without even seeming to try. With this Draco, Harry feels naked. Vulnerable. And this Draco has no idea that Harry is helplessly in love with him, but it doesn't seem to matter.

It's an odd sensation. He likes it.

As he races up the steps to the top of the rickety wooden stand on a freezing cold Saturday morning, he just hopes that Draco will be there. They haven't arranged to meet here as such, but the game has been mentioned in passing, and he finds it hard to believe that Draco would miss it, even though Slytherin aren't playing. Neither is James, and yet here Harry is, though he decides, as he emerges at the top of the stand, only slightly out of breath, that he isn't going to think about that too much.

At the sound of his footsteps, Draco turns, coat flying and eyes narrowed.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Harry blinks. "Nowhere," he says, handing over a steaming paper cup. "I just ran into McGonagall on the way down from the castle, and she wanted to catch up a bit."

"Oh," Draco says softly, taking the cup. "Thanks. Well. I thought perhaps you weren't coming."

Secretly delighted, Harry warms his hands on his paper cup and joins Draco at the front of the stand, gazing down at the empty pitch. He hides a smile. He's not even late.

"Sorry," he murmurs, leaning out and dragging the smell of the cold grass deep into his lungs.

"Yes, well." Draco folds his arms on the barrier. He frowns. "Where's the snake?"

"Here," Harry says, undoing the top two buttons of his coat to reveal a tangle of sleeping Misu in his inside pocket. "I don't think she's interested in Quidditch."

Draco grants him a tiny smile and then looks out over the pitch. "Ah. Pick a side, then."

"What?"

"Pick a side," Draco insists, gesturing at the two teams as they walk onto the pitch. "It's no fun if you don't care who wins."

"And there was me thinking you were a Quidditch purist. You mean it's not all about the form?" Harry teases, grinning.

"Shut up. And you're taking too long, so I'm having Hufflepuff."

Harry almost chokes on his coffee. "You? Seriously?"

Draco gives him a withering look. "Do you see that girl, there?" He points to a small, olive-skinned player in canary yellow robes, dark curly hair tied up in a ponytail.

"Yeah?"

"That's Frances Mullender. She is the best Seeker Hogwarts has seen since... well, you, so they say. She's already being scouted by several professional teams and she's only a fourth year."

Harry blinks, startled, watching the girl as she tightens her gloves and laughs with one of her team-mates. "That's insider information," he complains. "It's not fair."

Draco snorts. "It's nothing of the sort. The current commentator is quite enamoured with her. Mentions it at every other game, just in case we've forgotten."

"Fine," Harry sighs. "I'll take Ravenclaw. Those Beaters look like they could do some damage, at any rate."

Draco nods, sipping his coffee. "They'll be your best chance. They've something like an eighty-five percent accuracy rate with a Bludger, and there's a lot of power behind those bats."

"Oh, really?" Harry says, amused. "So there's a chance for me, then?"

"Absolutely." Draco says, just as the whistle blows and the players rise into the air. "Loser buys coffee at the Moody."

Harry leans back slightly as the first of several high-speed Bludgers whizzes past the stand. "Deal."

As the match progresses, it becomes clear that just about anything could happen, and Harry is quickly enthralled. He watches the Ravenclaw Chasers—unmistakeably the stronger players—sent whirling off course by the energetic efforts of the Hufflepuff Beaters, who are then in turn set upon with precision strikes from the bats of the two huge boys in flapping blue robes. When Harry tears his eyes away from the buzz of colour in the centre of the pitch, he's watching the two Seekers as they switch between slow, watchful circling and flurries of darting activity. After ten minutes, he has almost forgotten that he's standing right next to Draco, until he speaks.

"I wanted to be a journalist," he says, shifting slightly and brushing his arm against Harry's.

Harry turns to him, unsurprised by the content of the admission but astonished to be finally hearing it, offered up voluntarily. "What, like Rita Skeeter?" he says lightly.

"No," Draco murmurs, eyebrows drawn down. "Well, maybe, when I was very little. I was a silly child and I liked the idea of having my name in the newspaper every day."

Harry hides a smile as the Snitch pelts past the barrier, closely followed by a blur of yellow and blue.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"I know," Draco says defensively, wrapping his hands around the barrier and leaning out to follow the progress of the Seekers. "Bugger, it's disappeared again."

"So, what stopped you?" Harry presses.

Draco sighs. "Do you really think anyone would want to read a serious exposé written by someone like me? Do you think anyone would believe a word I had to say?"

"Why not? They believed Rita Skeeter," Harry points out.

"Oh, well, that's terribly reassuring," Draco says with a dry smile.

Harry laughs, relishing the press of warm, coat-clad arm against his own as Draco leans next to him again. "Sorry. But seriously, why not? People believe you when you tell them what to do with their money, don't they?"

"Of course they do. I'm an expert."

"You're a pain, that's what you are," Harry mutters, mouth tugging into a reluctant smile. "I'm sure you'd be an excellent investigator, if that's what you set your mind to. You've always been annoyingly tenacious like that."

"I'm sure there was a compliment in there somewhere."

"I told you we'd work up to them."

Draco snorts and leans out to observe a brief skirmish between two Chasers, sending a brief waft of citrusy air across Harry's nostrils and making him shiver. He watches Draco, thinking about his success in the glimpse, and his folder of intriguing photographs, and feels hopeful.

His chosen team is beaten, just as Draco predicted. The Ravenclaw players are strong, but their Seeker is no match for Frances Mullender, who grabs the Snitch out of the air just feet from their stand, pulling out of a tumbling dive with her bright robes flying behind her. As Harry joins in with the roar of applause, she turns on her broom and grins at him before swooping off to join her teammates, and he laughs delightedly.

"Even the best amateur Seeker in the country wants to show off for you," Draco observes, sounding equal parts amused and incredulous. "It must be very interesting being you."

Harry says nothing, just follows him down the stairs and out onto the grounds, where the other stands are beginning to empty, covering the grass with laughing, chattering students, wrapped in light cloaks and house colours. As he and Draco make their way back toward the castle, two simultaneous shouts of "Dad!" fly in from different directions. He turns, just as Al sprints across the lawn toward him, followed, at a slightly more sedate pace, by James. Beside Harry, Draco stops, too, unable to walk away without making his discomfort obvious.

"Hi, Dad! It was a brilliant game, wasn't it?" Al beams. "Hello, Mr Malfoy!"

"Hello," Draco says, tone pleasant but eyes cautious. "Is my son around anywhere?"

Al looks around, chaotic hair waving in the breeze. "Oh, he's around somewhere; he was sitting next to me all the way through the game..." He twists around, standing on tiptoes to scan the crowd. "I don't know, sorry. He and Rose were arguing about something—it's alright, though; she's just mad because Ravenclaw lost." He looks up at Draco with an appealing smile.

"They played well," Draco offers seriously. "She has nothing to be ashamed of."

"How's it going, Dad?" James asks, drawing level with them at last.

"Fine, thank you." Harry gazes at his son, whose hair is now streaked with purple, and smiles. "Sent any letters to your grandmother recently?"

James rolls his eyes and shoves his hands into the pockets of his overlong sweater. "No, Dad. Bought any snakes recently?"

Harry hesitates, and he thinks he hears Draco (who is listening to a somewhat garbled account of Al, Rose and Scorpius' latest adventures at Gobstones Club) stifle a snort of laughter.

"Who told you about Misu?"

"Lily," James admits. "Can I see?"

Harry is a little reluctant to disturb Misu's sleep, but he doesn't see James too often during term time, so he slips a careful hand into his coat pocket and draws her out. Sleep-warm and drowsy, Misu writhes indolently on Harry's palm and goes easily to James when he holds out his hand for her.

"He is cold," she complains, but quickly finds a way into his sleeve.

"She's awesome," James says, genuinely impressed. After a moment, he looks up at Harry, brows knitted. "Are you having a midlife crisis, Dad?"

This time, Draco definitely does laugh, and Harry definitely does elbow him in the ribs.

**~*~**

That night, Lily spreads a tartan blanket on the living room floor so that she, Harry, Frank, and Misu can have what she calls a 'carpet picnic', and entreats Harry to make fondue, because Mrs Harbottle has been telling the class tales from the seventies, and it is, apparently, 'the best thing ever'. Harry's not sure about that, but he cobbles one together, and by the time Lily has changed into her pyjamas and fluffy slippers, he has produced a passable pot of molten cheese and a vast array of accompaniments.

"Brilliant," Lily enthuses, taking a fork and settling cross-legged on the blanket. "Ergh, what's in there?" She points at one of the many bowls grouped around the fondue pot.

Harry lowers himself to the floor opposite her. "Pickled onions," he says sheepishly. "Cheese and onion? Sort of? No?"

Lily wrinkles her nose but spears one on her fork anyway, bravely plunging it into the cheese and then into her mouth. "It's quite nice, actually."

Harry smiles, thinking of Maura and wondering what she would like with her cheese. Probably beetle bits. In their absence, though, he and Lily dip chunks of bread, little tomatoes, new potatoes, crackers, cold sausages, and anything else they can find, until their forks are scraping the bottom of the pot and Lily declares the experiment a resounding success.

Full to bursting, she flops onto her back on the blanket and Harry carries the bowls and pots down to the kitchen, feeling warm and accomplished. As he waits for the kettle to boil, he reflects that he's been more of a dad this year than perhaps he's ever been, and that realisation comes with a sharp, sweet sort of sadness. He hasn't been a bad father, he knows that, but it's taken the separation and the glimpse and Boris and even Draco to make him realise that he loves being a dad. He spares a thought for his other self, who never had the chance to find out, and heads back up to Lily with two mugs of hot chocolate and a glowing feeling of gratitude.

He finds Lily curled on her side, clutching her stuffed fish and scanning the Daily Prophet.

"Anything exciting in there?"

Lily wrinkles her nose. "Not really. You've been in the paper a lot, though," she says.

"Yeah, I know," Harry sighs, settling next to her and leaning against the sofa. While he's no longer making the front page, the speculative little articles have barely stopped since Harry left Willoughby Drive. He hardly notices them any more, but it seems that the same cannot be said for Lily, and he suddenly remembers that she had expected Scorpius to be embarrassed when his parents' divorce was made public. He pokes her until she looks away from the paper and takes her hot chocolate. "Lil?"

"Yeah?" She blinks, brown eyes glowing golden in the firelight.

"Does it bother you that they write about me and your mum?"

"They don't write about Mum," she says, stroking Frank as he pads by and throws himself onto his back in front of Harry, who rubs his belly idly while Misu dangles from his collar. "Well, they did a little bit when you first split up, but not any more. But it doesn't bother me."

"Are you sure?"

She nods. "The things they write about you are a bit silly, aren't they? But it's kind of cool seeing the pictures," she admits, resting her chin on the fish and grinning. "You always look embarrassed, though."

Harry laughs, relieved. "I don't really like having my picture taken."

"You should. You look really smart now."

"I looked a mess before, did I?" Harry teases, shaking Frank's claws out of his hand.

Lily groans. "No. But now you look fashionable and stuff."

"Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

"Yep." Lily sips her hot chocolate thoughtfully. "Charlotte Ross got in trouble this week, you know."

"Oh?" That'll teach you to mess with my daughter, he thinks with satisfaction.

"She cheated on her maths test."

"From you?" Harry demands, scandalised.

Lily shakes her head. "No. She's still mean, though. I bet she wouldn't be mean to me if she knew my dad was famous," she muses.

"I bet she wouldn't be mean to you if she knew you were a witch," Harry points out, and Lily flushes and grins.

"Dad."

Harry shrugs and ruffles her hair. "So, I don't even embarrass you. What kind of a father am I?"

"A nice one. Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, of course."

Lily hugs her fish tightly and gazes up at him. "Are you and Mr Malfoy friends now?"

Harry's heart speeds. "Yeah, I think we are."

"Oh." Lily chews her lip thoughtfully. "Is he nice?"

Stifling the little bubble of amusement in his chest, Harry nods slowly. "Of course he's nice."

"Al says he's nice. Al said Mr Malfoy gave him some tips for playing Gobstones," Lily says.

"Al doesn't hang about, does he?" Harry murmurs, mostly to himself. The little bugger must have dashed off a letter to his sister practically the moment he and Draco had left.

"He knows I don't like to miss out on anything," Lily says mysteriously, and looks into her mug. "Have we got any marshmallows?"

**~*~**

Harry is more than a little bit thankful for Lily's blithe tolerance of his notoriety on Monday, when he opens the Prophet to find a large photograph of himself and Draco at Hogwarts under the headline: 'Old Rivalries Set to Rest?' Amused, Harry crunches on his buttered toast and stares at the figures in the photograph. They lean on the barrier of the stand, side by side, elbows almost touching as they both gaze toward the same spot in the distance; Photo-Draco's fingers flicker around the edge of the barrier and Photo-Harry's hair whips about in an invisible breeze. There is no real article to speak of, just a few lines of vague speculation about what appears to be a rather unconventional friendship.

"Page two," Harry says, retrieving Misu from the butter dish. "Good, eh?"

"Uncertain," Misu replies. "Why must they always take pictures?"

Harry doesn't have an answer to that. When he walks into the Moody late on Friday afternoon, however, Draco provides him with the most compelling argument yet.

"Ah, there you are," he says, kicking out Harry's chair impatiently and closing the leather-bound file in front of him. "I got you a coffee."

Harry lifts an eyebrow but sits, brushing the worst of the sawdust from his jeans and reaching for the still-steaming cup. "So you did," he agrees, taking a huge, too-hot swig of coffee and sighing contentedly as the bittersweet liquid warms his insides. "Thank you. What's the emergency?"

"The rotten shrew has thrown in the towel," Draco announces, baring his teeth in the most unguarded expression of triumph that Harry has ever seen on his face.

Harry leans forward on his elbows. "Astoria's lawyer, you mean?"

"The very same. I received an owl from Astoria this afternoon—apparently I'm to expect the final papers for signing before the weekend is out. What do you think of that?" Draco says, eyes bright with challenge.

"That's brilliant!" Harry grins. "What the hell happened?"

"This," Draco says simply, extracting a scrap of paper from his folder and holding it up for Harry to see. It's a page from the Prophet. It's page two from Monday's Prophet.

Harry catches his breath. "Yeah... you've lost me."

"Astonishing. If I were to keep count—"

"Get on with it, Draco."

Draco sighs, then abandons the piece of newspaper and crosses his arms on the tabletop. "Apparently—and don't ask me for the logic on this, because as far as I'm concerned, that woman operates in a horrible little world of her own—but apparently she saw this photograph and became convinced that her quest to muddy my reputation and clean out my vault was no longer viable."

Harry frowns. "And why is that?"

Draco's mouth curves into a seraphic smile. "Because as far as she is concerned, you are untouchable. And now, by association, so am I," he pronounces with a theatrical little gesture that Harry finds completely charming.

"You're kidding."

"I assure you, I'm not. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, but essentially, the truth is that you have somehow saved my divorce," Draco says, shaking his head in disbelief. "I genuinely have no idea what to think of the world any more."

Harry laughs. "I think you should just go with it," he advises, sipping his coffee. "Strange and wonderful things can happen when you stop worrying about what does and doesn't make sense."

Draco ruffles a careless hand through his hair, looking up at Harry through a swathe of escaped blond strands. For a second or two, his eyes convey only bemusement, but then he's smiling, and Harry is smiling with him, and he is Harry's Draco, blindingly so, and the realisation hits Harry so hard that he suddenly has no idea where to look. He blinks and stares down into his coffee.

"I'd better get going," Draco says, draining his cup and reaching for his coat. "I have to go and tell my mother the news; she'll be delighted." He glances up at the clock and grimaces. "It's her bridge night, so I haven't got long."

"Your mother plays bridge?" Harry asks, smirking.

"Please don't get me started on that," Draco sighs. "I'll owl you," he adds, and whips out of the door with characteristic swiftness, smile still playing around the corners of his mouth.

"What's up with him?" asks the waitress, stopping by the table to collect Draco's empty cup and saucer.

Harry slides his cup over and allows her to refill it. "He's happy. You should try it."

The waitress rolls her eyes, but Harry doesn't think he imagines the flicker of a reluctant smile as she turns away. Leaning back in his chair, he catches sight of the sleek, leather-bound folder, sitting abandoned at the edge of the table. Harry reaches out and pulls it toward him, relishing the softness of the leather beneath his fingers and fighting hard against the instinctive curiosity that is demanding he open the folder and look through the contents. He's not going to do that, because the contents are Draco's, and he really fucking wants Draco to trust him.

Fingers itching, Harry shakes his head and crosses his arms atop the folder, using almost his full weight to squash the unrest of his inquisitiveness.

No.

Still, he thinks, what if Draco needs this folder? What if it's an essential, indispensible, critical folder that he can't do without? Harry chews his lip pensively and drums his fingers against the leather.

"You are distressed," Misu says, threading her way through a belt loop.

"I'm alright, don't worry," Harry replies, dropping his voice, but the waitress shoots him an odd look from the counter anyway. Impulsively, he leaves a couple of Sickles on the table, nods to her and leaves the cafe, Misu at his waist and Draco's folder under one arm.

At the gates of the Manor, Harry encounters a small gaggle of ladies, all well into their sixties and all beautifully dressed in silk robes and neat little coats. Opting to save time, Harry ducks behind a bush before he is spotted and casts a quick Notice-Me-Not charm, then, when the gates swing open, he tacks himself to the back of the little group and trundles up the drive, feeling rather pleased with himself.

When the members of Narcissa's bridge club—they must be—disappear into the west wing of the house, Harry makes his way along the opposite corridor, seeking out Draco's study. At the third turn, raised voices ring out across the panelled hallway. Harry slows.

"The chattering monkeys are here! They know all about you, Draco!" someone cries in a shaky, refined voice that is all too familiar.

Holding his breath, Harry turns the corner, and the sight that greets him is both disturbing and unsurprising. Draco is standing in the doorway of his study, one hand wrapped protectively around the handle, while at the other side of the corridor, wasted and unkempt, weaving slightly from side to side as though unable to stop moving, is Lucius Malfoy.

"I think you should go back to your rooms," Draco says calmly. "Does Mother know you're wandering around?"

"She doesn't care, Draco," he hisses, gesturing wildly with a wooden cane that seems far too plain for him. "She's brought those women over to talk about me—and you, Draco," he insists. "They all know why you couldn't keep your wife—everyone knows." Lucius laughs, and it's a hollow, wrenching sound that, combined with Draco's audible intake of breath, makes Harry want to creep away down the corridor and out of the house, but his feet seem to be stuck to the floor and all he can do is watch.

"Dad," Draco appeals, voice stretched thin. "Just go back to your rooms. I'll call Bilby and he can take you—"

"I do not take orders from you," Lucius hisses, stepping closer, and managing to look extremely intimidating for an ageing man in a velvet dressing gown. He wipes spittle from his mouth with an embroidered handkerchief and glares down at his son, pressing his negligible height advantage. "You are a disgrace, and everyone knows it—do you have any idea what sort of damage you are doing to my reputation?"

Harry digs his fingernails into the leather folder in his arms and grits his teeth against the fury coursing through his veins, but Draco is unmoved. The almost imperceptible tightening of his fingers around the door handle is the only outward sign of his discomfiture, followed, as Harry watches, by the brush of his other hand against the wood of the door frame, but his eyes never leave his father's.

"I think you ruined your own reputation when you started torturing Muggles, don't you?" he says calmly, and there's something in his voice that makes Harry suspect that there's nothing new about this conversation.

"How dare you?" Lucius whispers, voice soft and dangerous as he pats at his robe pockets, and Harry reaches instinctively for his wand, just in case.

"I don't know," Draco says wearily. "Are you going to try to hex me now?"

Lucius steps right into his son's personal space, eyes wild. "Did you take my wand?" he demands, raising his cane to press against Draco's cheek with each word. "You know, if you'd had a few more hexes when you were a boy, perhaps you wouldn't have turned out to be such—a—hideous—disappointment."

Harry bristles, fingers tightening around his wand. It's only the knowledge that Draco would absolutely kill him that prevents him from incapacitating Lucius with a simple flick of the wrist. He doesn't give a flying fuck if he's mentally damaged; he's way out of order and the urge to protect Draco burns so fiercely that it obliterates all logic in its path.

"Well, it's always nice to hear that," Draco murmurs, never looking away from his father. "No, I did not take your wand. Is there any particular reason why you are so disenchanted with me today?"

"You have some nerve, boy," Lucius hisses, stubbled jaw clenched tight. "We gave you everything—every chance to forge a lifestyle befitting your lineage. All you had to do... all you had to do," he repeats, throwing each staccato syllable into Draco's face with an unnerving tightrope-balance of lucidity and derangement, "all you had to do, Draco, was forget your... inconvenient little deviance, but you could not do it—because you are weak!" Lucius spits, cane pressing into Draco's neck.

Pinned to the spot beneath his charm, Harry inhales sharply. The implication slams into him like a hail of Bludgers, pounding him with a confusing mixture of relief and rage that makes him want to slump to the floor and bring the heavy folder into decisive contact with his forehead.

"I'm not going to argue with you about this," Draco says, gritting his teeth. "Just... step... back."

Lucius leans in impossibly closer, dropping his voice to a harsh whisper that rakes unpleasantly down Harry's spine. "She always knew you were nothing but a sodomite."

A fraction of a second later, Draco's wand is drawn and Lucius finds himself pushed firmly but not roughly against the opposite wall, eyes hazy and lips drawn back in a bloodless smile. With a sharp crack, Bilby appears in the corridor between father and son.

"Mister Malfoy... Master Draco!" he wails, glancing anxiously between them, and then cries out in surprise and pain as Lucius' cane shoots out and catches him behind the knees, knocking him to the ground with an audible thump.

Harry finally allows himself to slump against the wall, lifting a hand to his face and rubbing at his heated skin.

"Dad, stop it," Draco says dully. Sheathing his wand, he picks up the startled elf and bends to whisper to him: "Fetch the calming potion—the blue one—and tell my mother that he's had a turn."

As Bilby disappears, Lucius seems to crumble. Right before Harry's eyes, the unhinged fury dissolves into nothing and the tall, angular figure turns small and beseeching. The hard grey eyes soften until they are so like Draco's that Harry's chest aches, and the pale hand not clutching the cane reaches out, trembling, across the expanse of corridor.

"Draco," he whispers, "dear Draco—I only want to talk to you."

"Yeah," Draco sighs, gazing at his father with an indecipherable expression that only serves to hammer home the knowledge that Harry has inadvertently intruded on something sadder and more bewildering than he could ever have imagined.

"You look so unhappy, Draco," Lucius murmurs, shuffling back into the centre of the corridor. Draco doesn't stop him.

Grey eyes flicker and Draco nods stiffly. "I'm fine, Dad."

The informal address only seems to make Draco's lie harder to hear. Harry waits, biting down on his bottom lip until he tastes blood, coppery-salty in his mouth. Eventually, Bilby reappears with the potion, which the now frighteningly compliant Lucius drinks without argument; he follows the house-elf away down the corridor, leaning heavily on his cane and glancing back every few steps at his son. Draco remains motionless and upright until the small figure and the unsteady one disappear out of view, and then he slumps against the doorframe and presses both hands to his face, looking suddenly so vulnerable that Harry can barely stand it.

He can't just step out of the shadows and admit to having witnessed the whole exchange; that much is obvious. Harry supposes he can owl the folder, though it's heavy enough to necessitate a trip to the post office, he thinks, weighing it in his hands and wondering distractedly just how many birds will be needed to—

"What the...?" Harry jumps as something—someone—Draco—walks into him at speed. "Harry?"

"Fuck," Harry mumbles, furious with himself. He dispels the charm and forces himself to meet Draco's eyes. "Sorry."

"How long have you been here?" Draco's voice is cool but real fear flickers across his face.

"Not too long," Harry hedges. He holds out the folder. "You left this at the cafe... I thought it might be important so I brought it back."

For several seconds, Draco stares at his forgotten possession as though he doesn't recognise it, and then takes it from Harry and holds it against his chest like a shield. "I see. And is there any particular reason why you were lurking around in my house, hiding under a spell? Standing in corridors, listening to other people's conversations?"

Harry scrubs at his hair, thoroughly ashamed of himself. "I didn't mean to listen to anything, I really didn't... I know this doesn't look good, and I'm not sure if I'd believe me, but I used the spell so that your mum's bridge-ladies didn't notice me on the way up the drive, and then I forgot to... get rid of it," he finishes weakly, already certain from Draco's expression that he isn't having any of it.

"You were spying on me."

Horrified, Harry only just manages to stop himself from taking an ill-advised step forward. "No! Draco, I really wasn't... when I came around this corner, you and your father were already arguing, and I just sort of..." ...panicked, froze up, went very still and not very Gryffindor? his brain supplies, but he lets the end of the sentence go in favour of a vague, apologetic hand gesture.

"You just sort of decided to stay and listen," Draco says coldly. "I see. Well, now you've witnessed my father's crumbling sanity for yourself. No doubt you'll have something to say about it?"

Harry swallows dryly. "No, I... this wasn't intentional, Draco, it really wasn't. What could I possibly have to say to that? I understand why you played it down, I—"

"What are you talking about?"

"Just that... when you mentioned your dad before, you made it sound like it wasn't that much of a big deal, but I get it... I understand why you wouldn't want to spend much time thinking about how nasty it was," Harry finishes quietly, knowing immediately that he's chosen the wrong words and utterly fucked it up.

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Draco demands.

Harry lets out a long, careful breath. "Just that I understand that he must be difficult to deal with."

Draco's eyes flash dangerously. "Because he's so nasty?" he says quietly.

"That's not what I meant," Harry attempts but the guards are up and he knows it's no good. Not that it will stop him from trying.

"He is damaged, Potter. He's hurt. He doesn't know what he's saying when he's saying it, and he definitely doesn't remember it afterwards. When he's not insulting me or winding up my mother, he's like a confused child... or worse," Draco says, knuckles turning white from their death grip on the folder. "I don't know if I should be surprised or not that you of all people are so judgemental."

Harry scowls, sympathy prickling into indignation. "I'm not judging him, but if we're going down that road, I think you were the one berating him for things he's done in the past. I'd have thought that you of all people would want to let people move on from their mistakes."

Draco looses a small, sharp sound of disbelief. "You are unbelievable."

"You'd know all about that," Harry snaps, making no sense and not caring.

Draco's eyes gleam, stoking Harry's fury and ensuring that he is painfully and inconveniently aroused. For an unhelpful split second, he wonders if he could shatter this argument by shoving Draco up against the wall and kissing him hard.

"Fuck you."

Harry laughs. "Yeah, you'd like that," he mumbles to himself, staring at the floor and attempting to come up with a response that doesn't make him sound like a fourteen-year-old.

Draco gets there first. "Excuse me? If you're referring to what my father said, then—"

Harry looks up, face heating. "No, I bloody wasn't, you defensive fucking prat! I don't care if you're gay! I can't say I'm all that surprised, but I don't care! I doubt your father even cares, it's probably just another thing he can give you a hard time about," Harry rants, rapidly losing the thread of his argument but ploughing on regardless. "You got married, you reproduced, and now, if you want to be gay then you should bloody well get on with it!"

Draco stares at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, and oh, god, he's so fucking buttoned up, and all Harry wants to do is unbutton him.

Finally, he frowns and appears to shake off Harry's tirade. "This isn't about me. It's about my father, and whatever you heard or saw, I will do my best for him because we are family, and that is what families do."

"I know how families work, Draco."

"Oh, really?" Draco snipes. "Because as far as I'm aware—"

"Look," Harry interrupts, folding his arms defensively, "Arthur Weasley mightn't have been there when I was born, but he would never call me a hideous disappointment."

Draco glares. "Well, perhaps he should have."

"Fine. I see." Stung, Harry swings around and stalks away from Draco, hurrying through corridor after corridor without really seeing where he is going, until eventually he emerges into the entrance hall. There is, thankfully, no sign of Lucius, Bilby, Narcissa or any of her lady-friends as Harry stomps his way down the drive and Apparates away, livid with himself and the lot of them.

**~*~**

Reluctant to return to his silent, empty house, Harry jumps to Diagon Alley and walks slowly through the Friday evening crowds, head down and hands stuffed into his coat pockets. Surrounded by warm laughter and the mingled scents of hot food, perfume, and smoke, he feels more and more wretched with every step, and cannot even bring himself to answer Misu's increasingly anxious enquiries.

He lets himself into the workshop and kicks the door closed behind him, shutting out the twinkling lights and happy chatter. Muttering darkly to himself, he slams a record onto the player and fires balls of light into five little green lamps that he made just last week and hung from the rafters. The small space glows in shades of emerald and jade and the needle drops onto a crackly recording of an angry, thrashing song that matches his mood. Fully aware that he's behaving like a stroppy teenager and struggling to care, Harry paces the stone floor, back and forth, back and forth, and around the worktables. He throws off his coat, rakes his fingers through his hair, retrieves Misu, who has been flung onto the nearest table along with his coat, just about resists the urge to smash all the glass he can see.

And then stops.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" he bellows, coming to a halt in the middle of the floor. He rubs his eyes behind his glasses and arches the tension out of his back, releasing a long, messy breath and forcing the frustration to drain away.

"Do not believe you are not angry," Misu insists, more strident than Harry has ever heard her. "Can feel it. Can feel it on you. Listen!"

"I'm listening. I'm sorry. And yes... I am—I was angry." Harry pauses, blinking in the soft green light. "I'm still a bit angry. He's such a fucking wanker sometimes."

"Do not know much of the other," Misu admits, twining herself around Harry's wrist. "But suspect you will think better if you feel calm."

"Easier said than done," Harry says, but Misu merely flicks her tongue and settles down to sleep.

Harry sighs, heaving himself up onto a worktable. He leans back on his elbows to stare up at the stars that glitter on the other side of the skylight. Of course he's being an idiot. That much is obvious. Of course Draco is a defensive, intractable pain in the arse; he always has been. Harry knows that. He was spiteful and angry, but when Harry allows himself to consider it, he knows that Draco had every reason to be. The spectre of the man who used to be Lucius Malfoy swims in front of Harry's eyes and he suppresses a shiver. Draco had never wanted him to see that. And, alright, so he's stubborn and far too proud for his own good, but Harry knows he cannot claim to be any better, and something in his chest squirms with the knowledge that he is the one in the wrong.

"It was a stupid argument, anyway," he sighs to the room, and suddenly the pounding music is making his head hurt. With a flick of his wrist, he silences the record player and sits up straight, wrapping his fingers around the hard edges of the table. He knows what he has to do, and he needs to act before he changes his mind.

"Sorry, Misu," he sighs, gently prying her from his wrist and installing her on her favourite shelf—the one with the little heat lamp and the collection of wooden tubes he has made for her to hide inside. "I think it's best for you to keep out of the way for now."

"What will we make?" she asks, shaking off her weariness and hanging over the edge of the shelf.

Harry rolls up his sleeves, lights his furnaces and extracts his most delicate copper pipe. "An apology," he says, and the admission soothes him.

"What does an apology look like?" Misu wants to know, tiny black eyes fixed on Harry.

"I don't know," Harry admits. "Let's find out."

As the furnaces heat up, Harry dispatches the angry music and drops the needle onto a record that always makes him smile; right now, he doesn't care what anyone thinks, and besides, the only witness is Misu, and she isn't picky; she just likes to feel the vibrations through her shelf, and is happy with anything from Mozart to the Weird Sisters.

'Veelas, Nymphs, and Squibs' it is, then, and as 'Curse-breakin' Man' crackles into life, he whacks up the volume as far as it will go. Misu wriggles delightedly on her shelf, and Harry sets to work on melting down pots of green, blue, and smoky grey glass.

He isn't sure what he's doing, but he very rarely is, and that's fine. All he can do is concentrate on the smoke, the changing shape of the glass, the turn of the pipe, as he pours everything he feels for Draco—the love, the exasperation, desire, confusion, remorse—into his work and hope that when he steps back from the befuddling heat, he will be left with something beautiful, or at least something interesting.

It quickly becomes obvious that this isn't like the other Draco sculptures. The angles are softer, more delicate, and he has no idea how he achieved those thin, ribbon-like strands of blue and green glass, but combined with the paper thin shimmer of the twisted bulb of grey that is almost hidden within, the whole thing has the effect of a gentle, cleansing wave, a flicker of seafoam, and the fragile warmth of most, if not all, of the sorrys that Harry owes.

Singing along to one of Celestina's most theatrical numbers, Harry carefully shovels his almost-finished piece into the green flames of the final furnace, slams the heavy door with a flourish and sets about sweeping up the debris from the floor. As he shakes a large brown spider out of his broom's bristles, someone raps at the door. Startled, Harry watches the spider scuttle away under the worktable and out of sight, before calling out the name of the only person who ever knocks at that door. Even as he does, he knows it's far too late in the evening for her to be hanging around.

"Kari?"

There's a soft cough and then: "Er, no."

Harry's heart leaps. Still clutching his broom, he hurries to the door and opens it. "Draco."

"Yes." Draco gazes back at him, mouth tight and eyes uncertain. "May I speak to you?"

Harry nods, a little unnerved by the formality. "Yeah," he says softly, stepping back to allow Draco into the workshop.

He walks slowly into the centre of the room, glancing around at the shimmering pieces stacked around the walls, the licking flames of the furnace and the gleam of the copper pipes and pots in the lamplight.

"Dark, dark magic, flowing through my veins; dark, dark, magic, I'll never be the same!" Celestina warbles. Harry can't see Draco's face now, but he can imagine it. He wonders if he should jump in, get his apology in first, but something about the set of Draco's shoulders compels him to stay quiet for now. Taking a deep breath, he joins Draco at the workbench, leans on the solid surface and waits.

"I was very rude to you," Draco says at last, still with his back to Harry.

"I understand, you didn't—"

"Good grief, let me say it, won't you?" Draco snaps, turning to him with arms crossed and expression aggrieved. "I don't do it very often, believe me."

"Sorry," Harry murmurs, holding up an acquiescent hand.

"Thank you. I was very rude to you; it was unnecessary, and I apologise," Draco says stiffly. Frowns, and then: "Are you listening to Celestina Warbeck?"

"Er," Harry manages, unsure where to start. "Yeah, I'm afraid I am," he admits, wrinkling his nose in embarrassment. And it's all your father's fault, he thinks. Your other father, he corrects himself with an inward wince, and, with some effort, pulls himself together. "For some reason, she makes good working music. I'm sorry, too," he adds. "I really didn't mean to intrude."

Draco sighs. "I know you didn't, and you're really going to have to let me finish or I'll have to leave and start all over again."

Trying hard to temper a smile, Harry nods. "Okay. Please continue."

"Where was I? Ah, yes. I apologise. Mostly. You shouldn't creep around in people's houses, and you can be terribly tactless at times, but I am sorry for what I said about your family. That was unnecessary, and I'd like you to forgive me, because... because, against my better judgement, I think you're a rather good friend," he finishes, expression grim and eyes narrowed as though he's expecting to be mocked or even attacked.

Startled but moved, Harry nods slowly. "Finished now?" he asks, almost in a whisper.

"Yes," Draco says, folding his arms.

"Okay. Good. I accept your—slightly odd, let's be honest—apology, and I'm sorry for what I said, and what I saw, and for... er, storming out of your house like an idiot." Harry levers himself back onto the worktable and shifts in place, playing for time. "It's not easy to watch someone you actually give a fuck about being spoken to like that, and you know that impulse control has never been my strong point."

Draco snorts. "I suppose you did rather well, considering," he admits. He gazes at Harry, eyes glowing in the green lamplight. "This is a very civil conversation," he says, sounding puzzled.

"It is," Harry agrees, letting the smile out just a little. "Is that bad?"

Draco takes off his coat, lays it inside out on the worktable opposite Harry's, and then pulls himself up to sit on the hard surface in one characteristically graceful movement.

"No. But when I imagined the conversation we would have if we ever spoke again after the war, it was never anything like this."

Harry's heart stutters and for a moment, all he can do is stare back across the stone flags that separate them. "I didn't realise you'd imagined it."

"Once or twice over the years," Draco says, fingers twitching defensively. "I sometimes had the impression that we missed out on saying things to one another."

Harry closes his eyes, just for a moment. "Yeah?" he says at last, voice rough. "Do you think they'd have been apologies or 'what the fuck did you do that to me for'-s?"

Draco laughs softly. "Plenty of both, I'm sure."

"You're probably right," Harry says, head full of hushed voices in the hospital wing, bright eyes and invisibility cloaks and take the unknown road now. Amid the tangled memories of apologies never made, something tugs at Harry's brain, and when it clears, he jumps to the floor with a muffled profanity.

"What's the matter?"

"Forgot something," Harry says, throwing up a heat-shield charm before opening the furnace and extracting his blue and green piece with a long-handled shovel.

Draco slithers to the floor and approaches the table where the glass sits cooling on a miniature rack. He presses his fingertips against the edge of the table and leans forward as though propriety and the possibility of injury are the only things preventing him from reaching out and touching.

"What is it?"

"It's... well, it's sorry for behaving like a cock," Harry admits, stowing away his shovel and facing Draco across the table.

"You made this? Just now? Tonight?"

"Yes."

Draco glances between Harry and the cooling glass, eyebrows knitting together. "I had no idea."

"What's that you're eating?" Misu murmurs in her sleep.

Harry frowns. "You had no idea about what?"

"I had no idea that you were... talented," he says, struggling to get the word out.

Harry snorts, using a spell to rotate the piece so that he can examine it from all angles. "Thanks, Draco," he says drily, though secretly he's thrilled by the backhanded compliment. "Did you really think I'd pack everything in for this if I was completely useless?"

Draco lifts an eyebrow. "I've seen you do stranger things."

"Shut up."

Draco smiles. "Well, much as it pains me to admit it; it's beautiful. It looks like water."

"In that case," Harry says slowly, hoping he's not making a colossal mistake, "it's yours."

"Are you quite certain?"

"Yes, Draco, I'm quite certain," Harry says, unable to stop himself from mocking Draco just a little bit.

"You're infuriating. Thank you," he adds, tone turning gracious. "I'll put it in my study where my father can't use it for target practice."

Harry grimaces but says nothing; he's still unsure how he should deal with the subject of Lucius Malfoy, even now that he and Draco have resolved their argument. Draco himself seems to swing between defensiveness, fierce loyalty and dark glittering humour without warning, so he hasn't a hope of keeping up.

"You don't have to look so worried," Draco says at last with an odd little smile. "I'm not going to bite your head off if you laugh."

"You'll forgive me for being cautious," Harry mutters, picking at his sleeves and gazing at the rotating glass in order to avoid looking at Draco.

Draco taps his fingers against the worktop. "Yes. It's complicated, I'll admit that. But sometimes the only thing I can do is make light of it. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to do so... perhaps it's callous of me, heartless... but otherwise, I think I might..."

"Drown?" Harry murmurs into the silence.

"Yes. Exactly," Draco says quietly, and now Harry looks at him—has to look at him—and despite his stiff posture, hard shoulders and mouth pressed thin, the barriers have dropped away and Harry can see him so clearly that his breath is stolen and his chest aches.

He drags in a painful breath. "I don't think you're heartless."

"No?"

"Not any more," Harry admits, mouth tugging into a half-smile. "Maybe I did once, a long time ago."

"I thought a lot of things about you a long time ago," Draco says, eyes glinting with amusement.

"I'm sure you did," Harry says, intrigue sparking inside him as he slows the glass piece to a stop with a sweep of his hand and grins at Draco. "And now I'm sure you regret it terribly."

Draco snorts, and then glances down at his stomach, which has begun emitting an impressive growling sound. "I don't know about that, but I regret missing dinner... which was completely your fault, by the way," he advises, arching an accusing eyebrow.

"I think you need a lesson in how responsibility works—I'm sure Lily could help you out with it... or her cat; I'm pretty sure he understands it better than you do," Harry says, reflecting Draco's disdainful expression back to him, but he still leaves the worktable and goes in search of sustenance, rifling around in boxes and on shelves until he finds the tub of leftovers he knew he had somewhere.

"There you go," he says, opening the box and plonking it down in front of Draco.

Grey eyes narrow in bewilderment and pale fingers come up to pull gently at the cardboard flaps of the box. "What is it?"

"Food," Harry advises, but relents at Draco's expression. "Nice Greek things from next door. There's a bit of orange cake there..." He points. "Some almond biscuits, and that's a sort of fried dough thing with honey on it. It's all good, just eat it."

Draco hesitates before picking up a bit of pantespani and regarding it with suspicion. "How do I know you're not trying to poison me?"

"Draco, if you really think I'd go to all this trouble to murder you, then feel free to go and find your own food," Harry advises, reaching for a biscuit and biting into it with deliberate relish. "But," he continues, through a mouthful of almondy crumbs, "if you would like to dice with danger and risk it, be my guest."

"Fine. On your head be it," Draco sighs, and takes a bite.

Harry applauds. Draco gives him the finger.

**~*~**

"He's not evil, you know," Draco says, licking honey from his fingertips and gazing intensely at Harry, who nods and attempts to ignore the unhelpful flare of interest in the pit of his stomach. "He's mad."

"I don't think very many people are truly evil," Harry offers.

"Interesting that you of all people should say that," Draco says. "You've grown up with evil."

Harry shrugs, though he feels anything but nonchalant. "So have you, if you want to look at it that way."

Draco makes a small sound of agreement and sweeps several stray pistachio bits into his mouth. Harry watches him, fascinated, from just inches away; they both sit cross-legged, facing each other atop the spare workbench, just as he and Maura and now he and Lily have done so many times before. Between them sits the box of treats, now almost empty, and though Harry has completely lost track of time, the occasional shout and rowdy song from outside tell him all he needs to know about the lateness of the hour.

The residual warmth from the furnaces and the blazing green lamps has persuaded Draco out of his jacket and waistcoat, and now he bends over the cake box, eyes narrowed and hair gleaming, with sleeves rolled up and top button undone. Mouth dry and heart racing like an idiot, Harry fiddles with the sleeves of his thin sweater and tries not to think about what would happen if he were to lean forward and just grab his collar, capture his mouth and swipe the honey from his lips.

"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"

Harry blinks. Draco is staring at him, one eyebrow raised expectantly. "Er... sorry, think I zoned out for a second. What were you saying?"

Draco shakes his head and sets down his half-eaten biscuit on a bit of greaseproof parchment torn from the bottom of the box. "Never mind. There's only so much moaning about my father that can be healthy, anyway."

"I don't know," Harry says, "Some people would say it's better to just vent... get everything out."

Draco laughs darkly. "Some people are terribly idealistic," he says, eyes sharp, and then seems to sag, resting his elbows on his knees and letting out a rueful sigh. "Listen... I wasn't underplaying it as much as you think when I said that it isn't all that bad these days. You saw him at his worst, but he's only lucid for perhaps half an hour a day, and my mother really does bear the brunt of it. The rest of the time, we just get on with our lives. She plants flowers and plays cards, and I provide sound financial advice and... sit in outhouses with you, apparently."

"It's a workshop, not an outhouse," Harry mumbles, still digesting the rest of Draco's words.

"Semantics," Draco shrugs, crunching the other half of his biscuit.

"I'm prepared to bet..." Harry twists uncomfortably and rummages in his pockets, slapping down the contents on the tabletop, "seven Galleons, thirteen Sickles and a lovely pair of needlenose tweezers... that you do more than just that."

"Tempting," Draco murmurs, picking up the delicate glasswork tweezers and examining them with interest, "but I have no idea what I'd do with these if I won them. Why don't you just tell me exactly what it is you want to know before you decide to gamble your life savings on finding out what I do at the weekends?"

"I'm not that interested, believe it or not," Harry lies, reclaiming his tweezers. "Although I do have a vague interest in what you keep in your big black folders, because whatever's in there is far more fascinating than accounting stuff."

"I'm not an accountant," Draco protests automatically.

"Yeah, because that's the point I was making," Harry mumbles, reaching for the last bit of cake.

"Why do you want to know?"

"What happened to 'just ask me before you sell your children', or whatever it was you said?" Harry asks, sucking orange syrup from his bottom lip and gazing at Draco wearily.

"You really hear what you want to hear, don't you?" Draco sighs. He picks up a Sickle from Harry's pile and sets it spinning, watching its progress across the tabletop until it smacks into Harry's knee and clatters to a stop.

"Come on," Harry wheedles, shooting Draco his most appealing smile. "Do you actually think we have anything to hide from each other at this point? Look at us—it's Friday night and we're sitting in an outhouse, sharing leftover Greek food. What've you got to lose?"

Draco stares, and then, quite unexpectedly, smiles. "You've no idea."

Harry's stomach flips. "Tell me."

"What's it worth?"

Harry rolls his eyes; it won't do to let Draco know he's enjoying the game. He indicates the pile at his side: "How about seven Galleons, thirteen Sickles, and... that's it, actually; I really like these," he says, pocketing the tweezers again.

"I don't want your money... how about the last bit of cake?" Draco suggests hopefully.

"I thought it was all gone!" Harry cries, leaning precariously on one hand to properly inspect the crumb-strewn interior of the box; sure enough, a small square of pantespani has been squidged into one corner. He sighs, but suspects it's a sacrifice he's willing to make. "Go on, then."

Draco's mouth curves into a satisfied smile that makes the back of Harry's neck tingle. He extracts the sticky piece of cake and Harry forces himself to look away, feigning interest in straightening his coins into neat piles and waiting for Draco to speak. He does, but not until he has devoured the entire piece with a low, soft sound of contentment that seems to slide out involuntarily but makes Harry want to groan out loud.

"Are you alright?" Draco asks solicitously, wiping his fingers on the scrap of parchment.

Harry looks up, face set. "I'm fine. Stop stalling. You've had your cake, now spill the beans."

"I'm beginning to think you're obsessed with food," Draco says, before he catches Harry's expression. "Oh, good grief. Alright. The folders are for my notes and my photographs. I'm interested in people and I like to record my findings—now aren't you sorry it isn't something more scandalous?"

Harry says nothing for a moment, taking in the slight flush to Draco's pale skin and allowing himself to enjoy it. And alright, perhaps it's a little unfair that he has information Draco doesn't, but it won't do either of them any good to worry about that.

"I wasn't looking for a scandal. I'm just curious about you."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Oh, give me strength," Draco mutters, bringing both hands to his face and gazing despairingly at Harry through the gaps in his fingers.

"So, you investigate people," Harry says, chewing on a triumphant smile. "Which is interesting, because we were discussing that just the other day."

Draco groans and drops his hands back into his lap. "You know, self-righteousness is terribly unattractive."

"I'll keep that in mind. So, how does this work? Is it like... accountant by day, private investigator by night?" Harry speculates, grinning and leaning forward until his face is only inches from Draco's.

To Harry's astonishment, Draco leans closer. Eyes fixed on Harry's, he opens his mouth to speak.

"I am not an accountant."

Harry grits his teeth and stares right back. "I know."

"You are so many annoying things," Draco murmurs, still far too close.

"Takes one to know one," Harry shoots back childishly, pulling back before he does something he regrets. "Will it really kill you to tell me about your... sleuthing thing?"

Draco sighs. "It's nothing as dramatic as that, I'm afraid. A few years ago, I started paying attention to the comings and goings of a few interesting public figures, that's all. I take the odd photograph, scribble down a theory when the mood takes me... there's nothing more to it."

While Harry doubts that very much, he takes the bait anyway. "Maybe there should be."

"More to it?" Draco scoffs. "No." He retrieves the stray Sickle and sets it on its unsteady path once more. "Everything I said the other day still stands. It's just a hobby, though I detest that word with a virulent passion," he says, nose wrinkling in distaste.

"What did the word 'hobby' ever do to you?" Harry asks, amused.

"It's nauseating. Haven't you ever noticed the way that people who have 'loads of hobbies' are always disgustingly twee and terminally dull?"

Harry laughs. "I hadn't, although now that you mention it... you really are a grumpy sod, aren't you?"

"Nevertheless," Draco murmurs, adjusting his cuffs and giving Harry a split-second flash of the faded Mark that somehow looks not-quite-right without the four small letters, T U R N.

"So, who do you watch?" Harry asks, tearing his eyes away from Draco's inner forearm.

For a moment, Draco stares at him, struggle clear on his face. "Political figures, mainly," he says at last, and Harry can't control the fishleap of anticipation in his chest—when he thinks of the scathing article written by the Draco in the glimpse, he can't help but hope that, with a bit of encouragement, this Draco could bring down his own Fitzwilliam.

"They're usually the ones who need to be watched," Harry agrees, opting not to push it for now.

"You do realise that, until recently, you were practically a political figure yourself?" Draco points out, covering a yawn.

Catching it, Harry still manages to make a face at him. "Please tell me you weren't following me."

Draco smirks. "Not nearly interesting enough."

"Charming."

"There's only so much charm one can muster at this hour," Draco sighs, leaning back on his hands and stretching, tipping back his head and exposing an expanse of pale throat licked by soft green lamplight. Aching, Harry stares past him at Misu, who is stirring from her long sleep and flicking out her tongue to taste the air.

"Is it dinnertime?" she asks.

"Nearly," Harry advises. "When we get home, okay?"

Misu coils languorously under her heat lamp and falls silent, no doubt contemplating her upcoming meal. Harry turns back to Draco, who has, thankfully, finished stretching and has begun to slither down to the floor.

"Leaving already?"

Draco smiles wearily. "You may not need sleep, but I certainly do. Can I Disapparate from here?"

Harry untangles his legs and lowers himself somewhat stiffly to the floor. "You'll have to go outside, I'm afraid. I thought I'd have a go at being security conscious."

Draco merely lifts an eyebrow as he gathers up his waistcoat and jacket and drapes his heavy black coat over one shoulder, somehow managing to look hopelessly stylish without making a scrap of effort. Harry grabs the watery glass piece and thrusts it into Draco's hands before he can change his mind, then shrugs into his coat, grabs Misu, extinguishes the lamps, and follows Draco out into the cold night air.

After locking up the 'shop, Harry turns to Draco and wonders just what the fuck he's supposed to do now. Draco says nothing, just stands there on the cobbles, staring back at him, and for what seems like a long time, there is silence; even the drunken revellers have gone home, and it feels as though he and Draco are the only people awake in the whole of Diagon Alley.

"Well..." Draco coughs and indicates the glass piece cradled in his pale fingers. "Thank you for this."

"You're welcome," Harry mumbles, and for no sensible reason at all, he has never felt more nervous in his life.

"Do you have your daughter tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Harry says softly.

"I'm going to Sheffield on Sunday," Draco says, shifting slightly in place.

"For Gringotts?" Harry asks, bewildered by the sudden awkwardness; it's as though the warm familiarity created by apologies and sugar and lamplight has been all but washed away by the crisp night, and he suddenly has no idea what to do with Draco.

"No, one of my own clients, fortunately," Draco says, eyes bright in the darkness, voice seeming unfeasibly loud all of a sudden.

"Good... well... good." Harry scrubs at his hair and uses all of his self-control to avoid smacking himself in the face.

"I'll... er... see you at the Moody on Monday, then?" Draco says uncertainly.

Harry smiles, relief coursing through his veins. "Absolutely."

Draco nods, turns to Disapparate, and hesitates. "Do you really not care?"

"About what?"

"About what my father said... about me."

"Oh," Harry murmurs, understanding in a rush. "No. I don't care at all." He pauses, gathering the strands of his confidence and pulling them tight. "In fact, I..." he begins, but Draco has disappeared, leaving him staring at an empty patch of cobbles.

Prickling with frustration, Harry makes his way home. He deposits Misu in her bedside tank with a defrosted mouse and a promise of a proper conversation later and heads for the bathroom, shedding clothes as he goes and turning the bath taps onto full blast. As the hot water surges into the tub and the room fills with delicious, sage-scented steam, he strips down to nothing and leans against the cool tiles, abandoning his glasses and pressing one hand against his tired eyes, leaving the other to slide down his belly and wrap around his aching, half hard cock. He's been wound up for most of the evening, and the gentle pressure now makes him groan and shiver.

He steps into the bath without checking the temperature and gasps as he lowers himself into the scalding water, watching his skin turn pink and glistening and staying perfectly still until he adjusts to the heat. Finally, he immerses himself up to his nostrils and sighs, sending tiny ripples across the surface of the water. The day has been interesting—not at all what he imagined when he woke to the squelching of the tomato this morning—and now he's exhausted, restless, a little confused, and so fucking turned on that he's ready to explode.

Resting his head against the cool porcelain, he shuts his eyes, closes his hand around himself and sighs, allowing the rapidly-hardening flesh to slide in and out of his fist. He strokes himself slowly, lazily, knowing he doesn't have to try too hard; he's been building up to this release for hours, head full of Draco's eyes bright with anger, fists clenched, fingers tapping, his stiff, formal apology, his smiles and teasing words and his licking of fingers sticky with honey and sugar... it's all too much, almost painful, and as Harry tightens his grip and lifts his hips into each oil-slippery stroke, he knows it's all but over, and all he can think about is Draco.

His Draco.

In his mind, he dissolves his restraint, leans across that table and tugs Draco to him, rising up on his knees and pulling them hard together, hip to hip with fingers in belt loops and maddening, beautiful friction, the taste of almonds and sharp sweetness as their tongues collide, hot, hungry, and threading his fingers through hair that feels like silk. What he remembers, he misses violently, and what is unfamiliar, he craves with every splinter of his being. Lemons and toothpaste and leather; stripes and dark suits and eyes pewter grey under lamplight.

"Fuck," he hisses, arching and stiffening as a sharp wave of pure relief crashes through him, whipping down his spine and swirling there as he comes in hot, powerful bursts under the water.

Breathless, he sinks back down into the bath, opening his eyes slowly and watching fuzzily as the water sluices into the overflow, taking with it the last of his tension. He exhales shakily, ignoring the fact that his eyes are stinging—he's just tired—and reaches for the soap. Some twenty minutes later, he hauls himself out of the water, throws a towel around his waist, staggers into the bedroom and collapses on top of the sheets. He doesn't move until the morning.

**~*~**

"You're late," Ginny informs him as she opens the door at three minutes past ten on Saturday morning, but she doesn't seem overly concerned and is still rubbing at her hair with a towel as she follows him along the hallway to the kitchen. "And so am I."

"Where are you going?" Harry asks, eyeing her vibrant, teal-coloured shirt and smart jeans. "Have you had your hair cut?"

Ginny drops the towel over the back of a chair and waves the kettle in Harry's direction. He nods.

"Yeah, just a little bit," she says, picking up a section between her index and middle fingers and examining it critically. The change of style isn't drastic, but it's noticeable; Ginny's hair now falls just a couple of inches below her shoulders and feathers slightly against her shirt fabric. "What do you think?"

"I like it," Harry says, surprised to be asked, but apparently not as surprised as Ginny is by his approval.

She blinks and turns away, clanking around with spoon and milk and teabags. He accepts the proffered cup, listening to the thumping sounds issuing from the floor above as Lily scrambles to stuff as many of her possessions as possible into her overnight bag, just as she does every weekend.

"Thanks. Ron and I are going to watch a match," she says, smiling at last. "Hermione's trying to write some paper or other and she wants him out of her hair, so I volunteered—should be a good one: Harpies v Wasps."

Something in her tone lifts Harry, and he smiles back as he sips his tea and waits for Lily to appear.

"How's work?"

"Not as exciting as yours, I imagine," she says, leaning against the counter and regarding him with interest over the top of her cup.

"No comment," Harry says, absently stroking Misu as she pops her head out of his shirt pocket.

"I've had some interesting meetings with Blaise Zabini."

Harry tempers a smirk. "Oh, really? What do you think of him?"

Ginny shrugs dispassionately, acting for all the world as though she hadn't raised the subject in the first place. "I don't know yet, but he certainly seems to think he's very charming."

Harry laughs. "How so?" he asks, as if he doesn't know exactly how so.

"Oh, you know, ever so polite but a bit cheeky, great big presence, ever so pleased with himself—you know the type," Ginny says, rolling her eyes. "Lily!" she bellows at the ceiling.

Harry doesn't jump, and is rather proud of himself. "Yeah, I know the type," he mumbles, smiling to himself.

That afternoon, as he and Lily walk through the park and she attempts to teach him to dangle upside down from the monkey bars, Harry can't quite shift Blaise Zabini and his exuberant personality from his mind. By the time they get back to the house, his mind is made up. The problem is, he's not exactly sure where to find Blaise, and he's buggered if he's going to ask Draco.

"Dad, you need to water your plants!" Lily says sternly, picking up a potted fern from the kitchen windowsill and waving the slightly dry earth under his nose. She sits down at the table next to him with Frank on her lap and watches as the cat sniffs amiably at Misu's tail before she disappears into a pile of old newspapers. "What sort of plant is this, anyway?"

"A fern, I think," Harry says, tracing the soft fronds with his fingers and moistening the soil with a stream of water from his wand.

"What kind?"

"I don't know. A green one?"

"Dad."

"Lily."

Lily grins and sticks out her tongue, and Harry has a rather good idea.

It's been far too long since he saw Neville.

When Lily is settled in bed with Frank, her fish, and an ancient copy of Watership Down, Harry sits at the kitchen table and writes a letter. It's a short note, a friendly, hopeful request, and he isn't disappointed. Less than an hour later, his owl returns with a response.

Harry,

Great to hear from you. You're right, it's been far too long.

Come over tomorrow afternoon, it'll be great to catch up. I thought I might bake a cake in your honour, but maybe it's better if I just buy one...

See you soon,

Nev.

PS I'm still in the same house, the one on the end with the red door. Just in case you've forgotten.

Harry hasn't. After sharing a mammoth cooked breakfast with Lily (and, despite his better efforts, Frank and Misu), he makes his way to the Hertfordshire village where Neville has lived for the best part of a decade. Having Apparated most of the distance, Harry opts to walk the last half mile or so, savouring the warm sunshine on his face and the fresh scents of the coming spring. Neville's house makes up one end of a small terrace of charmingly ramshackle cottages, and had Harry not known in advance which house belonged to his friend, the front garden would have given it away instantly. Behind the painted wooden gate, the small patch of land is ablaze with colour and alive with gently-waving green leaves, and in the midst of it all sleeps a glossy chocolate Labrador, tail and ears twitching against the carpet of pebbles.

Harry strokes the dog's silky head as he passes but it continues to snooze.

After what seems like a long time, the door flies open and Neville stands there, beaming and slightly out of breath, wearing a scuffed leather apron and a pair of gauntlets.

"Harry! Come in, come in," he says, squashing his sturdy frame against the wall of the narrow passageway so that Harry can edge through. "Sorry to keep you waiting, I'm having a bit of trouble with a spider-eating cactus."

Equal parts alarmed and amused, Harry nods, as though he knows exactly how bothersome spider-eating cacti can be.

"Should I be worried?" he asks, grinning.

"No, it's in the back garden, although..." Neville's dark eyebrows draw together. "Now I think about it, I might've left it a bit close to the fishpond. Can you just give me one minute?" he says, backing off down the hallway and pointing at the first door along. "Go and sit down, I'll be right back. Hopefully."

"Good luck," Harry calls, watching him disappear around a corner and hoping that the fish haven't come to any grief in Neville's absence. Then, he walks into the living room and stops dead.

Sitting in an armchair, casual as can be, with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, apparently engrossed in a heavy, serious-looking book, is someone Harry hoped he might never run into again.

"Goldstein?" he demands, blinking repeatedly, just in case.

The man in the chair looks up and the eyes behind the wire-rimmed reading glasses are genuinely surprised, as though noticing Harry for the first time.

"If you like, although I prefer to go by Anthony these days," he says, and he smiles. And Harry doesn't know what to think, because that smile uses the same lips and exposes the same perfect teeth that he has detested for several months now, but it's not the same smile at all. It's warm and slightly self-deprecating, and if Harry wasn't so confused, he'd want to smile back.

"Right," he says vaguely. "Sorry. I'm Harry."

Goldstein closes his book and nods. "You don't really think I don't remember you?"

"I don't like to presume," Harry says.

"Aren't you going to sit down?" Goldstein says mildly, indicating an armchair that is vacant but for a snoring, overweight tabby cat. "You can move her; she can sleep anywhere."

Harry hesitates, irked at being asked to sit down by not-quite Goldstein in Neville Longbottom's house. When he takes a closer look at Goldstein, though, he notices that he's not wearing shoes; he's in shirtsleeves with no outer garments in sight; there's a half finished cup of tea at his elbow, and Neville, quite obviously, knows that he's here, even if he was too preoccupied with carnivorous plants to tell Harry.

Humming with confused irritation, Harry gently shoves the cat until she flops onto her side and allows him enough space to perch on the edge of the chair with his hands in his lap. Goldstein watches him calmly over the top of his reading glasses and Harry waits. Waits for the gaze to sharpen into something intense, lascivious. Waits for an obnoxious remark, an invasion of his personal space, but there's nothing. If anything, Goldstein looks unnerved, and perhaps that's because Harry's staring.

Feeling awkward, Harry stares down at the cat instead. "So... erm... it's warm outside today."

"Yes," Goldstein says evenly. "Apparently the warm weather makes the cacti... fractious."

Harry looks up, catching Goldstein's wry smile, and this time it gets him; his mouth tugs upwards at the corners and he hates himself. He has no idea what kind of madness this is, but he thinks he'd like to opt out now. He also can't help wanting to blame the whole thing on Boris.

"Well... er... I'm sure Nev's more than capable of putting them in their place," he offers.

"Oh, I have every faith in him. He's very talented when it comes to living things, especially the more difficult varieties," Goldstein says, getting to his feet. "He could be a while. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"I'd love one," Nev says, shuffling into the room and dumping his gauntlets on the coffee table. Despite the protection, there are several fresh scratches on his arms and his dark hair is sticking to his forehead with sweat.

"I told you to order those full length gloves," Goldstein says, catching Neville's wrist and inspecting the cuts with narrowed eyes. "One of these days, I'm going to be sitting in here and you'll be out there bleeding to death."

"Don't be so bloody dramatic," Nev says, grinning and reclaiming his arm. He rubs briskly at the scratches with an earth-smeared hand. "It'll be fine. I've got that big cactus re-potted, that's the main thing."

"Will you... oh, for goodness' sake," Goldstein sighs, drawing his wand and cleaning the scratches with a spell Harry has used hundreds of times. "Perhaps you can reason with him," he says, turning exasperated eyes on Harry before stalking past both of them and into the kitchen.

"So," Neville mumbles, dropping into Goldstein's vacated chair and meeting Harry's eyes. "You've met Anthony."

"Yeah," Harry says. "Bit of a surprise, that one."

Neville's face, already flushed with exertion, turns beetroot red. "Hmm. It was, actually."

"So," Harry encourages, "what happened?" And what have you done to him? he wants to add, but manages to keep the unhelpful words inside his mouth, just about.

"Since when were you such a gossip?" Neville laughs, struggling with the string at the waist of his leather apron.

"Since I got divorced, probably," Harry admits. "I obviously need a bit of excitement in my life."

"I'm really sorry about that, Harry," Nev says, looking up from his knot. "I meant to get in touch, but... it's so hard to know what to say. I know it's no excuse."

"It's fine. We're both fine." Harry pauses, resenting the insipidness of the word. "God, that sounds like a load of crap, but we really are doing alright, and the kids are okay." He sighs, pulling the unprotesting cat onto his lap. "Life goes on, I suppose."

Neville smiles. Finally, with a small sound of triumph, he frees the knot and releases himself from the apron, and with some effort, he folds it on his lap and gazes at Harry. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Thanks. Now tell me how you ended up with Goldstein... er, Anthony, before he comes back and we can't talk about him."

At the sounds of a tea tray being assembled, both Harry and Neville turn their heads toward the kitchen for a moment.

"It's not very exciting," Neville insists. "We were quite close at school during that last year—you know, when you and Ron and Hermione left... the DA was like a family. We had to stick together. We lost touch over the years, obviously, but they had one of those Ministry balls last August and I got talked into going..." Neville grimaces and Harry reflects the expression back to him.

"I managed to avoid that one."

"You didn't miss much. We got seated together and spent the whole night reminiscing." Nev shrugs, failing to hide a smile despite his obvious embarrassment. "That's sort of it, really."

Harry doesn't know what to say. His friend seems happy and comfortable, and the man in the kitchen—while unmistakeably Anthony Goldstein—is practically unrecognisable as the psychotic idiot who had caused him endless hassle in the glimpse. None of it makes any sense.

"Nev..." Harry hesitates. Bites his lip. "Is he... I mean... does he treat you well?"

Neville blinks wide dark eyes and nods slowly. "Yeah, of course. Why do you ask?"

"Just... checking," Harry says brightly, forcing a smile and hoping it doesn't look too deranged. "I worry about my friends, that's all."

"There's nothing to worry about," Neville assures him. "You know, you and Anthony should compare notes—he worries about me all the time. It's a bit maddening, actually."

Harry lifts an eyebrow, trying not to think about the image invoked by Neville's words. In the kitchen, the kettle is whistling furiously, so he throws out one more question, even as he does, knowing that nothing he says will negate the feeling of quiet madness that is settling in around him.

"Does he live here, then?"

Neville drops his voice. "Well... we're sort of at that funny stage, you know. There's an awful lot of his stuff here, but we haven't made anything official." He leans across his tangle of apron toward Harry, eyes wide. "I've got no idea what I'm doing."

Harry smiles in spite of his reservations. "I don't think any of us do, really."

"It'd be nice if it wasn't just me," Nev sighs.

"It's definitely not. And I'm pleased for you, seriously. There's definitely nothing wrong with renewing old friendships."

Neville laughs. "There's been a lot of that recently, hasn't there—I saw you and Draco Malfoy in the paper the other day."

"Draco and I are just friends," Harry says, forcing himself not to avoid Neville's eyes.

Neville grins.

"I was at the match that day," Goldstein offers, sidling into the room with a loaded tea tray and setting it down on the table. "It was miserable. We were steamrollered."

"Er, thanks—one please," Harry says, accepting a steaming cup from Goldstein and allowing him to drop a sugar cube into it, quietly amazed that he's even thinking about drinking something that man has made for him. Made for him behind closed doors, at that. "I thought Ravenclaw played really well, actually. They just didn't have a chance against Frances Mullender," Harry offers, feeling rather pleased with himself.

Goldstein pauses in passing Neville his cup and turns to Harry with a surprised little smile. "I didn't realise you actually kept up with Hogwarts Quidditch," he says, sounding quite delighted.

"Not really," Harry admits. "I'm trying to educate myself, though; my son's playing now and Draco does seem to enjoy lecturing me."

Goldstein arches a fine eyebrow and pulls up a chair next to Neville, reaching over and examining his grazed arm once again, hanging on grimly when Nev protests that it's fine and he isn't going to die from a cactus bite.

"I'd rather not take that chance, oddly enough," he murmurs, Summoning a large book from the shelf behind Harry and disappearing behind it, reading glasses shoved up onto the bridge of his nose and brow wrinkled in concentration.

Nev shoots Harry a tolerant smile and shrugs, wrapping grimy-fingernailed hands around his teacup.

"Ah," Harry says, remembering the inspiration for his visit. "Have you heard of a place called Zabology?"

Nev sighs. "Yep."

"Do you know where it is?"

"Just off Oxford Street. It's got some fantastic Muggle-repelling magic on it—just looks like a boarded up old curry house to them, apparently," Neville says, sounding wistful. "I applied for a job there last week. Bet I won't get it."

"Don't be ridiculous," Goldstein says, frowning and continuing to thumb through the book, which Harry now notices is called 'Herbology and Health: how to ward off the worst' and is at least four inches thick. "You are perfect for that job. Have some patience."

"I'm sure they'd be lucky to have you, Nev," Harry says, and Neville smiles gratefully.

"We'll see. Why'd you want to know, anyway? You're not planning another change of career, are you?"

"Not today," Harry says cheerfully. "I'd just like to have a chat with someone who works there."

"Sounds mysterious," Nev says and leans back in his chair, wonderfully unconcerned.

"That second wound looks a lot like the start of insidious promontitis," Goldstein says, lowering his book and pursing his lips. "I think we're going to need some hellebore extract."

"It's just a scratch," Nev says faintly, exchanging glances with Harry as Goldstein leaps to his feet, dumps the book on his chair and sweeps out of the room. Seconds later, they both raise their eyes to the ceiling to follow the creaking of the ancient floorboards above their heads. Neville shrugs and drinks his tea, unperturbed. "He's... like that."

Harry nods slowly and reaches for a piece of cake. "So he is."

**~*~**

The next morning, as Harry heads through the chaotic, rain-slicked streets of central London on his way to Zabology, his head is still spinning with his visit to Neville and his altogether unexpected boyfriend. By the time he had left the house, several hours and countless cups of tea later, one thing had been abundantly clear: Anthony Goldstein adores Neville; he practically hero-worships him. He had been perfectly friendly to Harry for the duration of his visit, but had shown no interest beyond that; there hadn't been even a sniff of the slimy little moves Harry had expected, and it's just strange.

His obsessive personality seems to have translated itself into a somewhat fanatical fixation on Neville's health, and, Harry surmises from a few cutting remarks later in the afternoon, anyone who might dare to upset Neville in any way. Harry can't help but think that such neurotic behaviour would drive him insane, but Neville seems to be thriving on it, bearing his partner's more challenging quirks with the cheerful good grace that has always made him a good friend and a good person. Somewhere in the back of Harry's head, too, is the nagging feeling that there aren't a million miles separating this Goldstein and Draco, and that just makes his head hurt.

He thinks he wants to like this man, this other Goldstein, and perhaps the only thing he can do in good conscience is to give him a chance. After all, Harry and his other self are not, were not, one and the same, though the difference between Goldstein and Anthony is not subtle, it is staggering. And, Harry muses reluctantly as his turns onto Oxford Street and stumbles over an old woman's gargantuan shopping bag, the only real difference between this world and the glimpse is...

"Watch where you're going," she rasps in a harsh East-end accent, glaring at Harry and stumping off down the street, whacking men, women, children and dogs out of her way with the bag as she goes.

Harry sighs and steps out of the flow for a moment to extract Misu from his pocket and check her for injuries, ignoring the curious stares of his fellow pedestrians. Once satisfied that she is indeed unharmed, he lets her crawl into his sleeve and plunges back into the fray, reluctantly picking up his train of thought where he left it.

The difference is that he went back for Draco. That was what the whole thing had been about, hadn't it? In the glimpse, he didn't just think about saving Draco, he did it. Could that have been the one action that turned Goldstein's head? Harry sighs, pushing on through the crowds and the drizzle. He supposes he'll never know, not really, but still he can't stop himself from wondering about every little thing: was it his fault that glimpse-Goldstein behaved the way he did? Was his attraction to Neville—presumed feigned—actually genuine after all?

"So many strange smells in this place," Misu says. "So many of them from food. Many, many different types of food..."

Reluctantly amused, Harry says nothing until he turns onto a quieter side street and catches sight of the building. It isn't easy to miss, unless one is a Muggle, he supposes. Blaise Zabini's company occupies a tall structure covered in what looks like burnished copper with the letters 'ZABOLOGY' snaking down one side in elegant letters. He's impressed and a little intimidated as he stands before a set of heavy doors, staring up at the towering building. It occurs to him with a familiar weary resignation that once again, he has completely failed to plan just what he's going to do once he's inside.

"I really need to start rehearsing for these things," he sighs.

"Not sure what that means," Misu admits, sliding out onto the back of Harry's hand and taking in the imposing building. "You should go in there. It's so shiny."

"I'm not sure that's the wisest way to make decisions," Harry advises, but he lets himself into the building anyway.

The receptionist, a pretty young dark-haired woman, takes one look at him, flushes, and directs him to Blaise's office without question. Relieved, though slightly concerned for their security, Harry thanks her, and he and Misu ride the sparkling glass lift all the way to the twenty-fifth floor. The carpets here are Head-of-MLE soft and the fragrance of plant life is everywhere as he walks the corridors, passing several doors until he finds the right one.

Harry smiles to himself. Not only does the door bear a copper nameplate that reads: 'Blaise Zabini – CEO' but beneath it someone has Spellotaped a sign that says:

'Please knock loudly, occupant is elderly and deaf.'

He raps obediently on the panelled wood and waits. Seconds later he hears a crash and a familiar rich voice calls: "You'll have to open it yourself; I've just knocked my entire tea tray on the bloody floor."

Reminding himself that he's essentially a stranger to this man, Harry sets his face into a neutral expression and lets himself into the office. The sight that greets him is an instant threat to his composure. Blaise is on all fours, muttering to himself as he retrieves the fallen contents of his tea tray with massive hands and short, irritable flicks of his wand. He looks just as Harry remembers him, beautifully dressed in a stiff black three-piece suit and shiny shoes, dark, velvety skin betraying nothing of his advancing age but barrel-like abdomen and broad shoulders speaking volumes about his voracious appetite and strength.

He's still not completely sure what he's doing here even as he closes the door behind himself and steps onto the brightly-coloured rug, but whatever it is, he appears to be doing it anyway, and he doesn't think he should really be surprised about that.

"Er, good morning," he says uncertainly.

The muttering stops and Blaise withdraws himself from under the desk with surprising grace, dumping his empty sugar bowl back onto the tray and sitting back on his heels to regard Harry.

"Good morning indeed," he rumbles, dark eyes flicking over Harry's hair, his ripped-on-purpose t-shirt and silver-grey cardigan, his scruffy canvas shoes, and Misu, who has emerged from his sleeve to get a good look at the room, twisting this way and that like a multicoloured periscope. "I must admit, I thought my receptionist was having me on when she said Harry Potter was on his way up to see me."

"I'm afraid not," Harry says.

"I'm not disappointed," Blaise assures him, flashing the familiar sparkling grin and getting to his feet. "Intrigued, certainly, but a bit of mystery can only liven up a dull Monday morning. What can I do for you?"

Harry takes a moment to enjoy the sensation of relief that, unlike Goldstein, Blaise Zabini is exactly as he remembers him. He supposes it's only natural that the world seems to right itself eventually.

"It's a bit complicated," he admits.

"You'd better have a seat, then," Blaise says, indicating a pair of leather chairs next to a huge window that takes up one whole wall of the office. "I'd offer you a cup of tea, but I think most of it's in the carpet now."

"Thanks, it's fine," Harry assures, settling himself in the nearest chair. Blaise seems to be more fascinated than wary and that's more than good enough for him right now. Even as he drops into the chair opposite Harry's, though, Blaise seems to have other ideas.

"Hang on." He frowns and gets up, crossing the room and bellowing into the fire: "Kerensa! Can I have another tea tray, please?"

Harry doesn't quite catch the response, but Blaise sighs and shoots him a pained look before replying: "There was nothing wrong with the other one. I quite arbitrarily decided to throw it on the floor. Now I need another one because Harry Potter is in my office."

Amused but self-conscious, Harry chews his lip and stares down at Misu, who has slithered out onto his lap and appears to be curling herself into a little knot on his thigh.

"Really, it's fine," he mumbles, but Blaise either doesn't hear him or opts to ignore his protests.

"I don't know, Kerensa. Why didn't you ask him yourself while you had the chance?" He sighs. "Just tea. No, I didn't do it on purpose. Yes, sugar cubes all over the floor... the cups are all intact. I'm going now... yes. Just come in. Right. Marvellous."

Shaking his head, Blaise withdraws from the fire and resumes his position opposite Harry. He rests his vast elbows on the chair arms and steeples his fingers over his chest.

"What brings you to Zabology, Harry Potter?"

**~*~**

Ten minutes and Kerensa's replacement tea tray later, Harry still hasn't answered that question.

He has made vague inquiries about the business (Blaise set it up fifteen years ago and ran it out of his own basement until it became the biggest plant and plant-based remedy company in the UK), compliments the furniture (some pieces from France and some from the same Diagon Alley stores as Harry used to fill his new house), and enters into a surprisingly easy reminiscence about some of the teachers from their Hogwarts days (Blaise, Harry is interested to discover, was and remains to this day terrified of Professor McGonagall). Blaise nods and gesticulates and drinks his tea, completely unperturbed by Harry's evasiveness, and though this only serves to make Harry like him even more, guilt begins to get the better of him and he knows he will have to say something.

Why did he come here? That's the important question, and he doesn't have a sensible answer. All he knows is that he has been drawn here... by curiosity, by the desire to see someone familiar, and because he has missed Blaise. Now that he's here, sitting in a fancy chair in a fancy office and staring into the big handsome face, the compulsion to tell him everything is overwhelming. This man knows Draco, and while they don't seem to have the close relationship they had in the glimpse, they do see one another socially, and Blaise probably knows as much about the adult Draco as anyone beside Narcissa, and he's not about to ask her for advice.

But he can't, of course. He can't tell him.

Why not? asks a fiendish little voice inside his head.

"The funny thing is, I wasn't even very good at Herbology at school," Blaise is saying, adding several cubes of sugar to his tea. "I only got an 'A' in my OWL."

Because he'll think I'm weird. Because he won't believe me. Because I'm not allowed to tell anyone.

"Exam results aren't everything," Harry agrees. "You've obviously got a fairly impressive business sense."

"I never knew you were such a flatterer," Blaise says, grinning.

Harry smiles back and wonders when the prospect of breaking the rules has ever stopped him from doing anything.

He doesn't see why he shouldn't have someone to talk to about this surreal situation. Boris gave him a guide in the glimpse, and while he misses Maura enormously just because he misses her, he also misses having someone around who understands all this. Misu is impressively wise for a not-quite-three-month-old corn snake, but there are some things about the world that Harry just can't expect her to comprehend.

"I think I'd be a terrible flatterer," Harry says at last, gripping his cup, heart thumping, as he makes up his mind. "I'm a rubbish liar so I tend to just tell the truth."

"You really can't take the Gryffindor out of the boy, can you?" Blaise laughs.

"Not really." Harry pauses, reaching for a fortifying breath. "Okay. Here's the thing. I know Slytherins are supposed to be naturally suspicious, but I'm hoping you can hold on to what a crappy liar I am when I tell you this."

Blaise gazes at him, dark eyes intense. "Tell me what?"

"A story," Harry says quietly.