Author's Notes: Contains a homage to an Order of the Stick strip, rips off PS big-time, and doesn't pretend to make a great deal of sense. For the purposes of this story there's an Al, there's a Scorpius (they're seven), and Harry and Draco are already together. Where, you might ask, are Ginny and Astoria? Space, lesbian commune, trying to take over the world – you decide.

Mr & Mr Potter-Malfoy and the Treasure Hunt of Doom

"Tell me again how you lost it?" Harry sighed as he rifled through Draco's desk.

Draco's head rolled its eyes at him from the fireplace. "If I knew how or where I lost it then I would know where it is, wouldn't I Potter?"

Harry's lip curled. "Draco, don't get into a snit with me when I'm trying to help you. Are you sure you didn't just leave it in the bedroom?"

Draco ran a hand over his hair in frustration. "No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure about a damned thing. But I've got to have my signet ring or I won't be able to change the wards – and that could get awkward really fast."

"Right," Harry nodded. The ring was important and Draco almost always wore it, except of course when he was preparing potions. Harry had asked him about that once and received a fairly standard Draco reply: "Because, you Philistine, not only would the charms on the ring interfere with the properties of the ingredients, but I might splash something onto the platinum."

Harry had checked Draco's office since he was at home with the boys, and the lab behind it. Draco did keep a lot of his Malfoy heirlooms there, proud to be the head of the Committee on Experimental Potions. But if it wasn't here or in their bedroom, the bathroom or in the sitting room, where on earth could it be?

"Let's go over it again," Harry said, straightening up. "You definitely had it last night, correct?"

"By all means, Potter, why not have me recite my movements for the fourth time," Draco snapped.

"By all means, Malfoy, remember that I can throw people into holding cells and you should co-operate if you want me to help you," Harry said, folding his arms and looking over the top of his glasses – square frames since Draco had been making his fashion choices for him – and waited.

Draco bit his lip. "I love it when you go all Auror." Their eyes met and Harry smiled in just the way he knew would make Draco smile – and for just a moment he did, happy, until he remembered. He sighed, throwing his head back in frustration.

"Look, Draco," said Harry, "Why don't you let me send a message down to my office and I'll just tell them I have to leave early today. I can be home in twenty minutes, and we'll figure this whole thing out. Where are the boys?"

Draco smiled at the offer. "I asked Mother to keep an eye on them for a bit, I had to review my case reports."

Harry froze. "What?"

"Harry, you have to get over this thing with my mother," Draco sighed.

"No, no, I don't. She spoils them, you know she spoils them, and every time she visits them they get just a little less manageable – you know what? Never mind. I'll be home in ten."

Harry stared slack-jawed at the mess that had been made in the library while Draco closed his eyes in despair and rubbed his forehead as though the motion would make the world make sense.

"Well," said Harry, unable to form any other words.

Draco raised his head out of his hands and said, "You're right. Mother should never be allowed to spend time with the boys unsupervised."

The library looked as though someone had taken the whole room, with its rows and rows of shelves, its fireplaces and luxurious antique reading chairs, and shaken it violently. Books and papers were everywhere, half-drawn pictures were discarded crumpled on the floor, the lectern had been knocked over, the chairs moved –

"The chaise," Draco moaned, running over to touch it as though checking for bruises. "They got crayon on the chaise."

Harry was still shaking his head in disbelief. "You want to be a good Dad, you want your kids to know their family, so you let their grandmother watch them. You want to encourage curiosity of mind and healthy intellect, so you let them ask questions and go places – and then you realise your life would be so much easier if you had children who just sat in a box quietly all day with no visitors ever."

"There's always the next twenty years," Draco said soothingly. He stroked his hands over the smudges on his beloved chaise-longue – his favourite place to ride Harry, as in his words it maximised both comfort and pleasure.

Harry reminded himself that this really wasn't the time and cleared his throat. Draco looked up at him over his shoulder, a smirk lighting his face, his body begging to be pushed down onto the chaise.

"Now, Harry?" Draco asked with a wicked smile that proved to Harry that his tone had been recognised.

"Er," Harry said, but mercifully that was when Narcissa appeared from behind the stacks.

"Darlings!" she said in that cheerful way she affected when what she meant was, uh-oh, the killjoys are here. "You're back early Harry, dear," she added, swooping in to kiss him on the cheek.

"Draco called me," Harry said a little awkwardly. He liked Narcissa, he did, but he had never quite mastered the art of calling her by her first name and since she positively blanched every time he called her 'Mrs. Malfoy' – understandable after that thing with her husband and Aberforth Dumbledore – he was forced to address her without actually addressing her.

"And an excellent thing I did, too, Mother. What on earth has been going on here?"

Narcissa rolled her eyes slightly. "There is no need to overreact, Draco," she said, waving her wand hand almost lazily and setting the room to rights. "This room has been overturned more times than I care to admit."

"Where are the boys?" Harry said, looking around.

"Oh, they're just coming after me – they found their way into the west corridor and decided to bury some treasure there or something," Narcissa said, her gesture dismissing the unimportant. "If you're here then I suppose cocktail hour can start early – Numpty?" she called, and the House Elf appeared immediately. "Elf-made wine. Drinks for you dears? No?"

"Mother," Draco said, standing up very slowly and moving towards her, "when you say treasure, what exactly were they..."

"Daddy! Daddy!" came the voices and then bouncing round the corner were Scorpius and Al, enthusiasm and joy seeping out of every pore. Within seconds they were hugging a parent each.

Harry ran his hand through Al's unruly hair. "Hey there. Did you have a good day?"

Al's grin was infectious. "So cool, Dad. We did research and made up riddles and built traps and it was just so much fun!"

"Yeah, Father, it was great," Scorpius enthused. "Grandma took us all the way in to the secret underground rooms!"

Draco's eyebrows shot up. "You took them-"

"The west rooms, darling, the west rooms," Narcissa assured him, accepting the glass from the proffered elf-height hand and taking a deep swallow.

Harry made a mental note to find out what on earth was in the east rooms. "Look, guys, we've kind of –"

"Harry, shush, our sons were telling us about their day," Draco drawled in a way that all present knew meant trouble. "So you went into the west rooms, and..."

Al and Scorpius exchanged a glance. "Well the rooms were mostly empty, Daddy D, so..."

"...we had been reading about your first battle with Voldemort, Dad,"

"...right, Dad, and we thought it sounded really cool..."

"...and then Grandma let us look at some of her logic puzzles, Father..."

"...so we figured out how we would have protected the Philosopher's Stone."

Narcissa cleared her throat. "We were just about to make a treasure map of the house." That killed Harry. He couldn't get used to living in this... this castle, and to Narcissa it was just the house.

It was Draco, however, who seemed to have grasped the crucial point. "And what," he asked, the dangerous drawl still rolling through his words – Harry was glad it wasn't him Draco was angry with for a change, "did you use for the Philosopher's Stone?"

Scorpius was already cringing so it was Al who said, "Um... nothing?" as he tightened his hold on Harry.

"What specific nothing?" Draco asked, every syllable enunciated as though they were projectiles.

Scorpius cringed a little more as Al finally spat it out, "Not... your shiny ring that you told us not to touch?"

Draco smiled. It was not a particularly nice smile. "Of course not."

"I still think you're overreacting," Harry said as he examined the door to the outermost west room.

"You think I'm overreacting?" Draco was in disbelief. "I told them specifically not to touch that ring. Ever. Even if I were dead – I told them that."

"You also told them that about your facial cleansers, Draco," Harry reminded him dryly. Really Draco was just the biggest drama queen ever. Harry really didn't know why he found it so endearing, but he did.

"Not the point, Harry!" Draco said, tone somewhere between shriek and screech. "The point is we have to get it back and I had really just hoped for a nice relaxing night for once and..."

The quickest way to get Draco to shut up had always been to kiss him. Harry had sort of sneaked up on him while he'd been ranting and now pressed his mouth to his lover's; Draco tried at first to spit out his tongue and keep speaking, but Harry had perfected a kissing technique just for moments like these, because if you're going to spend your life with Draco Malfoy, you need a couple of tricks up your sleeve. Harry curled his fingers into the nape of Draco's neck and tilted his head just a bit more than usual to the right, using the motion of his fingers to soothe Draco until finally he shuddered in Harry's arms and kissed him back.

When Harry pulled back, Draco met his gaze with a rueful expression in his own. "Five years and that still works."

Harry kissed him again, just an affectionate brush of the lips this time. "If it ever stops working then I'll worry," he said. He sighed. "Look, Draco, I know this isn't quite what you'd planned for tonight-"

"Being as it's our anniversary? This is as you say not what I had in mind," Draco agreed, tightening his fingers on Harry's upper arms.

"But try to think of it as fun," Harry went on. "The boys didn't mean any harm, and after all, this is almost a chance for us to have the kind of schoolboy adventure we never had together when we were in school. It's a chance for us to do this together."

Draco's mouth quirked at the corner, and he swayed a little closer. "I could fish out my old school uniform if you like?"

Harry hummed deep in his throat. "Maybe later. For now we should concentrate."

"You think we can't outwit our own children?"

Harry grimaced. "The look on your mother's face was a little too happy when she sent us down here to fix it ourselves."

Draco nodded. "True. We'll be wary."

"Right," Harry said, squeezing Draco once more before releasing him. "Let's find out what's behind door number one."

The first room contained a drawing of a dog with three heads, animated to snarl at them as they walked past it. It tried to chase them, but ran into the edge of the paper as though it was a solid wall and fell, whimpering, to the bottom of the page.

Harry looked at it for a long moment before turning to Draco.

"That was rather absurdly anti-climactic," Draco said.

The second room contained flying origami birds with a door at the other end that did not respond to Alohomora.

"One of them is probably carrying the key," Harry said, nodding towards the birds. "I'm starting to regret having told Al this story."

"Well, quite," Draco said, absolutely composed. "Accio door key!"

Immediately one of the birds zoomed into Draco's hand and promptly transfigured itself into a key. Draco smirked at Harry. "How does this compare to your youthful adventures so far?"

Harry considered, and replied with a small smile, "I was thinking you would have made my young life less eventful, but I'm sure you would have made up for it in other ways."

In the third room, Draco and Harry played chess. Harry wasn't sure which of them was supposed to win or if it mattered, but the board was set up and so they played until Draco, smirking, declared, "Checkmate!" at which the door swung open.

"See, Potter," Draco drawled, advancing towards the door, "this is why you should always submit to my superior intelligence."

Abruptly, the door slammed shut in Draco's face.

After a stunned silence, Draco let out a shaky, "What on earth – what are they playing at?"

But Harry had figured it out. "I think," he said a little gravely, "you have to win and then, and here's the crucial part my love, not gloat about it."

"What?" Draco screeched.

Harry fought to keep down the smirk. "You know I'm always telling the boys not to be sore losers and not to gloat? I'm guessing here, but I think that's what this room is about."

Draco made a strangled sound and flounced back to the chessboard. Harry grinned all the way through the second game, which Draco won. Draco played a little sulkily but when he won for the second time he said simply, "Good game, Potter," and shook Harry's hand.

The door swung open.

Unfortunately it slammed closed again right after Harry said, "I knew that was it!"

Draco waited until they were safely in the fourth room to start berating Harry for dooming them to play a third game of chess, but Harry was a little distracted by the twin doors at the other end of the room, each with an animated statue standing guard.

"What's this?" he indicated the back of the room.

Immediately both statues turned towards him.

"I guard the way forward," said the guardian to the right.

"I guard the way forward," said the guardian to the left.

"That's helpful," Draco snarked.

In the centre of the back wall was a plaque, which Harry read aloud:

""The twin guardians perform their duties wise-
One always tells the truth, the other always lies.
One question of one guardian is all you need to find
Which door leads forward and which leads back behind."

"I'm getting our sons a creative writing tutor," Draco muttered, then sighed. "Damn Scorpius and his obsession with logic puzzles."

Draco was pretty useless with these and Harry wasn't great himself. "How are we supposed to ask only one question and choose the right door?"

"I guard the way forward," said the guardian to the right.

"I guard the way forward," said the guardian to the left.

"Yeah, thanks, not helping," said Harry, furrowing his brow.

Draco rolled his eyes. "So one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth?"

"Yes," Harry said, trying to puzzle it out. One always lied and one always told the truth – so maybe if you asked one of them what the other would say... no, you'd have to be more specific than that, you couldn't just ask if the other always lied. "Draco, I think..."

But Draco was already smiling. "I've got it!" he said, and drew his wand.

"Draco, what..."

Without a word, Draco aimed his wand at the guardian to the left and blew its leg off.

"Aaaagh!" the statue cried, "he blew my leg off! The crazy git blew my leg off!"

The guardian to the right ran over to its companion, crying out, "He didn't blow your leg off and I totally saw it coming!"

Beaming, Draco turned back to Harry. "Door to the left, I think."

"I seriously cannot believe that you did that," said Harry for the fourth time. "I am so glad you never joined the Aurors."

"It was a transfigured guard, Harry, not a person. And it worked. Which is why it's just as ridiculous to always lie as to always tell the truth – people have to be less predictable than that."

"I am so glad you are half responsible for the boys' moral education," Harry said flatly.

Draco kissed his nose. "Basic survival skills, Harry, are often about expedience. Your life's been easier since I've been looking after your wellbeing hasn't it?"

Harry swallowed. "Why, Draco, what have you been doing?"

"Uh," Draco said, meeting Harry's eyes for just a second before turning away. "Nothing that you need to worry about. Oh, look, a mirror!"

Draco might think he was making Harry's life easier, but that was somewhat offset by the fact that Draco himself would likely be the death of him.

The back wall of this room was, indeed, almost entirely a mirror – and as they approached, somewhat to Harry's surprise, Narcissa's face appeared in it.

"Do you see..." Harry began.

"My mother?" Draco finished for him. "Oh, this does not bode well."

"Darlings," said mirror-Narcissa. "It has come to my attention that you two have not had enough time to simply enjoy one another's company of late. And so, the boys and I set up this little treasure hunt as your anniversary present. I do hope you had fun. Draco, your ring is in your bedside cabinet where I put it. You really should take better care of it; you know how important it is. In any case, when you go back upstairs, there will be your favourite foods waiting in the small dining room. The boys will stay with me overnight and tomorrow you both had better look well-shagged or I will be severely disappointed. Night, darlings!" And with that, she disappeared.

It took a moment before either of them was capable of speech.

Then Harry said, "Did your mother just say shagged?"

"She was just trying to do something nice for us," said Harry as they trudged out of the underground west corridor.

"As though we couldn't make plans for our own anniversary," Draco sniffed.

Harry winced a little. "Well, we hadn't, exactly. We have both been really busy lately you know. Seems like we're hardly ever awake at the same time these days."

Draco bit his lip. "I'll try to cut back if you will."

Harry kissed him gently. "Deal."

"Still," Draco said briskly, always adverse to being overly soppy, "I think it was at least partly to get me to have more of the rings made. Which isn't actually a bad idea. I don't know why I never got around to getting you one."

Harry smiled. "Because it's too close to being married?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Exactly how much more married could we get?"

Harry blushed. "Er. Well, you know, we could always, er..."

Draco looked at him, incredulous. "That had better not be a proposal, Potter, I will be damned if that is how you propose to me!"

Harry nodded slowly. "Well, how about this then: I love you. Marry me."

Draco went slack-jawed. "What, really?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I was going to get rings before I asked, but it looks like you lose those so maybe we should just get tattoos on our ring-fingers. Because I really do want to fight with you for the rest of my life."

Draco didn't speak for a moment – a moment filled with Harry fidgeting and wondering why he'd never even considered that Draco might say no, God, what if he said no...

"I don't know, Potter," Draco said, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. "Can I design the tattoos?"

"Only if you promise it won't involve the words Draco's bitch," Harry replied as his heart soared.

"You never let me have any fun," Draco pouted, and then Harry leaned forward to bite Draco's protruding lip into his mouth, proving just how much of a lie that was.

~fin.