I was just finishing a letter just after three on a Monday afternoon when I heard someone clear their throat. I signed Brendon Greengrass, put the parchment aside, and looked up.

Draco Malfoy was hovering in my doorway. He looked extremely sheepish.

Given what he'd been doing that weekend, I was not surprised.

"Hi," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "Er - thanks for dinner. On Saturday."

"You thanked us on Saturday," I pointed out. "You didn't need to come all the way down here to thank me again."

He jerked his head down the hall. "I was just already here," he said. "I had a meeting with Potter. So - so I thought I'd stop by."

"To thank me for dinner."

It wasn't that I disliked Draco Malfoy - I actually got on well with him, which made me one of the only people in the Ministry that could actually stand to work with him. He'd given me (and the rest of Werewolf Capture, by proxy) a lot of very useful information at significant personal risk and despite several assassination attempts, which I appreciated. He'd caught people we'd been interviewing as a formality in lies. He'd even used Polyjuice to get information for the Aurors on multiple occasions, and while that didn't directly affect my division, it still made my job easier.

All in all, he'd been a cowardly, immoral, self-serving ass before and during the war, but as far as I was concerned, he'd more than made up for it since then.

I also wasn't actually bothered by his friendship with my little sister, and while I hadn't been sure it had taken a romantic turn until Saturday night, I'd had my suspicions. Catching him shirtless in Astoria's basement flat when I'd stopped downstairs to ask if she was eating dinner with us had just confirmed it. I wasn't particularly bothered by that, either; he'd been getting red when I mentioned her for much longer than I'd caught a romantic vibe off of her, and when he did mention her, it was clear that he liked her a lot.

However, he also clearly thought that I was very overprotective and deeply bothered by the idea of him wanting to kiss my sister, and it was fun to fuck with him over it.

"Yeah. So - er - thank you."

"You're welcome." I plastered a smile of polite disinterest onto my face. "Is that all?"

"I - I guess." He hesitated, and then took a few steps into my office. "No. Aren't you going to tell me to... I don't know, not hurt your sister or something?"

"Why would I do that?"

I could see him swallow from across the room. "I - because I'm dating your sister?"

Even if I was enjoying fucking with him, I had to appreciate him saying it so flatly. "Oh - are you?"

He shifted from one foot to the other. "I mean... yeah. That's why - I mean, you know. On Saturday."

I drew my eyebrows together and narrowed my eyes. "Wait - this is a regular thing?"

"Yes." He thought about it for a minute. "Well, no. Sort of."

"You seem unsure. I hope you're not giving my sister mixed signals."

That succeeded in getting him mad rather than just anxious. "I'm not-" He started hotly, and then he cut himself off. After a moment, he sighed. "You're fucking with me, aren't you?"

"Completely." He made a face, and I grinned. "Draco, I know what kind of man you are. I've been working with you for - years, at this point, isn't it?" He shrugged. "I don't need to threaten you."

"Oh." He looked a little surprised. "I - okay. Good."

I thought about it for a moment, and then decided it was time to clear the rest of his misconception up. "Look, my sister is smart. I trust her judgment - I always have. I have no interest in making her do anything - I just want to make sure that she always has the choice."

Whatever he was expecting me to say, it clearly wasn't that. "Seriously? Even if she wanted to date a blood purity asshole?"

"If she wanted to, I'd assume that there was something she knew that I didn't. Astoria doesn't trust easily, and like I said, I trust her judgment."

"Oh." He studied me for a minute. "So that's why you brought her back to Hogwarts that night?"

I didn't have to ask what night he was talking about. My finding my fifteen year old sister in Hogsmeade and bringing her back to Hogwarts for the battle had been a source of contention in my family since I'd done so. Daphne had been furious at the prospect of having two siblings on "the wrong side" rather than just her well-established-as-a-blood-traitor brother, and while our parents sympathized with the right side, they hadn't been pleased with my putting Astoria in harm's way. It had been several years, and they still hadn't gotten over it - they'd just moved onto blaming me for her issues. I didn't regret it, and neither did Astoria. We'd always been close, despite the eight years between us, but that had cemented me as a trustworthy person after a year in which she'd learned to trust no one.

There'd been more than one reason why I'd let her come with me to fight the Death Eaters in the Battle of Hogwarts after evacuating - our sister's use of the Imperius Curse on her to make her leave in the first place had also played a role in my decision - but it was close enough. "Yes," I said. I didn't point out that he was on the wrong side in that battle.

To my surprise, he did it for me. "On which I was on the wrong side, as she reminds me frequently."

I snorted. That sounded like my little sister. "Our sister would have been, too, if she hadn't been too much of a coward to stay."

He stiffened, just a little, and the wheels in my head started turning. "You don't like Daphne, do you?" He shrugged, and I took it as a no. "Since when? She was mad about you for about a year when you were all in Hogwarts, and I don't recall her ever sobbing about you giving her the cold shoulder."

He shrugged again. "I didn't know her as well then." When I didn't look away from him, he sighed. "I don't know. I just don't like her."

He was being cagey, and when people are cagey, it's because they have something to hide - especially when they're men, and especially when they're talking about someone they're romantically involved with. "You know," I said slowly. "About the curse. That's it, isn't it?"

His jaw clenched, which was confirmation enough.

I hadn't realized that Astoria liked him as much as that. I probably should have - she didn't put herself in a vulnerable position lightly, and she'd done so with him several times over - but still. It was a big secret to tell.

"Huh." I looked back at the reports on my desk. "I really do need to get back to this," I told him. "But stop acting like I'm about to hex you. I'm not." He nodded and turned to go. "But Draco?"

He looked back.

"Be nice to my sister."

He let out a snort. "I'm always nice to your sister."

"Doesn't sound like you."

"Maybe I just like your sister more than I like you."

There was an unspoken comment about how kissing my sister radically changed the dynamic, or about my sister being prettier than I was. It was just as well that it stayed unspoken.

"Good."

A/N: If you enjoyed this, please check out my other Drastoria fics (including a longer version of this from Astoria's PoV called "The Way You Say My Name"), which are prequels and probably eventually sequels to this - I've been doing a lot of Drastoria for NaNo. They're somewhere on this page, or you can find them in an organized series at the HPFanficTalk archive under the series (Sidenote: Greengrass stories) under the the same author name. :)

Reviews and favorites are appreciated!

- Branwen