Death, Fate, and Free Will Chapter 2: Partners, a harry potter fanfic

Hi everyone! I know it's been a long time since I've last updated, but I hope the VERY long length of this chapter makes up for it. Enjoy!

CHAPTER TWO: PARTNERS

The sky was dark that night. Whirls of green and burgundy clouds shrouded the stars, and an eerie purple mist had fallen to the earth. It was as if the heavens themselves were battled, bruised. Below the turbulence of the skies, the cobblestones were wet with that afternoon's rain. Not a soul was walking the streets. The windows of the thatched houses and shops were dark, curtains covering the panes, no smoke rising from the chimneys. Zonko's had haphazardly barred its front door shut with large planks of rotting wood. Most of the other owners in Hogsmeade hadn't taken the time to provide for security. The village seemed deserted.

But it wasn't. Dementors were making their way up the streets, flying shortly above the cobblestones. They came slowly at first, but in the span of minutes they were entering in droves. It must have been their presence that made the air seem so heavy and so stifled.

Yet not even they were alone. Beneath the cloaks that were billowing in the wind, a long, thin cover of darkness was crawling forward. Not a cloud or a mist, but an active, living thing. They were carpet-like masses, crowding the streets, the few porches, the storefronts, even the walls.

Suddenly a piercing cry rang out. Above the Dementors, flying deep within the mist, was a huge black creature with a horned beak of grey stone and large, fibrous wings. From deep within its throat sounded the high shriek. And it was this blood-curling screech that remained ringing in Blaise Zabini's head as the image in his mind's eye faded away into blackness.

Blaise opened his eyes and shivered. Around him, rows of young men and women dressed in the same drab khaki as he were staring curiously toward him. Some looked jealous; many of them had studied Divination at this academy since they were young children, day in and day out for years, and almost none had the same kind of gift that Blaise did.

"Well?" Francesco Zabini was standing in front of him, looking down at his nephew, who was still shaking slightly from his cross-legged position on the floor.

Blaise swallowed heavily, "It was Hogsmeade. Being attacked…I think. I don't know when or wh - " He sat up straighter, swallowed again, and spoke with the appropriate formality, "I mean that I don't quite understand it sir."

Francesco nodded, "Good."

"Sir?"

"When what you See becomes more difficult to understand, only then are you beginning to See things that are indeed worth Seeing."

It was Arthur Weasley who escorted Harry to the Ministry the following morning, pulling him through the mass of cameras and microphones that were being thrust into his face as they made their way toward the security grade and lifts. The press mob was even bigger than it had been the day before; the news that Harry Potter was "working with" or "assisting" or "cooperating alongside" the Ministry – the verb and implicit suggestions depended on the periodical you chose to read – had spread like fiendfyre and every journalist in London seemed to want a sound bite.

"Mr. Potter, how do you feel about the sacking of former Minister Fudge?"

"Are you really the Chosen One, Mr. Potter?"

"Harry, do you approve of the Ministry's current approach to the war?"

"What do you think should be done with the Death Eaters being held in Azkaban? Should they be executed immediately?"

"Don't say anything," Arthur whispered, as he pushed past a witch with an absurdly tall, singing hat. "Ignore them."

"Excuse me!" a voice from behind Harry shouted, "Mr. Malfoy! Draco Malfoy!"

For the first time he could remember, Harry felt mildly relieved that Malfoy was around. A good part of the press, shrugging off the rejection they were getting from Harry, turned around to ask questions to the son of a convicted Death Eater suddenly working for the Ministry.

"Oh he'd make a juicy cover photo," a short, mustached man carrying a Witch Weekly camera mumbled as he pushed past Harry.

"Mr. Malfoy, do you think your work here will help your father?"

"Does your family still maintain Lucius Malfoy's innocence?"

"Draco, are you trying to follow in your great-grandfather's footsteps?"

Harry could here Draco from behind him. "No comment," he snarled. "I maintain that my family has no comment."

"How hard is it going to be for you to work alongside Harry Potter?"

"What do you hope to gain from this internship Mr. Malfoy?"

"You touch the blazer again and you're paying the three thousand galleons," Draco growled under his breath.

Harry and Mr. Weasley made it through wand security and to the far end of the room much before Malfoy, but by the time the lift arrived he was standing behind them, setting his suit straight and shaking his head in disgust.

"Vultures," he muttered to himself, before he followed Harry and Mr. Weasley in, acknowledging neither of them. Across from Malfoy, Harry sniggered softly. Standing straight-backed at the side of the lift, his feet square, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a large cup of coffee, were it not for the long cloak around his shoulders, Draco would have done an excellent job of passing for a young Muggle broker in the center of London's Square Mile. Knowing how much that comparison would have horrified him, Harry couldn't help feeling amused.

Draco must have realized that Harry was laughing at him, because he looked up quickly in annoyance. Before he could retort, however, the lift stopped at Level 6, the Department of Magical Transportation, and a tall, wrinkled wizard with hard features and a long, grey ponytail entered.

"Arthur," the man nodded briskly. As he turned to Harry, a sneer formed on his face. There was a cold, almost predatory look in his eyes. Harry swallowed and as the wizard turned away, Mr. Weasley lowered his head and mouthed toward him, "Death Eater."

"Draco Malfoy," the wizard greeted in a low voice, "Well look at you."

"Yaxley," Draco smiled and reached forward to shake the wizard's hand.

"The spitting image of your father. And tall, trim, and working at the Ministry to boot. Your great-grandfather would be proud."

"Thank you sir," Draco replied smugly.

"I actually paid a visit to your dear mother the other day," Yaxley continued.

"Oh?" Draco replied. His voice remained casual, but there was now a tone of heightened albeit guarded interest in it.

"Indeed. I was sad to miss you, wanted to express my condolences. Your mother said you were in Italy?"

"Escorting a friend," Draco supplied. "Although unfortunately I won't be home at all this summer."

Yaxley appeared surprised, "Really?"

"Ease of travel. I've had my own flat in London since I was thirteen. It was time to make use of it."

"Ah." The lift stopped at Level 3 and Yaxley cleared his throat, "Well nevertheless I'm sure I'll be seeing you around often enough."

"I'll make a point of it," Draco replied, nodding to the older wizard as he walked briskly toward the offices of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.

The short trip up a level to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was spent in silence. Malfoy continued to ignore his two companions and hurried out of the lift the second the doors opened. Behind him, Arthur Weasley pulled Harry back.

"The Order suspects," Arthur whispered quickly, "that the Death Eaters are using Malfoy Manor as headquarters. They did last time."

"Why wouldn't Malfoy want to live there then?" Harry asked quickly. "Avoiding Death Eaters? That doesn't sound like him."

"Lucius bungled the prophecy job," Arthur replied, "You-Know-Who can't be pleased with the family." Mr. Weasley grabbed Harry by both arms. "Listen Harry," he whispered, "whatever Dumbledore or Kingsley might believe, there's one thing you can know for sure: there is nothing worse to a Death Eater than losing his favor. And once it's lost, they will do anything to get it back, try any means, use anyone."

"Even their children…" Harry completed Mr. Weasley's thought.

Arthur nodded, "Watch yourself Harry."

Despite Mr. Weasley's warning, however, the morning was as dull as could be. Draco seemed to have adopted the policy of acting as if Harry weren't there, something Harry himself was perfectly fine with accepting. A silent albeit uneasy truce was the best he could have hoped for in the first place. And slowly but steadily, work was coming in to occupy his attention, busywork though it might have been.

Throughout the morning, Aurors streamed in and out of their office, handing them handwritten notes that had to be turned into proper case reports. Harry had a feeling, however, that they were far more interested in meeting some of the interns than getting their paperwork done. Most of them didn't even bother distributing their notes and files to the girls on the other side of the glass door. They stopped primarily at Harry's desk and smiled widely, trying to make small talk for as long as possible. A few alluded to the war, attempting to pry information out of Harry. And a few particularly daring ones inquired directly about what had happened in the Department of Mysteries earlier that year. He could tell most of them wanted to ask if he really was the 'Chosen One' or not, but they'd probably been told by department administrators not to mention any of the rumors in front of him.

As the questioning became more persistent, Harry tried to keep his tone polite yet curt. He knew that the entire summer would probably pass this way, or at least it would until the Aurors got over the novelty of having him around. And he could watch their reactions to Malfoy with both interest and amusement. Next to Harry, he was easily the intern to which they were paying most attention. They'd turn around from Harry and look at him, smiling thinly or staring gravely. Some of them were silent as they plopped files on his desk. Many of them would mention his great-grandfather; a few who'd known the Malfoys longer tried chatting casually with him or offered indirect support to the family. Most of the younger ones just seemed curious, and Harry thought he saw one first year trainee turn his neck sideways to look at Draco's forearm, as if he expected to see the Dark Mark there in plain sight.

The witches seemed much less suspicious, however, and a few of them were actively flirting with both him and Harry. One particular woman, however, didn't even try hiding her disgust. The moment she entered the room and saw Draco, her face turned cold. She didn't even look toward Harry, only glared angrily at Malfoy as she placed a thick file on his desk. It had a large red stamp on it, with the word DECEASED, and Draco seemed genuinely surprised. He was about to ask when the tall, blonde witch finally spoke. "Your aunt killed my fiancé," she said coldly. To which Malfoy only leaned back and in a casual, completely unsympathetic tone, almost as if he were trying hard to keep himself from laughing or rolling his eyes, replied softly, "My apologies."

Harry shook his head when that witch walked out quietly. "You're disgusting," he muttered.

"Sticks. And. Stones. Potter." Malfoy said, unfazed. It was the only exchange the two had that morning.

By one o'clock, Harry had gotten tired of the continual flood of curious Aurors and the almost awkward hate-filled silence that filled the room when they left. He was about to take a break and go eat – Susan had just left with Luciana – when the door opened for the umpteenth time that day and two men walked in.

Both were tall and extremely well built. One had golden-brown hair that fell to his shoulders in thick curls; the other's head was completely shaved. They were both smirking.

"Well, well, well…Harry Potter," the curly-haired one shot out his hand to shake Harry's. "Aramis. This is Hector. We're fourth year Arctor students. Former Ravenclaws. Former Head Boy and Quidditch Captain at Hogwarts. Respectively."

"Nice to meet you," Harry said, smiling thinly. He disliked the two instantly. They practically stank of arrogance, more so than anyone else he'd interacted with that morning. That was saying something too, considering that he'd been sitting across from Draco for about five hours.

Hector was standing in front of him with his arms crossed and an intent stare on his face. "Hmm," he finally grunted. "A little bit scrawny for the Chosen One."

"W – what?" Harry stammered, taken aback by Hector's mocking tone and surprised to hear anyone mention the topic in the first place after a morning of evasion and subtle allusions.

"And he stammers," Aramis said. "That's a sign of poor charisma."

"Can't have a great leader without charisma," Hector added.

"Not that you look like much of a leader anyway," Aramis nodded to him.

"I wouldn't follow you into battle at least."

The smile had fallen off Harry's face. "Well," he said coldly, "if the time ever comes, I'll be sure not to ask you."

Aramis laughed loudly. "You ask us? Please, we're our year's best."

"We're the Ministry's best," Hector rephrased.

"Top of the class since we've gotten here. Two of only twenty Auror or Arctor students to actually work a job before graduating in the last ten years. Our scores are perfect; our stats are perfect. And let me tell you, now that this war's running in full force, it's going to be us on the front lines, not some kid."

"See," Hector continued. "We don't get lucky. We don't wait for our mummies or our mentors to save our skins. We just win, plain and simple, and we don't need any Chose One to do it."

As Harry glared at them incredulously, Malfoy suddenly sniggered at his desk. "Please, carry on," he said amusedly, as the two Arctors turned toward him. "Don't mind me."

"You," Aramis began, pointing at him, "you're the one they gave my physical regiment to. Or at least, half of it. Interns always have it easy."

"We should know," Hector added. "We both had this job four years ago."

Aramis was nodding slowly. "Impressive I suppose," he said toward Malfoy "although to be honest, you don't exactly seem much like a warrior either. More…suited…to plan a gala." He sniggered at his pun.

If Malfoy was taken aback by the tone, he didn't show it. "If you're interested, I can refer you to my tailor," he replied smoothly, in the same confident, nonchalant tone he'd used with Yaxley in the elevator and with the tall, blonde witch just hours before.

Aramis snorted, "Clever aren't you?"

"Must be a family trait," Hector smirked. "Although one that ebbs away when times get rough."

"See, we helped bring your father over to Azkaban."

"Sniveling like a rat he was, fear written on every inch of his old, pale face."

"I half expected him to try and pay us off to bring him hair products."

"Not that he'd have been able to make an offer."

"We'd never have heard the words, he was whimpering so loudly."

"Tears would have been less pathetic."

Draco stood up quickly with his face reddening and his jaw clenched, knocking an inkwell off his desk in the process.

"Calm," Aramis said, before Draco cold retort, taking out his wand and levitating the inkwell back on the desk's corner. "We wouldn't want both Malfoy men to end up in prison. That'd be a real shame."

Hector laughed and threw a few leaflets of paper on both desks, "Have fun you two. We'll be around."

Harry smiled bitterly as the two walked out. They had obviously come in to have a look at him and assert their influence in the Ministry. At least this was one thing with which he wouldn't let himself get frustrated. He was used to being discredited, not to mention that he'd been expecting to meet plenty of Ministry workers who either didn't understand what it meant for Voldemort to have returned or were falsely overconfident about their ability to defeat him. As Hermione would have wisely pointed out, getting offended wouldn't have been worth the effort. They'd all come to their senses soon enough.

Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed far less comfortable. He had sat back down and started writing again, but his face was still red and he seemed flustered, scribbling quickly and stopping at intervals to drum his fingers angrily on the desktop. The cool and detached attitude that he'd adopted for the previous day and entire morning had fallen away immediately at the mention his father. Harry couldn't help feeling a little inner satisfaction.

Somewhat surprisingly, and to the severe disappointment of Harry's futile albeit consistent hopes that Malfoy would do something stupid and get himself removed from the Ministry, "cool and detached" seemed to be Draco's default state. That incident with Aramis and Hector was the closest he came to losing control. He spent the rest of the week working quickly through case report forms at his desk, and when he wasn't doing paperwork, he was presumably on the training floor. He ignored Harry almost completely. When he spoke, he was sarcastic, but in fact he rarely spoke. And he kept out of the way far more than would have been expected of someone who spent his school days making as much childish and immature trouble as he could.

In fact, were it not for seeing him in the same room day in and day out, Harry would have forgotten Draco was even around. He had become busy enough himself, frustratingly so. While his immediate guess that he'd be spending the summer doing little more than paperwork had been proven right, he had stunningly underestimated the actual difficulty of the job. The statues that had to be written in full on every report were buried deep in huge and largely disorganized Ministry volumes with old, sticky pages and tiny text, and they were only identifiable by long sequences and subsequences of numbers. The Dursleys had always kept Harry as far away from their computer as possible, and he'd never really understood how anyone, even Dudley, could spend so much time sitting in front of one machine and becoming so dependent on it; now he could easily imagine its usefulness. And he was quickly developing a feeling of pity toward the first year Auror students who apparently did this work when interns were around. On the other hand, he'd lost any ability to imagine how Hermione could actually find research "fun."

Then there was the challenge of dealing with the case files themselves. Most of the Aurors and Arctors had handwriting that was difficult to decipher, and they often wrote in shorthand. To Harry's frustration, in some cases it was taking him hours to figure out what was already written in the notes he'd been handed, not to mention to fill his forms out. It didn't help his general annoyance at the job that Malfoy seemed to be moving through his work at a much faster pace.

Worst of all, the cases he was being handed seemed almost inconsequential; most of them looked like they belonged more to the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol Squad than the Aurors themselves and in any other time would have been considered as such. Granted, Harry was sure that Mrs. Stevenson was upset that her old cat had suddenly begun acting psychotic, but her claim that Death Eaters were possessing it had made him literally laugh aloud. Not to mention there were a string of petty break-ins and burglaries; numerous arrests and late-night attacks on witches, wizards, and even Muggles that had been mistaken for Death Eaters; and the general rowdiness and stupidity of kids that didn't understand the gravity of the war well enough to keep from trying to emulate its participants for a few laughs. All terrible incidents, but none at the level of Voldemort-induced tragedy. Yet as pointless as these claims may have seemed in a time like this, the Ministry was obligated to investigate them and equally obligated to file away reports. Harry had tried asking Kingsley whether the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was actually doing something productive to unravel real crimes and capture actual Death Eaters; the only mumbled and evasive response he received, however, was that while they certainly were, first and second year Auror students must have been handling most of that paperwork and Harry could only wait until one randomly appeared on his desk.

By that Friday, Harry's general boredom and frustration had reached a high point. The notes he was trying to read made even Ron's handwriting look neat, the letters were minuscule, half of the words were abbreviated, and the faux case itself was about the theft of some oriental vase from a rich couple's condominium in west London, an incident they'd insisted be reported to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement itself out of an ironclad belief that no one but a Death Eater would dare break into their home and rob them. He'd spent over an hour on the groan-inducing report and wasn't halfway through, so when the door opened late that morning and provided the opportunity for a welcome distraction, Harry almost jumped out of his seat.

His stomach, however, fell sharply at the sight of Percy Weasley standing in the doorway. The elder Weasley was almost unchanged from the last time Harry had seen him. His hair was a little shorter and his face a little thinner, but his lips were still pursed in that infuriating expression of rigid pompousness. Harry thought he may have seen him nod a greeting, but if so it was barely perceptible. He might as well have blinked. Harry didn't bother to acknowledge him, not after all the pain he was still causing Mrs. Weasley and everything he'd said about Harry the year before. Groaning slightly, he returned to the case of the missing Chinese porcelain.

Percy cleared his throat, "Mr. Malfoy."

Draco had looked up over the large book of statues he was browsing when the door had first opened and had lost interest immediately, but at the sound of his name sighed loudly and slammed the book shut. He grunted in reply.

"Good afternoon, I'm Percy Weasley, Senior Assistant to Minister of Magic Rufu - "

"I went to school with you Weasley, drop the act," Draco drawled, clearly not interested in giving the Weasley any more respect than he always had, Ministry official or not. "How have I offended the dear Minister?"

Harry pretended to keep writing but started to listen carefully. Malfoy might have managed to stay trouble-free that week, but Harry had no doubt that any callous reference to his family would yet again make him lose his temper instantly. And after all, there were only a few things that an assistant to the Minister of Magic could possibly want to discuss with Draco, and none of them had to do with job performance.

Percy cleared his throat again, an expression of severe annoyance at Malfoy's disrespect crossing his face. "You haven't," he replied quickly. "Your mother has."

As Harry predicted, the smirk instantly fell off Draco's face and his back straightened quickly. "Excuse me?" he asked curtly.

Percy walked over briskly and handed Draco a set of papers. "She refuses to sign these documents. In fact she refuses to permit us to enter the grounds -"

"Imagine that," Draco snapped.

" – As I'm sure you know, your father's trial is being postponed indefinitely. The Ministry needs it documented that your family understands this decision and is fully aware of its remaining rights and privileges under Ministry Statue 507.4 - "

"I know what the Ministry Statue is," Draco said drily. At this point Harry had stopped pretending that he wasn't paying attention. He could tell Malfoy was getting angry. He'd completely dropped the sarcastic tone and he hadn't even looked at what Percy had handed him.

Percy smiled smugly, "Considering the prominence and implications of your father's case, your mother's resistance to acknowledging the legality of the Ministry's present course of action is causing no small frustration for the Minister, not to mention a number of…strategic complications. And I'm sure I don't need to remind you that such complications tend to make life difficult for both the accused and their families."

Harry half expected Draco to take out his wand and curse Percy right then and there. He'd been about to blow in front of Aramis and Hector earlier that week, and all they had done was be annoying and insulting. At the least if looks could kill, Percy would have dropped over before he'd finished talking.

To Harry's surprise and even grudging, although short-lived, admiration, Malfoy held his tongue. "I'm underage," he finally pointed out cooly. "Sorry I can't help."

"Irrelevant," Percy replied quickly. "You are nevertheless in charge of your father's affairs while he's in custody. Control his invest firm now do you not?"

"It's the family investment firm," Draco corrected coldly. "I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand."

It was a pretty poor insult, and both of them knew it. "I stand corrected," Percy replied, not sounding the least bit apologetic or offended. He tapped the papers on Malfoy's desk impatiently.

Draco didn't say anything else. For about five minutes, he scanned over the legal documents in complete silence as Percy stood over him. Finally, he sighed and signed each one, handing them back to Percy without a word.

"Wonderful," Percy was smiling, obviously pleased with himself for getting a coveted signature that other Ministry officials had not. Yet even though Malfoy had reopened the large statue guide and returned to his case report form, Percy didn't budge. A few awkward moments passed, then Percy cleared his throat again.

Draco stopped right. "What?" he hissed, now not even trying to hide the impatience and frustration in his voice.

"It's not my place," Percy began formally, "but as a formerly aspiring Ministry wizard who has achieved respectable success, I feel it a personal duty to speak. The evidence against your father is incontrovertible Draco. Your future will benefit immeasurably by your distancing yourself and providing the Ministry with any and all information you may have at your disposal."

Harry bit his lip quickly to suppress either a laugh or a gasp of shock – he wasn't quite sure which would have come out. He knew Percy had an incredible amount of nerve, but that was a level of audacity that, even after everything he'd done, Harry wouldn't have expected. He quickly looked across the glass panel to where the girls sat, but they'd left earlier that morning to finish their physical regiments. It was somewhat of a pity; Susan would have found this very entertaining.

Across the room, Malfoy's mouth had literally fallen open. He looked at Percy in silence for a few tense moments, then actually laughed. He shook his head and leaned back in his seat.

"I know it might be challenging for you to understand Weasley," he began with false politesse, "but while some people can denounce their families and keep their pride and consciences intact, others have the decency to advance their fortunes in more tasteful ways."

Percy's face immediately turned a dark shade of pink. He opened his mouth to say something, but clearly decided against it, because without even the pretense of an official farewell, he marched out of the room without saying another word or looking at either Harry or Draco.

"What are you sniggering at Potter?" Malfoy snapped angrily.

Harry quickly suppressed his spontaneous laughter. "Nothing," he shook his head. "That – that was pretty good though," he muttered. He had absolutely no pity for either Draco or his father. They were among Voldemort's staunchest supporters, Lucius fully deserved to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban, and it wouldn't have surprised Harry one bit if Draco followed him there quite willingly before the war was over. But Percy had deserved the jab.

Draco got up to return his completed case report forms to the Aurors who'd requested them. "What can I say, I hate self righteous people," he added bitterly.

"Oh there's so much absurd bureaucracy in the Ministry," Tonks laughed. "I almost dropped out my first year because of it. Too much bullshit."

She and Harry were having a long lunch in the Ministry cafeteria. They'd been talking about Ministry administration and its general lack of efficiency, and even though Tonks had been picking slowly at her food for the past hour, she seemed in a better mood than Harry had seen her in some time.

Harry smiled, "Yeah, I can imagine how Moody was a little…controversial."

"Got that right," Tonks snorted. "Helped that he was brilliant though. Completely bonkers, but brilliant." She shook her head, "Hey, speaking of pompous Ministry assholes, I saw Percy going in to talk with you guys. What was that all about?"

Harry rolled his eyes, "He wanted to see Malfoy. His father, papers that need signing…something like that."

"Ahhhh…yeah the Wizengamot isn't trying any of the Death Eaters yet."

"Why not?"

Tonks shrugged, "If the prosecution loses, the Death Eaters go straight back to You-Know-Who. There're far too many legal technicalities to risk it. Not to mention that we really don't have any idea who in the Ministry is actually on their side. Could be enough to tilt the vote you know?" She shook her head, "Scrimgeour was head of the Auror Office. He guest lecturered in some of my classes, even went into the field with us a few times. Trust me, that man is not above forgoing habeas corpus in times of crisis."

"Seems like a big improvement over Fudge."

"Oh definitely. Well, for the most part. Sadly enough, he did promote Percy to Senior Personal Assistant. That was a negative."

"I assume Percy's not popular?"

"Of course not. The kid's a pompous git. Walks around the entire Ministry with Scrimgeour's little assignments as if he's the Minister-elect. Not to mention that he's just overly formal and plain annoying." She rolled her eyes, "I mean, I'd never say anything in front of Molly…God knows why, she still adores him…but someone needs to bring the guy down a few notches and quickly."

"Actually, Malfoy kinda did," Harry sniggered again at the memory.

"Oh he must have been furious. Malfoy blood runs thick."

"Yeah he basically worships his father," Harry agreed. "But there really wasn't a problem until Percy took it upon himself to recommend that Draco turn Lucius in so that he can advance his Ministry career."

"He didn't!" Tonks laughed loudly. "Wow…what happened?"

"Malfoy basically told Percy that even he has enough dignity and loyalty to not do to his own family what Percy did to Mr. And Mrs. Weasley."

Tonks threw her head back and clapped her hands, "Oh wonderful…Getting lessons on virtue from Slytherin spawn, that has to hurt." She paused, "Not that I'm siding with the Malfoys or anything. But you know, Percy does des - "

"I know what you mean," Harry interrupted.

Tonks shook her head in amusement for some time. "How are you two getting along anyway? You and Malfoy, not you and Percy."

Harry shrugged, "Fine. It's been a pretty uneventful week."

"Much to Kinglsey's relief I'm sure. He was preparing for the worst. 'Dreading' is probably a better word."

"I mean, it's not that we like each other any better than we ever have. But Malfoy and I only argue when he opens his mouth, and he's been pretty quiet. Uncharacteristically I guess. Just works and, um, works out."

"Oh right. I heard he's impressive on that count." She shrugged, "Although Lynx tends to be impressed very easily."

"You know him?"

"Oh yeah." Tonks smiled. "Pretty well as a matter of fact."

Harry laughed, "Tonks are you blushing?"

She rolled her eyes. "I may have dated him," she muttered. "Well don't look so surprised!"

Harry's mouth had fallen open. "S - sorry," he said quickly. "It's just - Lynx is so…so…"

"Overly hyper? And cheery? And excitable? And not at all awesomely badass like I am?" Tonks laughed.

"Um, yeah all of the above."

Tonks laughed, "Believe it or not we had a pretty good rapport. We were in all the same classes and everything. Well, until he decided to go on and be an Arctor. Then things changed for the worse I guess."

"Can I ask why?" Harry asked.

"Oh don't be so awkward." Tonks rolled her eyes and shrugged, "No big deal or anything. It's just that Aurors and Arctors have an…uneasy relationship. There are only about, say fifteen maybe twenty, Arctors in total, and they tend to think way too much of themselves."

Harry nodded in understanding, "Like Aramis and Hector."

Tonks groaned loudly, "Oh Merlin, now there are two more that would benefit from having their egos slaughtered a little."

Harry laughed, "I guess that no one likes them either?"

"Well," Tonks sighed. "Depends. I mean, out of fairness, to their credit and all, they're pretty good. Quite possibly the best magical combat students in…at least a decade. Strong, fast, great instincts, hardworking, not to mention politically astute…you know, the Department's dream."

"But…"

"But they know they're good. And they want everyone else to know it. And remember it. And be reminded of it."

Harry shook his head, "The first day I met them, they were trying to stake out their territory or something."

"Typical," Tonks said drily. "The result of all that arrogance is that they're basically giant assholes. Especially to anyone they feel insults them, threatens them - that's you I guess - or is a weak and easy target for them. Which happens to be a lot of people. " She shrugs, "I assume it makes them feel all better about themselves, even though it shows the maturity of a twelve-year-old."

"Doesn't anyone try to put them in their place?"

Tonks sighed again, "Most of their peers and the younger Aurors just try to ignore them. I do at least. Aramis actually tried to ask me out once." She shuddered. "The problem's that in the eyes of all the higher-ups, they can do no wrong. Scrimgeour took it as a matter of personal pride that they 'were discovered' when he was Head of the Auror Office, Gawain Robards - the new Head you know? - absolutely adores them, and I'm pretty sure Amelia Bones is related to Aramis' mother or something. They're kinda like you at Hogwarts Harry."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked defensively.

"Not that you're a jerk or product of nepotism or anything. Just that I hear you tend to get what you want and tend to never get in trouble."

"I don't always get what I want," Harry insisted. "And I definitely get in trouble."

"Not in nearly the amount of trouble you'd deserve, hey Harry?" Tonks winked.

Had it been anyone else, Harry would have objected further, but he knew Tonks meant well - and she wasn't completely wrong either - so he simply shot her his most innocent smile.

Tonks laughed, "Well, Aramis and Hector are pretty favored too. They more or less get anything they ask for. Actually, I'm pretty sure they've only ever had one request turned down and that was…" Suddenly, her voice trailed away and the smile on her face disappeared.

"Tonks?" Harry asked.

She swallowed and continued more quietly, "The Sirius Black case. They, um, asked to be put on it two years ago, as second years. Not even Scrimgeour would let them, and he, he really wanted to catc…to catch Sirius you know."

Harry nodded quickly. He tried to think of something to say, a way to change the conversation, but a cold, tense silence had fallen over the pair. Tonks, who'd been so animated over the past hour or so, had regained that sad and exhausted expression she had been wearing the entire summer. She almost looked haunted.

After an awkward minute or two, Tonks cleared her throat, "Hey Harry, I, um, I actually have to go. I'm picking up Ginny from her Aunt Muriel's. She's coming home today. I'll - I'll see you later."

Harry muttered a goodbye and waited until she was far out of hearing before sighing angrily. He felt horrible seeing Tonks in that depressed state. Hermione had told him that she'd been like that the entire summer, refusing to share her thoughts or feelings with anyone in the Order, even when Molly was trying to be especially motherly. The one time Lupin had pressed her, she'd shouted toward him that she neither wanted nor needed anyone's help, before bursting into tears and claiming that none of them could offer any in the first place, because they didn't know what it was like for their ineptitudes to cause someone's death. She was blaming herself for not being able to defeat Bellatrix before she'd killed Sirius, and Harry wished there was something he could do or say that would make her feel even the least bit better, let her know that she wasn't the one that needed to be condemned for what had happened. But he couldn't even imagine bringing up the subject with her. He had no idea what to say in the first place, not when he hadn't come to terms with Sirius' Death himself. Regardless of the work or the Ministry frustrations, his mind would turn to that night in the Department of Mysteries during every spare moment. And even though he knew somewhere deep inside that Dumbledore was right, that he couldn't blame himself for what had happened, he still couldn't let himself off the hook. He didn't even know why Sirius was dead. He didn't even know what the veil Sirius had fallen through was, how it had even managed to engulf and destroy an entire human being. He still had no closure or peace of mind himself, and so even though he wanted to, he had no idea how to bring them to Tonks.

Harry was so distracted as he made his way back to the interns' offices that he didn't notice anyone was in the hallway with him until he heard Aramis' rough laughter from behind. He turned around, almost against his better judgment, and saw him and Hector turning the corner a few steps behind Malfoy. They were walking on either side of him and seemed incredibly amused.

"Damn, Malfoy's having a rough day…" Harry muttered under his breath as he walked on, grudgingly feeling a little sorry for Draco but more importantly hoping that Aramis and Hector wouldn't notice and start on him too. Nevertheless, he couldn't help overhearing them.

"Aramis, that has to be a little unfair. At least he's being incredibly modest about it."

"True. We never would've found out you're in charge of all that Malfoy money were it not for Percefuck strutting around. Humility. I can respect that."

"Unless of course it's not humility," Hector added. "It could always just be personal doubt. Think of what'll happen if you screw it up Draco."

"The Malfoy coffers at Gringotts empty…"

"All those historic books and maps and documents handed over to the government…"

"The properties given away to new money…"

"And to half-bloods. Or even worse, Muggleborns."

"Your children and their children's children and their children's children's children growing up in squalor…"

"All because you screwed up?"

Aramis shook his head, "It'd be enough to keep me quiet with terror."

Although Aramis and Hector seemed far too amused to notice, by then the three of them had caught up to Harry. He could see Malfoy out of the corner of his eye. His usually cold, grey eyes were burning and he was chewing the inside of his cheeks furiously, but he seemed to be doing his best to walk ahead of the two and ignore them.

"Yeah," Aramis continued. "I'm actually going to go with sheer terror instead of humility."

"I mean, the evidence could go either way."

"Perhaps, but from my experience with the Malfoys, I figure pressure makes them squirm."

"Good point. What do you think Draco? How long are you going to be able to stand your family's fortune and history festering like old pumpkin bread before you start going nuts?"

"Oh I think he'll last longer than his father. Old Lucius already seemed a little gone. Plus, decency and reputation aren't as nerve wrecking as prison sentences."

"Not to you maybe. And anyway, I don't really care. I'm much more interested in finding out which one of them has the more high-pitched squeal."

Even though he'd think about it quite a few times during the months to come, Harry was never really able to explain why he'd done what he did next. He was still looking at Malfoy out of the corner of his eye, and he must have seen something: a rough sigh after a day of jibes, a gritting of the teeth, a sudden twitching of the hand…Whatever it was, in seconds he found himself grabbing Malfoy tightly by the upper arms, struggling to hold him back after he'd suddenly twisted around and lurched angrily toward Hector.

Both the Arctors laughed. "Aw, cute that you're helping him out Potter," Aramis said mockingly.

"Oh bugger off," Harry snapped, pulling Malfoy back again as he tried to wrench himself out of Harry's grasp. Harry suppressed a grunt. Lynx couldn't have been exaggerating much; Malfoy was stronger than he'd have figured.

Fortunately, neither Aramis nor Hector seemed to think the situation warranted their further attention. Still sniggering, they walked down the rest of the hallway and out of sight. As Harry look after them, Draco finally managed to twist free of his grip. "Get your filthy hands off of me," he spat.

"They're bullies. It's not worth it; they're just looking for a reaction," Harry spat. "I know, because I've been putting up with you for five years."

Malfoy glared at him angrily but didn't retort. As he hurried away angrily, Harry shook his head. "Why even bother?" he muttered to himself.

By mid-afternoon, Harry was certain he never wanted to hear or read a thing about oriental vases again, much less actually see one. He was also convinced that if he ever met the couple that was pulling the Ministry through this joke of an investigation, he'd give them a violent piece of his mind.

"Busy Harry?" Kinglsey asked from the doorway.

Harry shook his head, "More like annoyed. Although we've been having a lot of visitors today."

"It's been slow." Kingsley looked around and nodded toward Malfoy's empty desk, "Where's he?"

Harry shrugged, "Had a run-in with Aramis and Hector earlier, then he ran off somewhere. I don't ask."

"He's on the training floor," Susan said, as she walked through the room to leave and deliver finished files to the Aurors. "Luciana and I saw him…say half an hour ago?"

Kingsley turned to Harry, "How often does he go down there?"

Harry shrugged again, "I told you, I don't ask." When Kingsley shot him a stern look, Harry sighed, "Every day I think?"

Kingsley shook his head, "The Ministry isn't here to provide him a personal gym. He's supposed to be working."

"Um, take it up with him then?" Harry replied awkwardly.

"Oh I will…" Kinglsey said slowly. "Do you mind bringing him back up here for me?"

"Yes!" Harry objected. "Kingsley, I'm buried in these stupid things…no offense."

"Please?" Kingsley asked.

"I'm not his babysitter," Harry insisted.

"Harry…"

Harry sighed angrily, "Fine." He smiled wryly at Kingsley as he left the room, "But you owe me."

When he reached the training room floor, Harry groaned. It was more crowded than he'd ever seen it; most of the Aurors seemed to have put off their physical requirements until that Friday afternoon. Apparently procrastination had no age limit. Harry craned his neck to look for Malfoy among the bustle of bodies.

"Hey, Harry!" Lynx waved him over from the dueling room. "Need someone to work out with?"

Harry smiled with relief as he saw the Auror, "No I actually finished yesterday."

"Nice. By the way, I saw you having lunch with Tonks. How's she be -"

"Um, she's good," Harry interrupted quickly, even though the answer certainly wasn't true. "Hey have you seen Malfoy? I'm looking for him."

If Lynx was upset at having his question about Tonks cut off, he didn't show it. "Oh yeah," he replied excitedly. "Martial arts and combat room. He's beating the hell out of a punching bag. Kinda scary to be honest. Personally, I'm better at the more elegant swordfigh -"

"Thanks Lynx," Harry said as he walked away quickly. Fortunately, despite Lynx's relatively frustrating eagerness, he was spot on. It took Harry almost no time to find Malfoy, not only because he was precisely where Lynx had remembered but because there was almost no one standing around him.

"Damn," Harry muttered, quickly realizing why. Draco was apparently doing to the punching back what he'd wanted to do to Percy, Aramis, and Hector earlier that day - and probably to Harry for most of his life - hitting it so quickly and violently that his muscles seemed to be jumping straight out of his upper arms and shoulders and that all the other Aurors walking by were taking a wide circle to avoid getting hit by the large flying mass. It made Harry feel pretty certain that he'd been smart, or at least had accurate instincts, to have held Malfoy back earlier that day; that fight couldn't have ended well.

"Malfoy," Harry groaned.

Draco, his back turned toward him, either didn't hear or didn't pay attention.

"Malfoy," Harry emphasized more loudly.

Draco punched forward twice, then kicked the bag fiercely and followed through, taking to the air and twisting around to the other side of the punching bag as it snapped upward and almost hit the ceiling.

"What?" he spat fiercely, his face angry beneath a wall of sweat.

"Why are you even friends with Crabbe and Goyle…" Harry muttered.

"Excuse me?"

Harry shook his head, "Nevermind. Kingsley wants to see you."

Draco rolled his eyes and ignored him.

"Now," Harry emphasized.

Draco gave the punching back two more hits, then threw off his gloves. "Fine," he hissed, pushing past Harry.

"You're not changing back into your fancy suit?" Harry muttered sarcastically.

"Oh I won't be gone long," Draco hissed.

Taken aback that Malfoy had actually heard him, Harry shut up. After all, if Malfoy wanted to get into a fight with Kingsley, he certainly wasn't going to try and dissuade him. A full week of peace had been far too good to be true anyway…

"Is there a problem?" Malfoy asked Kingsley with only the thinnest veneer of respect when they finally returned to the interns' offices. Harry slid behind him to sit at his desk and shrugged toward Susan, who he could see leaning over her desk and closer to the glass door to hear better.

Kingsley smiled thinly, "Apparently so. While I can certainly appreciate, Draco, your…eagerness to complete challenging physical requirements, please remember that your most important job here is t -"

"I finished the case reports this morning," Draco interrupted quickly.

Kingsley swallowed heavily, "Then it would be advisable to help some of your fellow interns with their workloads."

"I have. Did a quarter of Luciana's this morning. I finished all my own yesterday."

Kingsley opened his mouth to reply, but Draco quickly cut him off. "Listen," he said in an annoyed voice, "If you want to go ahead and protect yourselves against my supposed evil influences and nefarious connections by fixing the reports they give out so that actual Aurors handle all the Death Eater cases while we're all stuck with petty robbery, break-ins, and spurious idiocies, fine. And while it's not your fault that when the big boys come out to play all the younger copycat children run out after them and need to be properly accounted for, it certainly isn't my fault that copying down the exact same four or five statues to deal with those children takes less time than my History of Magic Essays back at Hogwarts. In fact, I'm offended it's not a point of compliment that I'm being so efficient. Now if you'll excuse me…" Almost slamming the door behind him, Malfoy stormed out of the room. Susan whistled in disbelief and retreated back to her seat, whispering something to Luciana.

Kingsley sighed, "If only Dumbledore hadn't said we couldn't fire him for disrespect…"

"Your fixing which cases they give us?" Harry exclaimed. His mind had immediately fixed to that point in the brief argument.

"There might be some…selection involved," Kingsley replied slowly. "Didn't realize it would be that obvious."

"What?" Harry could feel the by-now customary anger rising up in his chest again. He grabbed the case report on his desk, "You mean I'm doing this…pottery bullshit for kicks?"

"The Ministry does feel a little trepidation about giving young students access to Death Eater files," Kingsley replied absentmindedly, "Especially to Malfoy."

"Then why did you pick him?"

Kingsley didn't reply immediately. "Sorry Harry, one moment," he finally said. "I think I have an idea…"

"What?"

"You - you finish that up there. I'm going to clear something with Bones. Should make everything more bearable for everyone."

"What ar - Kingsley?" Harry shouted after him as he left the room, but it was to no avail. Frustrated, he sat down angrily and hit his fist against the desk. "So much for not being angry," he muttered between gritted teeth. Quickly, he skimmed through his completed case forms, "Dammit they are only the same four or five statues aren't they?"

Frustrated that he hadn't noticed the similarities and infuriated at both the the pointless work and at Kingsley for making him do it, Harry spent the next hour struggling to focus and thinking of all the more productive things Dumbledore could have forced him to do: train to fight Voldemort, prepare to lead others as the 'Chosen One'…The thoughts of course only made him angrier. It was as if despite the few days of relative inner piece, he'd injected himself into the same vicious cycle of intensifying anger and frustration.

As the day wore on and it got closer to the time to leave, Harry got increasingly irritated and inattentive, so much so that he scarcely noticed when Malfoy came back upstairs and that when Kingsley finally reentered the room, a fairly large case file in his hand, Harry would have started to shout at him outright had Kingsley not quickly pushed him out of the conversation to address Malfoy.

"Keeping busy?" he asked calmly. There was a self-assured smile on his face that Draco noticed immediately.

"Selecting the family's charitable contributions," Draco replied slowly. "Of course if that's too much a waste of time I could just sit here and stare at the ceiling. Maybe annoy Potter."

The already angry Harry glared at him, but Kingsley ignored the sarcasm. In the same cool voice he replied, "Ah yes, your family does donate generously…"

"We try…" Draco said, his voice still slow and guarded.

"I assume you're pretty good with money yourself then?"

"Obviously, I'm a Malfoy…excuse me, what exactly are you…"

Kingsley smiled widely, "You've heard of Alexander Rizitsky?"

At that, Draco immediately stood up straight, "You caught Alexander Rizitsky?"

"Well, the word 'caught'…it might be a little too precise."

Draco raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"He's in Mungo's."

Draco rolled his eyes, "Let me guess, Mafia attack gone wrong?"

"We're suspecting the Russians."

"Only the Ministry of Magic would consider mob-induced physical incapacitation to be their personal victory," Draco shook his head sarcastically.

Kingsley ignored the jibe, "Obviously it would be preferable if we could build enough of a case to arrest him before he's physically capable of leaving the country for one that doesn't extradite…yet again. But we're a little short on forensic economists and accountants at the moment."

"The Ministry doesn't have a criminal economic analyst," Draco pointed out.

Kingsley shrugged, "True, but we at least usually have a basic accountant."

"Yeah, one that changes like every few months or year at most. Doesn't everyone hate that job?"

"Well right now no one has that job," Kingsley replied, a slight tinge of impatience appearing in his otherwise calm voice, "The old one was appointed by Scrimgeour to a personal assistant, the newest one was killed by Death Eaters about a month ago, and somehow no one else has volunteered.."

"Oh sure, blame the Death Eaters," Draco snorted. "The problem has nothing to do with the fact that now that Mr. Action and Battle-Oriented Rufus Scrimgeour is Minister, the job wouldn't lead to any higher rung on the bureaucratic ladder."

Kingsley sighed. "I came to offer you the chance to build a case against him yourself," he said coldly. "Thought you'd be interested."

Slowly, a smirk grew on Draco's face. "Let me guess," he began, "you give me Rizitsky, I do no more Auror case files, and Potter can have all the Death Eater cases his pure, Gryffindor heart desires?"

"I'm sitting right here," Harry muttered.

Kingsley smiled, "Something like that."

Draco paused for a moment, then laughed, "You've got yourself a deal."

"Excellent. Here you can have this file…" Kinglsey plopped the case file on Draco's voice. "That's only the most recent one by the way…" Smiling widely, he opened the door and pulled in a tall rolling shelf, filled to capacity with what looked like over-stuffed case files; there had to be at least forty or fifty, enough to keep Malfoy busy for weeks.

Despite his bad mood, Harry had to work hard to suppress a laugh at the surprised look that immediately plastered itself on Draco's face. His mouth had fallen open and he seemed at a genuine loss for words. "Well played," he finally conceded, swallowing heavily.

"Oh I know," Kingsley replied cooly. As he left the room, he clapped Harry on the shoulder, "And I'll make sure that from now on you have something better to read about than robberies."

Harry shook his head in grudging admiration, "Um, thanks."

"I'm not going to complain about having a boring day at the Ministry ever again," Harry sighed as he and Kingsley entered the dining room of Grimmauld Place.

"Oh did something actually happen?" Tonks asked excitedly. She was sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and had looked lost in thought as they entered. "And I missed it?"

Kingsley smiled, "Well, I don't usually like to brag but -"

"He was brilliant," Harry interceded. "Absolutely brilliant. You should have seen Malfoy's face. By the way Kingsley, um, I'm sorry that I was so…rude and angry and…"

"No offense taken Harry," Kingsley said quickly. "It was all quite a horrible idea; Gawain's, not surprisingly. It doesn't save the Aurors much time because they can fill those out in their sleep by now and you weren't learning anything valuable from it eith -"

"That is NOT your call to make young lady!" A loud female scream echoed down the stairs and through the room, cutting Kingsley off.

"Is everything ok?" Harry exclaimed.

Tonks groaned, "Molly and Ginny have been at it since I brought her home. It's been almost an hour now."

"What happened?" Kingsley asked, his hand instinctively turning to his wand.

"Oh don't even bother," Tonks said. "It's ridiculous really. Molly's far too over-protective."

"It IS my call. I'm not a kid anymore; you can't tell me what to wear!"

Harry was confused. "They're fighting about clothes?"

Tonks rolled her eyes again, "Apparently Aunt Muriel thought Ginny's wardrobe was 'absolutely atrocious' for a growing young lady and took her shopping. From what I can tell, Molly took one look at was she was wearing today and what else the two of them bought and erupted. She thinks the clothes are 'provocative' or something. Which, you know, is sort of ironic because that Aunt Muriel is one, crabby old-fashioned piece of work. Merlin, the look on her face when she saw my hair…"

Harry walked up the stairs toward the drawing room, clearly where Molly and Ginny were arguing, and found Ron and Hermione sitting on the steps, just out of sight of the door. They were arguing in furious whispers.

"It really wasn't that bad of an outfit. Have you seen what Fay Dunbar and Lavender wear?"

"She's fourteen," Ron snapped. His face red, he was hunched far over on the bottom step, sulking angrily at the idea of his sister wearing anything that could be considered provocative.

"She's almost fifteen," Hermione pointed out a little awkwardly. She seemed uncomfortable fighting about clothing with Ron, but Harry could tell by her rolling eyes and sniping voice that she thought Molly was exaggerating.

"Can't she pick out her own clothes?" Harry asked.

Ron turned to him quickly, "My sister isn't going to go dressing up like a whore. And YOU better not be expecting her to."

"I - I don't," Harry shook his head quickly.

"It's just v-neck sweater Ron," Hermione said.

"Oh really? Just a sweater? Would you wear it?" Ron snapped.

Hermione blushed lightly, "I'm not saying I'd…I'd wear it. I - I don't like v-ne -"

Ron rolled his eyes, "Forget it, of course you wouldn't. You never wear anything suggestive."

Hermione's blush deepened, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing!" Ron said. It was his turn to redden. "I just meant…you wear stuff that's appropriate."

Hermione pursed her lips tightly. "Ron, it's not your place to tell any girl what is or isn't appropriate," she snapped.

"Oh yes it is," Ron replied defensively, his shyness lost almost immediately. "She's my sister."

"Which means your supposed to protect and advise her, not tell her what to wear."

"I AM protecting her. You know what guys think about girls who wear clothes like that?"

"Tell us Ron," Harry sniggered lightly. "What do we think again?"

Ron blushed again, "I - I -"

Hermione rolled her eyes again and cut him off, "It's a sweater."

"And low-rise jeans! And those strappy shirt things -"

"They're called tank tops."

"- And that white, lacy lingerie thing she had in her suitcase?" Ron snapped, struggling to keep his voice down.

Hermione sighed, "Every girl has lingerie Ron."

"Oh yeah," Ron snapped quickly. "How much lace is on your lingerie?"

At that, Hermione turned bright red. "THAT," she said coldly, "is absolutely none of your business."

Harry, starting to blush himself, tried to intercede and diffuse the awkwardness, but before he could say anything, Ginny stomped out of the drawing room. She was wearing a black, low v-neck sweater and a pair of low-rise, bleached jeans, a far cry from her usual Christmas sweaters, t-shirts, old jeans, baggy pants, and school uniforms, even though Harry still couldn't see anything especially wrong with the outfit…

"Hi Harry. Good to see you," Ginny said briskly, her flushed and angry face barely looking at him. Without a word to her brother, she pushed past him and ran up the stairs, slamming the door to her usual room shut.

Hermione sighed, "I'll go talk to her."

"The nerve," Molly muttered, as she looked after her daughter. "I'm going to have a few words with Muriel."

"You should mum," Ron said stubbornly. "She can't go to Hogwarts looking like that."

"Come on Molly," Tonks said. Having heard the noise fade away, she'd come to sit in the drawing room with a copy of the Daily Prophet. "You're overreacting. She looks cute."

"Yeah, she does," Harry muttered absentmindedly. He was lucky that neither Ron nor Molly heard him; they'd both begun to shout again.

With the dullness and frustration of his first week at the Ministry and the general way his mood was still swinging violently and unexpectedly between being angry, depressed, apathetic, or at an uneasy peace, Harry could scarcely have imagined just how well the next two weeks were going to progress. Back at Grimmauld Place, much to the relief of everyone who lived in or frequently visited the house, Ginny and Molly reached an quiet, restless peace, with Ginny wearing only the old t-shirts, sweaters, and jeans her mother had bought for her, Molly holding back on her threat to throw away everything Aunt Muriel had purchased (except for the quickly confiscated lingerie), and both of them managing to address each other with civility; it may have been shrouded by coldness or disapproval, respectively, or interrupted by short, sarcastic remarks but it was civility nonetheless. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione seemed to have gotten over the initial shock of hearing Harry's prophecy. They didn't talk to him about the Department of Mysteries or about how he was the Chosen One, but there were no more awkward silences around him, like there had been right after he'd told them. There was no more avoidance of the topic of Voldemort in the newspapers or of questions about the Order's movements and Dumbledore's plans. The latter hadn't returned to Grimmauld Place since he'd left earlier that summer, and his absence was the closest thing to a blight on the general good spirits of the Order. Murders, arson, and disappearances on account of Death Eaters had gone down both in the wizarding and Muggle words, Voldemort himself didn't appear to have been involved in an attack for weeks, and, as Lupin calmly pointed out, Dumbledore knew how to handle his business and would be gone no shorter or no longer than he absolutely had to be.

Even Harry had to agree. The positive atmosphere was rubbing off on him, much to the noticeable relief of Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Molly, and pretty much everyone else in the Order. His mood swings came less frequently. The thoughts of Sirius, while still causing him very painful memories, he could now repress from his daily thoughts. And he'd thoroughly enjoyed his birthday party, for which Molly had taken incredible pains to find time to bake him a three layer cake and knit him a thin, fall sweater and everyone else had somehow managed to get him a thoughtful present. Even Mundungus Fletcher had shown up at Grimmauld to present him with a pair of silver cufflinks; Harry was pretty sure they'd been stolen, and he didn't wear cufflinks in the first place, but at least it was the thought that counted.

And ultimately, Harry had to admit that Dumbledore had been right and that working at the Ministry was helping to calm his mood and focus his mind. After all, the only thing he'd really wanted all year was to be actively engaged in the fight against Voldemort and that sense had only intensified with Sirius' death and his hearing of the prophecy. And while he assumed - and everyone else seemed to expect - that upon his return Dumbledore himself would be working with and training Harry, until the Hogwarts headmaster did return, the Ministry was giving him a chance to be involved. Kingsley had been true to his word. The week after he'd finagled the intern work arrangements again, Harry had stopped receiving the streams of small burglaries and petty crimes. Sure, every once in a while he'd get another, but they served as short bursts of comic relief above all else. He was finally getting real cases that Aurors were dealing with and, despite the apparent bureaucratic uselessness of the Ministry, they were actually proving informative. He was learning that in addition to the Death Eaters themselves, Voldemort and his followers were using proxies to do their dirty work, scavengers, snatchers, crooks, misfits, werewolves...anyone who wasn't pleased with the current order of law and society and who Voldemort could attract, even though he'd never deem them worthy of actually receiving a Dark Mark. A few of them, like Scabior and Greyback, were appearing in more and more reports. And as he was reading, Harry was getting a much better idea of how all these actors operated, which ones of them seemed to be exceptionally strong duelers for example, which of the unknown masked figures were suspected of having ties to government or public offices...He was learning that Bellatrix, Rabastan, Rudolphus, Mulciber, and two Death Eaters referred to as the Carrow siblings had started to carry around blades, like daggers or swords or scimitars, to use alongside their wands and torture their victims. He was learning that the Death Eaters were trying to unleash scores of Dementors on Muggle populations that couldn't see them and that the Ministry had basically lost all control over their activities; Azkaban was being controlled by shifts of top-level Aurors and "secret protective services," which Harry was subtly understanding to mean dragons and centaurs. He was figuring out which of the Aurors seemed to be formidable forces against the Death Eaters, and which were getting in over their head. He was realizing what the Ministry was even able to do, intelligence-wise and tactics-wise, to find and defeat Voldemort's followers; it was sadly although unsurprisingly much less than he knew would be necessary. He was also realizing that Scrimgeour's policies were becoming increasingly militaristic, with more and more liberties being given to the Aurors and Arctors, even those that were still students, to act on behalf of the government against perceived Death Eater threats. The new Minister seemed to have good intentions, but Harry couldn't help wonder how effective those intentions were. Despite the almost unprecedented powers, from what he was reading and hearing said between Ministry members in the halls, cafeteria, and training floor, they had still to capture one definitive Death Eater, a top Voldemort follower like those that had escaped from Azkaban the year before. More and more he was filling out full release forms for witches and wizards that had been wrongfully incarcerated and had somehow managed to prove their innocence, and more and more he was hearing rumors that the current lull in Death Eater activity was preceding something major, like an attempt to break open Azkaban once more. Kinglsey, Tonks, and Moody insisted it was nothing but talk, the gossip of angsty and unprepared new Aurors who were both excited to prove themselves and secretly terrified of what they expected to be coming. But Harry wasn't sure. It seemed that the Ministry, all good intentions aside, was scarcely more effective than it had been during Fudge's times, arriving at scenes long after the Death Eaters had left, and that even though Voldemort and his followers may not have been acting forcefully at the moment, they were still a few steps ahead.

Once in a while, Harry would look across the room at Malfoy and wonder just how much he knew. With his family being who they were, there was no way he didn't have some idea of what the Death Eaters were planning. Yet if he did, he didn't even hint to it. In fact, looking at Draco, one would scarcely guess that a violent war was embroiling the whole of England and particularly the department in which he worked. While during their first week of the internship he had seemed efficient, proficient, but ultimately disinterested and arrogant, he was downright absorbed in the case Kinglsey had handed him. It was, Harry had quickly decided, not only surprising and uncharacteristic, but downright alarming. He had no idea what Alexander Rizitsky had done and why in the world it merited approximately fifty overfilled Department of Law Enforcement files, but whatever kind of monetary fraud was involved obviously engrossed Malfoy to the extreme. He came in early and left late. He could be agitated, even informal in doing the work, letting go of his cooly professional demeanor to mutter under his breath, tap his quill nervously, and pace the floor. His desk was constantly covered with stacks upon stacks of papers, notes, and memos that he was keeping organized with almost anal retentive care. He was no longer pointedly ignoring Harry; instead, he seemed to have more or less forgotten that the Gryffindor was even there. At one point, he'd been so distracted in a particular chart that when he bumped into Harry as he was leaving the room, Draco had actually muttered, "Sorry about that Potter." It had taken Harry about five full minutes to get over the shock. In fact, the closest interactions the two had had to actual conflicts since that first week of work happened when either tried to get books of statues that were stored in cabinets behind the desks of the other - neither was about to concede weakness or defeat by actually asking the other to pass a volume along - and when Malfoy had taken to levitating a large number of his notes in the center of the room so that he could look at them simultaneously. Harry complained that they were distracting and that he could barely walk into or out of the room, Malfoy had retorted with customary sarcasm…what could have turned into a major conflict, however, dissipated almost immediately. Draco had given in and lowered his notes, before surprising Harry the next day by dragging into the room six large chalkboards he'd borrowed from a family friend in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. These were quickly filled by masses of arrows, nodes, and brief comments which Draco would look at for hours, sometimes erasing them furiously and repeatedly, other times copying them down onto parchment. It was those six fully filled chalkboards that Harry found especially disturbing. They symbolized a sort of intellectual excitement Harry tended to associate with only one other person in his acquaintance…

Yet things proceeded in this strange yet unpredictably productive manner for over two weeks, and it wasn't until the second week of August that anything of particular note occurred. Early that Tuesday, as Harry was beginning to read about a string of suspicious Muggle disappearances in the Chelsea area of London, Theodore Nott hurried into the room. His rabbity face was flushed and he appeared almost disheveled, skinny pastel tie askew, shirttails out, and suit obviously un-ironed. Hurrying toward Draco, he slammed both his hands on his desk and quickly spat, "I don't know any Greek."

Draco, who had taken his blazer off that morning and was sitting on the desk with his back to the door, shirtsleeves rolled up, feet on his chair, and quill in his mouth, rolling a piece of chalk between his fingers like a cigarette and looking intently at his chalkboards, spit the quill out and shot his friend a confused look. "Okay…I'll remember that the next time I…need someone else to translate my Greek."

Nott rolled his eyes. "No," he emphasized. "You don't get it. I don't know any Greek, but I told Tiberius Ogden and his assistant that I did."

Malfoy shook his head, "Why?"

"I - I didn't think about it. He was mad at me."

"So you risked getting the old bat more mad at you by lying?"

"I was desperate! He was bloody furious."

Draco finally turned around and sat back in his seat, "What exactly did you do?"

Nott sighed and rolled his eyes. "I may have not shown up yesterday," he replied impatiently. "When the International Magical Trading Standards Body was meeting with huge delegations from both Venice and Sicily…and I may have had a lot of work that was assigned which, um, well which didn't get done in time."

Draco shook his head slowly, "I reiterate: WHY?"

Nott rolled his eyes and spoke even more quickly, "You remember that blonde I was flirting with on Sunday?"

"The one with the really large breasts?"

"Um, yeah," Nott muttered. "We may have…had a little too much fun."

Draco threw his head back and clapped, "You got too drunk, hungover, and sexually satisfied to get up for work…"

"It's not funny," Nott emphasized. "I'm in a shitload of trouble." He sighed, "What were you doing on Sunday night anyway?"

Draco smirked widely, "Twins. Misty and Heather. You know, I think I'm developing this theory about redhea -"

"Yes, we get it, you're a stud, congratulations." Nott interrupted. "Now help me."

"Oh? What do you expect me to do?" Draco said, succeeding in producing a voice that was simultaneously quite innocent and unmistakably mocking.

Nott sighed in frustration, "Come on Malfoy, I know you know Greek. I only need to translate one letter…"

Draco shook his head slowly, "I don't know Theodore….I'm really rusty. And my agriculture and trade vocabulary is…modest at best and nonexis- "

"YOU WANT ME TO BEG DRACO, I'LL BEG," Nott shouted in exasperation. Harry repressed a snort. Looking at the two in front of him and hearing them interact, Harry could understand why, if true, Nott would hate Malfoy. There was a tone of arrogance and sarcasm in almost every word Draco directed to Nott, as if he not only was convinced that he was a vastly superior human specimen but also expected Nott to know it and to respect the difference. Even as they stood next to each other, the stringy, round-faced boy seemed to shrink in front of Malfoy's casual, confident slouch, sharply cut facial features, and greater height. And add to all that the story about Nott's mother…

Draco rolled his eyes, "You're no fun when you're desperate. Hand it over. And get yourself together, you look bloody awful."

"Oh thank you Merlin," Nott breathed.

"I hate that expression," Draco muttered, as he took out a piece of parchment and began translating what Nott had given him. "I strongly, strongly doubt that Merlin would give a damn about the degree of your incompetence in international relations."

Nott ignored the insult. After breathing a few signs of relief and stretching in a fairly loud and distracting fashion - Harry was tempted to agitate him further by telling him to quiet down, but decided that the argument which would certainly ensue wouldn't be worth the temporary amusement - Nott looked over Draco's shoulder at the notes that were scribbled across his six chalkboards. "Damn," he said, as he tucked his shirt in and tried to fix his tie, "What are you doing?"

"Alexander Rizitsky," Draco muttered distractedly. "Hey, have you thought of what might happen if I translate this incorrectly? Intentionally of course."

"You wouldn't," Nott said quickly. "The Alexander Rizitsky? That Russian guy who's run basically every type of financial fraud and investment scheme known to man?"

"Precisely," Draco replied.

"Nice," Nott said somewhat grudgingly, "How'd you get the case?"

"Long story," Draco laughed. "You know, I really hope this isn't all you've been doing this summer. It's dull as hell. I mean, the olive trade?"

"At least I don't just draw dots and arrows with chalk like a seven year old," Nott snapped defensively.

Draco paused. "First, I have power over three-fourths of the future outcome of your brief internship here in my hand. Don't tempt me," he said in annoyance. "Second, I'm not 'just drawing dots and arrows.' I'm tracing the money. Literally. The visuals just help."

"Wait, tracing the money? Like, all of it?" Nott asked.

"Everything the Ministry knows about," Draco said, turning back to the translation. "Every investment, every transaction, every deposit into every account…"

"Can you…do that?"

"I said I was trying to; I didn't say it was easy."

"The guy's been doing this for years though. Hasn't the Ministry tried to get him on something for…"

"For a good while," Draco supplied. "But the longevity isn't the genius of it." He paused again and pointed at the stacks of papers around him, "Although the fact that the Ministry cycles new accountants and economists through this department like Crabbe and Goyle cycle favorite flavors of scones is a bit of a logistical hassle."

"Nice," Nott muttered.

"But see, Rizitsky's genius is in precisely what he does. The man doesn't just run schemes…he has frauds within frauds…invisible accounts, "missing" witnesses, savings that stay "dead" for years until they reappear…Ponzi schemes in pyramid schemes that are part of an even larger, other Ponzi schemes. The shtick of it all is that he makes sure anything you might trace leads to a dead end or to something you can't prove or to something you can't legally use or obtain to condemn him. It's almost - almost - impenetrable."

"But you're going to succeed…with dots and arrows?"

Draco rolled his eyes, "They're organizational tools, drop it. I'm going to succeed because I'm looking at everything and I'm tracing it all back from the very beginning. Or at least from what beginning the Ministry has recorded, which surprisingly and somewhat disturbingly seems pretty accurate. Believe it or not, I'm actually quite far along."

Nott grunted, seemingly unconvinced. "So let me guess," he began, looking more carefully at Draco's notes, "The arrows are obviously transactions. The closed dots are…accounts or individuals, destinations that is. And the open circles?"

"Points from which the money could have been diverted in a number of different ways. Uncertainties you know?"

"Ah. And how do you know where to go from those?"

Draco smirked, "Intuition. You've got to think about what move would be smartest, what would be hardest for anyone else to decipher…He's invented a few new schemes I've been trying to figure out." He shrugged, "It's mostly guess and check. For example, I'm thinking the top part of that fourth board is wrong, which basically means that most of the fifth board and the entire sixth board are wrong too…doesn't match up with the numbers from the late 80s and I know he had a hit taken out on him by the Italians in '87 that was rescinded five months later, so I have to account for another big payoff there."

"I see…" Nott replied slowly and sarcastically.

"What can I say, I have some experience."

At that, Nott laughed, "Actually, should you even be looking at any of this? Isn't there a…conflict of interest somewhere?"

"Why, because my family handles investments as well?"

Nott grunted in reply.

"Well it's not like we complete with Rizitsky."

"Of course you compete," Nott objected.

Draco rolled his eyes, "It's not like we actually compete in the same market."

"Ahh…you mean because your family doesn't issue securities or plain hard cash out of a desire to magnify an already immeasurable amount of wealth but rather to promote socially and politically certain industries in which you have a vested personal or professional interest and to retain influence and relevance across a wide variety of modern spheres AND therefore you can pick and choose all your clients and projects at your elitist will?"

"Wow," Draco breathed. "So much well-rehearsed cynicism…"

"I am merely an agent of the truth."

Draco rolled his eyes, "I don't remember you speaking the truth in that kind of negative tone when it comes to our owning most of Cornish Pixie."

Nott smiled, "That's because your owning most of Cornish Pixie is probably one of the best parts of our friendship."

"Glad to know I bring something to the table."

Nott sniggered and continued to look at the complicated chalk notes as he waited for Draco to finish. "You know Malfoy" he said after a few minutes of silence, "sometimes I forget that you're actually smart."

Draco snorted, "I'll take that as a compliment. And you can take this. One lovely, riveting letter about the olive and cheese trade. Sorry that I didn't try to imitate your handwriting; you can tell Ogden you were having an especially good day."

Nott ignored the sarcasm and grabbed the translation and original quickly, "I owe you one."

"Oh trust me, I'll remind you," Malfoy shouted after him as he left the room.

"Unbelievable," Harry muttered.

"What was that Potter?" Draco snapped, once again surprisingly hearing the low mumble.

Harry couldn't help himself. "You're…you're unbelievably like Hermione," Harry shook his head, then added quickly. "You know, if we ignore the smugness and offensive sarcasm."

Draco's face froze. "And here I am, straining myself to be civil…" he replied coldly, before turning back to his work.

"It's true," Harry insisted, pointing vaguely to all the notes behind Draco, "I'm pretty sure I've never seen anyone else this engrossed in…research."

Draco rolled his eyes and ignored him.

Still, Harry didn't want to let it go; this had been bugging him since the very first day of their internship. "What? It's a compliment. Come on Malfoy, you're being far too modest."

Sighing angrily, Draco finally looked up. "Let me get this straight Potter…are you trying to ask me why I'm not more Granger-esque?"

"No…yes…sort of." Harry shook his head quickly, "That's part of it, start from there."

Malfoy snorted and pushed aside a few papers, "You know, this might be interesting. I'll humor you and answer your question with another: Why the hell would anyone want to be like Granger?"

"She's brilliant!" Harry said defensively.

Draco rolled his eyes, "She's book-smart."

"Says the guy who apparently knows Greek."

"In addition to Spanish, French, German, and about six others, but I don't base my dreams, reputation, and self-worth on academic proficiency," Draco retorted quickly.

"She does no -"

"Please," Malfoy interrupted. "The constant studying? The incessant, maddening need to prove to everyone just how much she's stuffed into that brain of hers? It's who she is. It's what she does. It's like - her - her first love and her childhood comfort blanket both encompassed by the same entity. In fact if it weren't for the fact that being friends with you is akin to entering a contractual obligation to risk one's life on a regular basis, that woman would barely recognize what the outside of the library looks like."

Harry could feel his anger rising, "Hermi -"

"AND - " Malfoy wasn't finished, "AND, you know what? One day she's going to look up from whatever encyclopedia she has her fucking nose stuck to and realize that all the rest of the world's moved on."

"What's that even supposed to mean?" Harry objected.

"It means," Draco snapped, "that while Granger invests all her energy in reading about how millions of people have people lived their lives, she's not going to have any idea about how to actually live hers."

"And you know things about life?"

"I know it's not about sucking up to Flitwick and McGonagall."

Harry rolled his eyes, "No it's about sucking up to Snape."

"It's about doing things, meeting people, going places, enjoying yourself. Damn, you're right: if I wanted to, I probably could give Granger a run for her little bookworm money, but why should I bother?" Draco laughed, "Come on Potter, you of all people know how short life is. Forgive me if I don't give a shit about who I could become and just squeeze every ounce of hedonism I can from it."

Harry shook his head slowly. "Yeah, life is short," he said with some contempt, "That's why you should use it to make a difference for others."

Draco snorted, "Gryffindor self-sacrifice: so unappealing on so many levels." With that, he turned back around to face his notes, as if Harry needed any indication that the conversation was over.

Still, disbelief and disgust aside, Harry had to admit that was probably the most authentic conversation he'd had with Malfoy since, well, ever. Given the general rate at which they'd been interacting that summer, he half expected it was going to be the last exchange of words they'd have at all, at least until they returned to Hogwarts. Nor would it have surprised him if Malfoy amplified his usual immaturity following the comparison to Hermione. However, he remained as taciturn and as engrossed in the Rizitsky files as ever, such that when Kingsley came to check on them that Friday and Draco actually interrupted himself to look up and address him, Harry was almost shocked.

"Just the man I wanted to see," Draco smirked.

"No problems I hope?" Kingsley replied patiently.

"None whatsoever. In fact, I'm basically finished."

Kingsley's eyebrows shot up, "Finished? It's been three weeks."

"Yes?" Draco said in mock confusion. "Ohhh...you mean it's only been three weeks. See what can be accomplished when you get the right person to look at things in an organized and focused manner?"

Kingsley pursed his lips and didn't reply.

"Granted," Draco conceded, "I do have quite a bit left to write down, a few loose ends to tie up...couple hundred thousand here, couple hundred thousand there...but I'm finished with the most important things. Biggest transactions and lines of credit and all.

When he didn't continue, Kingsley had to give in, "And...?"

"Well I have good news and bad news."

"Alright. Good news."

"Splendid, I was hoping you'd say that."

"Then let's hear the bad news first," Kingsley replied drily.

Draco paused, "Well, the bad news doesn't make much sense without the good news."

"Just explain," Kingsley said strictly, his voice yet again betraying his impatience with Malfoy's attitude.

Draco smirked and picked up a large stack of pieces of parchment that had been accumulating on the floor next to his desk over the weeks. "I'm writing up what I've found in a comprehensive report," he began. "And once I'm completely done, you're going to having Alexander Rizitsky on a silver platter."

Kingsley's mouth almost fell open, "You're kidding?"

"Not in the least. You give this to any basic prosecutor or Arctor and they'll have more than enough evidence to convict. Real evidence too: millions of galleons being moved around illegally, business connections that I would be ashamed of…Not to mention you could probably use this stuff to get some of those conspirators as well and, surprisingly enough, not just the ones that are mobsters."

"I didn't actually think you'd…" Kingsley shook his head, "How did you pull it off?"

"Inherited financial sense, good intuition, and general awesomeness." He leaned back in his seat with a smirk of self-satisfaction that was almost obscene, "You're welcome."

"What's the bad news?" Kingsley asked slowly, ignoring the shower of self-praise.

At that, Draco threw his head back and laughed loudly, "You can't use any of it."

"What?"

"Oh come on, you must be joking. Lists of his investments, his properties, his trading history, his personal vacation expenditures…This is the kind of information the Ministry can't legally obtain unless they've launched a full-scale investigation, and you never have on Rizitsky because you've never had enough evidence to justify one. All this stuff is illegal."

Kinglsey coughed, "The Ministry doesn't collect ille -"

Draco rolled his eyes and held up a small red and white piece of paper, "A history of deposits and withdrawals from his Swiss bank accounts? Trust me, if it was so easy for a government to get that information, my family wouldn't have a Swiss bank account."

"Point taken," Kingsley conceded grudgingly.

"Now…if you try to put Rizitsky on trial, the Wizengamot will have to throw all this stuff out, and on the off chance you find another reason to indict him - which is pretty small by the way because, you know, I have a life other than cleaning up your financial messes - there's a pretty good chance you won't be able to re-introduce it because you can't really prove it isn't information that you had formerly obtained illegally…and there's goes decades of proof of financial fraud."

Kingsley groaned and shook his head slowly. He seemed momentarily at a loss for words on what had obviously been a huge oversight from whoever used to be in charge of the investigation. Harry, who'd been trying to keep up with the conversation, muttered, "Seems like a Catch-22."

"I'm going to ignore what I assume is some Muggle cultural, historical, or literary reference," Draco snapped.

"Literary," he explained, making a mental note to remember that Malfoy's hearing was freakishly acute. Both Kingsley and Malfoy shot him somewhat confused looks, so he added, "It was Dudley's summer reading assignment…to his annoyanc…never mind."

Kingsley finally found his voice, "That is indeed…unfortunate."

"Sucks doesn't it?" Draco laughed again. "FORTUNATELY, I do have a possible solution."

"Which of course you couldn't mention until now," Kingsley groaned again.

"Well, the phrase 'I have good news, bad news, and mildly-positive news' doesn't have the same ring to it."

"Malfoy…" Kingsley warned.

Draco rolled his eyes, "See, while the Ministry doesn't have easy access to this information, it does, thanks to its acute sense of paranoia, have almost unlimited access to anything done with its own funds."

Kinglsey cleared his throat, "The Ministry doesn't use outside investors to subsidize its projects."

"Please," Draco exclaimed. "If the Ministry has contracts with Malfoy Investments, it has contracts with Rizitsky. God knows, there are enough ventures you try to sell us that we turn down."

"That's because your family invests based on how much they like the blood-status of the client, not based on the merits of their proposals," Kingsley said angrily, deciding that any attempt to maintain the official Ministry talking points on the subject would be more trouble than it would be worth.

"What is it with everyone bashing Malfoy Investments this week?" Draco objected. "First of all, I would remind you that we exhibit a degree of legality and transparency that is almost unmatched in the financial sphere -"

"Only because you don't need the money, I'm sure," Kingsley quipped calmly. Harry laughed.

"Secondly," Draco ignored him, "A bad idea is a bad idea. I mean, broom-based navigational systems? Who in the world wants to their broomstick to shout to them 'turn left, turn right, five minutes to Surrey?' It's like something Muggles would put in their cars."

"I'm pretty sure they're developing those," Harry supplied.

He clammed up quickly as Kingsley shot him a frustrated look. "Just get on with it Malfoy. I shouldn't have encouraged you."

"Well as I was saying…" Draco continued in a wounded tone of voice, "I suspect that a lot of the missing transactions I've been seeing, a lot the uncertainties, a lot of the guesses I've been making, they're due to the money Rizitsky's received from the government. Now, since you can actually follow that money legally, if you find it's been involved in a fraudulent transaction or suspicious investment, then you'll have sufficient cause to have obtained the rest of this information and then you can use it."

"But we'll still have gathered it beforehand…"

Draco shrugged, "Yeah. But who's going to know?"

Kingsley paused as Draco smugly leaned back again to bask in his cleverness. Then he pursed his lips, "Excellent job Draco. Genuinely, genuinely impressive."

"Well thank you."

"Your contribution will be well noted by the Ministry."

"Of course."

"And appreciated."

"I'm only doing my civic duty."

Kingsley took a deep breath, "But you're not getting access to the Ministry financial records."

The fake appreciation fell off Malfoy's face immediately. "Oh come on," he whined, in a voice that was far more reminiscent of the Draco that Harry knew from school. "What's the worst I could possibly do?"

"Do you really have to ask?" Kingsley replied calmly.

"It's not like I'm going to funnel your wage reports to the Death Eate -"

Kingsley cut him off, "Ministry financial records are strictly in the possession of the Ministry of Magic and his support staff. An employee from that office can handle the remainder of this case."

Draco sighed, "Fine. I'm sure that, having heard all you have today, you are perfectly judicious in trusting this matter once again to the expertise of Ministry financial crimes enforcement." He coughed, "By the way, when Rizitsky leaves Mungo's and doesn't get arrested, where do you think he's going to go? I suppose Russia's temporarily out…What about the United Arab Emirates? They don't extradite to us and he has three penthouses there…"

Kingsley pursed his lips again and didn't reply. As he left the room, Draco sniggered.

"You seem especially smug after that last part…" Harry pointed out.

"Oh trust me, I'll get what I need Potter," Draco replied, too pleased with himself to even retort angrily.

And he was right. A few hours later, Kingsley returned to the room with a large black key. He held it close to his chest as he explained, "The file room is on Level One. Get off the lift, take the two first lefts, down the long hall, right, and one more left. If anyone asks, tell them who you are and show them the key. If you get lost, find Percy Weasley."

"I think I'll be good," Malfoy said smoothly as he took the key from Kingsley's hand with an expression of eagerness on his face that Harry almost felt compelled to warn someone about.

"You are very fortunate Scrimgeour's brother-in-law lost almost everything he owned in one of Rizitsky's schemes…"

"Really? I've never heard that being gossiped about in any social circles whatsoever," Malfoy said sarcastically.

Kingsley sighed. "Wait," he said, grabbing Draco's arm before he could rush out of the room to rummage through the Ministry's finances. "You can start tomorrow." Motioning to Susan and Luciana to enter the other room, he continued, "Practical experiences alongside actual Aurors have traditionally been important components of this internship. Unfortunately, given the nature of the security challenges we are facing today, this goal has been more difficult to achieve this year."

"You mean that you think Potter's going to get killed and that I'm going to help kill him," Draco said drily.

Kingsley turned to him sharply, "You've had a chance to exercise your hubris today Malfoy. Do try and remember you're still an intern here."

Draco pursed his lips unapologetically but allowed Kingsley to continue, "There has, however, been an incident today that does not appear to be directly related to the present Death Eater activity and in any case that the Aurors feel has been sufficiently contained for the four of you to see in person. And I hope that it will give you an idea not only of what, other than direct combat, Aurors often deal with, but of…of what this war is really going to mean for hundreds of people."

Harry felt the pit in his stomach growing as Kingsley enumerated a few official Ministry safety procedures and then led them through the halls of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. In contrast, Luciana and Susan seemed almost excited. Whatever Kingsley may have said, they all believed that what they were about to see was somehow connected to Death Eater activity; everything now was. Neither of the girls had ever seen in person the kinds of things they'd been reading and writing about for the past few weeks. Luciana herself knew very little about the Death Eaters; apparently the news of Lord Voldemort's return was ingraining itself only slowly into the consciousnesses of those on the continent. But Harry couldn't think of this as an educational exercise, even if he had wanted to. It wasn't a DA meeting, it was real life, and he braced himself for what he knew was going to be a disturbing sight.

"Wait here," Kingsley said, walking away to talk to an older Auror. He had led them into a long thin room that appeared to be a mini-Atrium; fireplaces lined both walls, a pile of throwaway objects in one corner seemed to serve as a Portkey repository, and witches and wizards were entering and exiting quickly and with purpose. Smaller stations filled the center of the room, where it looked like different Ministry officials were servicing short-term medical treatment, maps, even owl services.

"This must be where they send Aurors out on assignments," Susan said breathlessly.

"Makes sense, I imagine it would be very difficult to leave in and out of that hectic, press-filled room upstairs in emergencies," Luciana said.

Susan motioned to Harry to walk around with them, but he shook his head quickly.

Behind him, Malfoy sniggered. Having sat down on a ledge next to the wall, he was shaking his head slowly.

"What?" Harry snapped toward him.

Draco had been silent since Kingsley had announced the afternoon's destination, registering little more than a blank expression as the Auror was speaking and leading them through the Ministry. Still, he couldn't help himself, "It's just so typical for the Ministry to think that a well-staffed enter and exit point will actually give them a tangible strategic advantage. They never do cease to amuse me."

To himself, Harry had to admit he agreed, but he wasn't about to tell Malfoy that. "Oh I think it's sensible," Harry replied coldly. "Systematic action for systematic murderers."

Draco snorted, "With that mentality no wonder your lot's losing."

Harry rolled his eyes and didn't respond, but Malfoy continued.

"They're not killing machines Potter," he insisted. "They're not monolithic caricatures of evil. Beneath the cruelty and the insensitivity and the unwavering pursuit of ambition and objectives at all costs, after the...the crass disregard for life, so to say...underneath the masks…they're still human. With the same strengths and frailties that exist in all humans. They still feel hurt. They can still feel regret. They can still love."

Harry laughed in disbelief.

Unfazed, Draco continued, "The Carrow siblings love each other. My mother loves my father - not that I'm admitting there's any veracity to the accusations against him of course. Rodolphus and Rabastan love Bellatrix."

"And who does Bellatrix love?" Harry spat harshly.

"Oh that's easy. Him. Passionately, ardently, obsessively…There's nothing in the world she wouldn't do for him, nothing she wouldn't give up, nowhere she wouldn't go." He smirked, "It's knowing and understanding things like that which gives you the real strategic advantages. After all Potter, I'm sure you remember how effective it was for the Dark Lord to know whom you loved most."

Harry felt the blood rise to his head at the callous allusion to Sirius. He whipped out his wand and took a step forward.

Malfoy laughed softly, but nevertheless took out his own wand, "Tut, tut Potter. I think I've hit a nerve."

In fact, every nerve in Harry's body was telling him to curse Malfoy. He might have been able to control some of the memories of what had happened in the Department of Mysteries, but they still hurt bitterly, and Malfoy was one of the last people with the right to mock them. It would be some small satisfaction too, punishing the man whose father had led the Death Eaters in the Hall of Prophecy and whose aunt had killed Sirius.

Still, in the back of his mind he remembered what both Dumbledore and Hermione had been trying to tell him about his anger and hatred. Controlling it, letting go...it made him different from Voldemort. And he'd been doing so well...Swallowing heavily, he lowered his wand and spat, "By your logic, even Voldemort has an understandable human soul."

This time, Draco kept the victorious smirk to a minimum. "Well," he began. "He's different, I'll give you that. He's torn his soul apart beyond all recognition."

"If he has, then all the Death Eaters have," Harry said coldly. "With all they've done…they're exactly like him."

Draco laughed softly, "If you really believe that Potter, if you can't tell there's a difference…you're in even more trouble than you'd think."

Harry furrowed his brows, but before he could ask Malfoy what he meant, Kingsley had returned with an old bottle in his hand. "Is there a problem?"

"No," Draco replied cooly. "Potter and I just have…philosophical differences."

Kingsley was looking at Harry carefully, reading the anger that was still written all over his flushed face. "It's fine," Harry muttered. "Don't worry about it."

"Alright…" Kingsley replied slowly, motioning to Susan and Luciana as he continued to cast his eyes keenly between Draco and Harry. "We're going to travel by Portkey since none of you can Apparate and the fireplaces are all in use. If you feel dizzy after landing, it's normal."

Harry and the others placed a finger on the wine bottle Kingsley held out. He felt the familiar pull beneath his navel, the floor spun away beneath him, and in seconds his feet landed with a thud on a sweep of grass. Next to him, Luciana stumbled over and grabbed Draco's arm. "I can't wait until we can Apparate," Susan muttered.

Harry nodded in absentminded agreement, then looked around. They seemed to be in the English countryside, standing in a field far behind a large farmhouse. The ground was wet with rain, and sprinkled among the dirt and grass were irregular white and beige forms. Harry bent down to look at them more closely. They were chicken bones.

"Harry," Tonks said grimly as she ran up to them. "Good to have you here."

"Ah, cousin Nymphadora…" Draco gave her a sarcastic and unprompted greeting.

Tonks cringed at the sound of her first name, but she ignored him, "You've got to look at this Kingsley. I've never seen anything like it."

Kingsley motioned for the interns to listen carefully and follow them. "Williamson said it was a werewolf attack?"

"He and Savage think so. I don't. Neither does Dawlish. Werewolves don't do this."

"From what I've been reading, there's not a lot that at least one of them wouldn't do," Harry supplied eagerly. "I forget the name, Gre, Grae-"

"Greyback," Tonks completed, shaking her head. "And true, but I don't think this is him."

"Oh my God!" Susan, who had been first behind Kingsley and Tonks, shrieked and jumped backwards.

Harry hurried forward and felt his stomach drop as he saw what had shocked her. The Ministry wizards were crowding around the bodies of a man and a woman, or rather what remained of them. Something had torn large pieces of flesh straight off much of their frames, leaving behind nothing but bones and pools of congealed blood. The skin and muscle that remained on their bodies was battered to a deep purple. The man's face had been scratched away beyond recognition, and what remained of the woman's back and upper shoulders, bare beneath the few threads of clothing that remained, was punctured with hundreds of small, bee-stinger like barbs. Their fronts, however, were perhaps most horrifying. From the dark pieces of viscera that lay on the ground, it looked like the couple had been disemboweled, and that whatever had attacked them had also tried to feed on the entrails. He took a deep breath to push away the nausea.

"Che dio ci aiuti," Luciana breathed.

"Se c'è un Dio, non credo che lui ti ascolta," Draco mumbled in reply.

There was an especially cold and unsettled note to his normally controlled voice, and Harry forced himself to tear away from the gruesome scene and look at him. Malfoy's face had paled dramatically. It wasn't just detached, it wasn't just disgusted, it wasn't even angry. With his jaw clenched and his eyes staring forward unblinkingly, Draco looked simultaneously like he was bracing himself against a punch to his own a gut and like he was lost in deep, conflicting thought. Harry would never have guessed the Slytherin could look that disturbed.

"How could you defend them?" Harry whispered in a low voice, so that Draco alone could hear. "People who can do something like this, order it…Are you so sure about how much humanity they have?"

"Shut up Potter," Malfoy said dully.

Their time in that field took all afternoon and passed into early evening. Kingsley told Tonks and Dawlish to classify the scene as a werewolf attack. "I don't think it is either," he had said, "but while we investigate, we should register it as something tangible, something that can be understood and expected."

As Aurors and other Ministry wizards wandered around the scene, taking notes on every detail and shielding it from Muggles, Harry felt his impression reinforced, that the Ministry of Magic was far better at cleaning up after an incident than preventing it or catching the ones responsible. They were organized, meticulous…but that man and that woman were still dead and they still had no idea what killed them.

It was the look on Malfoy's face that increasingly interested Harry as the day wore on. Even after hours had passed since they'd first set eyes on the couple, even as he was obviously avoiding to look toward them, that dead, lost-in-thought look was still on his face. And he didn't say a single word, not one quip, not one sarcastic insult directed toward the Ministry. Harry couldn't help but be suspicious. There was something more than odd or eccentric or horrified in the way he was acting.

Kingsley stayed at the scene that night, and it was Tonks who took the interns back to the Ministry. Luciana and Susan headed quietly for home. Malfoy walked back toward the interns' offices, mumbling about having something to finish.

"I'm so ready to sit down and eat something…and just talk to Molly," Tonks said.

Harry was still looking after Malfoy, "Um Tonks. I…I actually have some files that a few Aurors insisted I get back to them by tomorrow morning. I think I should probably stay and finish right?"

"Yeah…yeah you should…" Tonks groaned. "I'm sorry Harry; I shouldn't whine. I've been there, I understand. I guess I'll just…find some work to do until you're done."

"Oh, you don't have to. You were out there all day Tonks; you look exhausted. Go back to Grimmauld Place. I'll be fine."

Tonks hesitated, "I really shouldn't Harry."

"I'm only going to be sitting in that office," Harry insisted. "No one's going to attack me. And it shouldn't take that long."

"They'll be furious if I leave you…I'm just going to have to come back."

"Tell them Kingsley's watching me," Harry supplied. "He's going to be busy for a while. By the time they find out, I'll be back and safe." He smiled, "I know how to get there without walking the streets of London you know? Floo Powder into the empty apartment across the street."

Tonks looked at him skeptically for a while. Then she sighed, "Alright…Just be really careful Harry."

"Definitely," he assured her.

"I owe you."

"Not at all." He shook his head as he walked away. A part of him felt bad for lying to Tonks and fooling her into leaving him alone. But there was something very wrong with the way Malfoy was acting, and he needed to find out what. Harry didn't trust him, especially not almost alone at night in the Ministry. He couldn't shake the feeling…

Entering his office under the pretext of grabbing something he'd forgotten, Harry waited until Malfoy did come in and start working. The expression on his face hadn't changed. Harry tried to ask him where he'd been, but Malfoy only rolled his eyes and ignored him.

Even more troubled, Harry left the room and hid behind a corner in sight of the door, wishing he had his Invisibility Cloak with him. He waited for Malfoy to leave.

An hour passed, then an hour more. Harry's legs began to hurt. He looked at his watch anxiously; sooner rather than later, the Order was going to get worried and come after him. Maybe Malfoy wasn't going to do anything, other than fulfill an urge to work especially late. Maybe he was just being paranoid.

Close to midnight, however, Harry's patience was rewarded. Malfoy left the room and locked it, then looked around the hall with the same thoughtful expression that kept bothering Harry. He walked away, thankfully in Harry's opposite direction, and when he turned the corner, Harry followed quickly.

He always stayed a corner or two, or a long hallways' length, behind Malfoy, walking as quietly as possible. It helped that he knew this part of the Ministry well by now and that Draco was moving quickly and purposely. He didn't turn around once, not even as he waiting for the lifts.

The second the doors to the lifts shut and Malfoy was out of sight, Harry ran forward and looked at the number. If Malfoy stopped at Level 8, he was just leaving the Ministry. But if he stopped anywhere else…

Harry tapped his foot impatiently. Then he felt his stomach sink. Malfoy hadn't stopped at the Atrium. He'd gone down one more floor, to the Department of Mysteries.

It was quite possibly the last place in the world Harry wanted to go. He was still seeing it in his nightmares; he was using all his energy to avoid thinking about it obsessively, like he had earlier that summer. What had happened there, what he'd let happen…

Harry shook his head quickly. It was stupid. The more he stood there feeling sorry for himself, the longer Malfoy had to pull off whatever he was plotting. He pounded the button for the lift. It felt like hours until it came up and took him down to the ninth level. By the time the doors opened, there was no one, not a guard or Unspeakable, in sight. To Harry, however, it didn't matter. There was only one place Malfoy would have a vested interest in seeing down there.

Forgoing quiet, Harry ran down the plain corridor that faced the lift, through the black door, and into the Entrance Chamber. He tried to remember where they'd gone that spring, but it wasn't working. He just picked a door and went through, hoping the memories would come back to him.

As time went on however, Harry felt increasingly frustrated. He cursed inwardly as he turned another corner. The hallways of the Department of Mysteries seemed even more twisted than they had a few months ago. And without the noises of a battle, they seemed far longer and wider too. He shook his head as he imagined the disapproving expression Hermione would be wearing on her face if she knew what he was doing and walked more quickly. He raced down the hall, turned another corner, cursed aloud this time, turned yet again, and finally stopped short. There was a glass door in front of him, beyond which he could see familiar regularly arranged rows of shelves. It was a side entrance to the Hall of Prophecy.

Harry grimaced as he opened the door. He hadn't realized just how many prophecies they'd broken. Scarcely any were still on the shelves. The floor was covered in small shards of glass; every so often a pile of larger pieces had been collected, disturbing the now shiny dark marble floor. That was the extent of the Ministry's cleanup efforts. As he entered the room, he tried not making any noise, but the glass crunched loudly under the barest pressure from his foot. He momentarily considered a silencing charm, but there wasn't any time.

Instead, Harry walked quickly – and noisily – across the room and looked down the rows of shelves. There wasn't a sign of Malfoy anywhere. He looked at the row number: 13. If Draco had come in here, he would have probably tried to go straight to where Harry's prophecy had been kept. Harry had no doubt that he knew where it was; he didn't believe the "I haven't met any Death Eaters" claim for a second. He hurried down the length of the room - past 3, 2, 1, 0, 00 - and turned around quickly to walk back up the other side toward row 97.

But to his surprise, Malfoy was right there, sitting casually at the end of the hall, one elbow on his knee, staring intently at a large silver and crystal cabinet that looked out of place in the room of towering shelves.

"Really Potter," he said drily, without looking at him, "I knew it would be easy to lose you; I had no idea it would be so efficient. You took ages to get here."

Harry furrowed his brow slightly, "You knew I w - "

"You breathe too loudly," he interrupted.

Harry ignored his words. "Why are you here Malfoy?"

"Why are you?" Draco replied in a bored voice, no sarcasm, no mocking. "Neither of us have any reason to be, neither of us have permission to be…and believe it or not Potter you don't have any implicit right to police me."

He still hadn't taken his eyes off the cabinet. Harry looked over at it. The body was made of silver with an elaborate pattern of moons and stars carved in. There was a crystal window that seemed to have once had the image of a large astrological chart carved in, but it had been split open, probably the casualty of a wayward curse that had ricocheted all the way to this side of the hall. The shelves on the inside had fallen and there were large pieces of rounded glass near the floor, orbs of prophecy that had been broken. A few were left on the top shelf, just a few. As he walked closer, Harry noticed that some of the thin letters which had been carved on the outside of the window were still visible: MOST ANC_NT _ND _TORIC.

"Sorry to disappoint Malfoy, but the prophecy that your precious Dark Lord was looking for wasn't especially ancient or historic." Draco smirked but said nothing, so Harry continued. "And it isn't here anymore, even in shards. I destroyed it; I'm sure you know that."

Still, no response. "So if you're here because you've suddenly become afraid that someone you actually care about is going to end up like those bodies, you won't find your answer."

Malfoy finally turned around to look at him. Surprisingly, he didn't insult Harry or curse him or even walk away. "Oh Potter, it's adorable to see you try to figure me out. For the record, you're awful at it." His voice was still dry. "I know you destroyed your prophecy. Believe it or not it's not the only thing here worth looking for."

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but Draco, turning back toward the cabinet, cut him off, "Have you ever wondered Potter, why people have particular fates? Why the universe cares so much about how certain people live their lives and gives them so much importance, and then so little to others? What drives destiny? Have you ever asked yourself 'why me?' Why not someone else? Anyone else…"

"Why do you care?" Harry snapped. He was confused. The dull, emotionless voice, the pensive words…none of that seemed like Malfoy.

Draco shrugged, "It's interesting. Hundreds of destinies that the cosmic universe thought worthwhile to bother precious Seers with, all lined up orb after orb, and now hundreds of thousands of shards of orb after orb strewn across the floor after the first major battle of a war to be fought the soul of the wizarding world. It's almost poetic." He laughed, "That last part was sarcasm."

Harry stared at him in a mixture of disgust and confusion. "So what Malfoy?" he asked. "You see tragic death for the first time in your life and you just suddenly become curious about fate and the meaning of life? Nothing to do with how your father had his biggest downfall here just months ago?"

"It wasn't a downfall," Malfoy sniggered softly. "And this has nothing to do with my father."

"Oh really?" Harry challenged.

"I'm an ass, not an idiot. I have no intention of sustaining the Dark Lord's humiliation of my family by making an utter imbecile of myself, nor do I have any intention of losing this Ministry job out of foolishness. I have no malicious objectives."

"Just philosophical ones," Harry said sarcastically.

"Do I need to mention the beauty of the cosmic universe again?" He was smirking but the usual mocking intensity was missing from his voice.

"You're not funny or clever Malfoy," he said slowly. "You're just trying to fix what can't be fixed."

"You mean, I'm trying to fix my father's failure to get the prophecy off you and the hell that's resulted from it?" He laughed again, "Don't project your problems onto me Potter. I don't blame myself, or my father as a matter of fact, for anything. You're the one that's here to fix things. You're the one that blames yourself."

"Shut up," Harry snapped, taking out his wand again. He hated how much Malfoy seemed to know about what had happened in the Department of Mysteries; he hated how easy it was for that to get him riled up.

Draco rolled his eyes, "Put it away Potter. I could be saying a lot worse. And lose the anger. It doesn't suit you."

"What do you mean 'it doesn't sui -"

"It'll only get worse you know. In the weeks and months to come. If you can't learn to deal, well…you're the kind of righteous son-of-a-bitch that'll get consumed by it."

Harry tried to reply again, and he was cut off yet again. "I mean, look around: you are literally surrounded by the broken fragments of the truth. Might as well get used to that fact that it hurts."

Harry lowered his wand sightly. "Are you - are you giving me advice?" he stammered in surprise.

"I'm changing the conversation," Draco insisted as he stood up and brushed the little pieces of glass of his suit. "It's been working masterfully by the way, considering that you still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing here."

By that point, Harry must have looked absolutely dumbfounded, because Malfoy laughed bitterly, "What? You thought I'd easily say something stupid, immature, incriminating, etc. etc., of course then giving you plenty of justification to curse me?"

"N - no," Harry stammered.

"Pity. It would have been a much better plan than the one you have now, which I figure is nonexistent. You should probably work on that too."

Harry was quiet for a moment and then put away his wand. "You know," he began slowly. "You're starting to make me wonder Malfoy…If I'd shaken your hand that first day of class, maybe you'd have turned out differently."

It was the first time during the exchange that Draco looked taken aback. But the surprised expression was immediately replaced by one of disgust. "Your ego puts mine to shame Potter," he spat. "Let me assure you that no matter what you may or may not have done, regardless of how that much would have changed things, I'd still have ended up right here, standing on this exact same floor, looking at that exact same cabinet with more or less the exact same expression on my face." He paused, "Now that was poetic."

Harry looked at him carefully. For the first time that night, Malfoy was shooting him a look and using a tone of absolute revulsion, maybe one of his worsts. But Harry couldn't understand why, what he'd said to trigger it that was something worse than what he'd said before. And there was something even odder in Malfoy's voice, something more personal, that seemed even beyond hatred.

"I'm trying to be ni – "

"Yes, yes," Draco rolled his eyes, his face regaining its neutral expression. "You're trying to be nice because you think that little by little over the weeks you've been glimpsing parts of my deeper, mature soul and have a chance to heroically save it from completing the transformation from immature schoolyard bully to evil Death Eater scum. My soul will try to remember to thank you one day."

Harry shook his head, "You're hopeless."

"Unabashedly so." Disgruntled, Draco started walking away, "Come on, let's get out of here."

"I don't need your help."

As if nothing at all abnormal had been happening, Draco paused and shot him a particularly sarcastic look, "Of course you don't. You're fine with being hopelessly lost. Or with being caught by the next Department of Mysteries guard, which happens to be on duty in this area in…say ten minutes I figure. This might be the only floor the Ministry actively protects, but I've heard it said they take it seriously, especially after your, well…" He shrugged, "Personally, I would be very amused if you got caught, but then you'd tell them all that I was here as well and I'd have to explain myself. This was Is just easier."

Harry sighed and gave in reluctantly, starting to follow Malfoy down the length of the room, "What about the current Ministry guard?"

"Not around. Convenient no?"

Harry decided it wasn't worth asking if Malfoy had anything to do with that. Shaking his head of suspicions, he walked a few steps behind him, past the side door Harry had used to enter, past the main entrance leading to the time room, past even row 97, and all the way to the other side of the room, where they went through a small, almost unnoticeable doorway in the corner.

They found themselves in a long, thin, stone hall with only a few doorways at hundreds of feet. Harry guessed that it was a side corridor running through the entire Department on Mysteries.

"How do you know your way around here?" Harry muttered, more to himself than anything else.

Draco's uncanny sense of hearing kicked in, and surprisingly, he actually replied, "My great-grandfather almost personally redesigned this entire complex. My family has the only complete set of Ministry maps outside the Minister of Magic's office." He laughed and corrected himself, "Had I suppose. Either way, I enjoyed messing with them when I was little. I have a good memory"

He abruptly turned and went through one of the side doors. Harry started to follow him, then stopped short again. He felt his stomach sink and a knot form in his throat. They were in the single room he'd been visiting again and again in his nightmares. Large, dimly lit, with that raised stone dais and crumbling archway in the middle. As he looked at it, he could almost see Sirius's body falling through.

"Fuck," Malfoy muttered, as he realized why Harry had stopped. "Potter," he looked at him closely. "Potter."

"This isn't funny Malfoy," Harry spat, his anger rising again.

"Astonishingly I'm not trying to be. We're taking the Ministry-wide stairs you idiot," he retorted. "One of the last remnants of the Ministry's old design, back when it was all just stairs and stone archways. This is the only way to get there."

Harry swallowed and didn't acknowledge what Malfoy had said, but he did walk into the room. The closer he got to the archway, the more sharply he could remember that night, the precise expression on Sirius' face as he'd fallen slowly through the veil. He had half a mind to run toward it, jump through, and drag his godfather out.

"Don't think about it. I'm not testifying to the Ministry about your suicide, " Malfoy interrupted. He'd slowed down and was walking next to Harry, still watching him carefully, as if he in fact did expect Harry to jump through the veil himself. "Besides, you can't bring him back," he added.

"How do you know so much about it anyway?" Harry snapped. The continuous references to Sirius were making his blood boil.

"Aunt Bella likes to brag," Draco replied coolly.

"I thought you've never met your dear Aunt Bella."

"Oops," Draco rolled his eyes.

He stopped in front of a large square pillar attached to the wall and heaved against it. If Harry had been paying attention, he'd have expressed surprise as it gave away and revealed a tall long column with a stone staircase circling about it, looking far older than the rest of the building. As it were, he barely realized where he was walking. Malfoy snapped his fingers in front of him to draw him in, and he didn't even notice.

The Atrium seemed a long way up, even if it was only one level, and they walked slowly and in silence for a good bit, their footsteps barely echoing on the old stones that were left over from the Ministry's earliest years. Surprisingly, it was Malfoy who broke the silence.

"In the 1810s," he began, almost to himself, "there was a huge push in the Ministry to find out what exists after death. Is there a heaven, is there a hell – that sort of thing. It was around that time that the Department of Mysteries gained real autonomy. Became a sovereign department and all, separate from Law Enforcement. And it was also around that time that a group of wizards came up with a pretty cool theory. They figured that every person has…technically they called it an 'essence.' Like…basically like a soul, only a little more than that. And that as long as a person's essence was intact, almost anything could happen to their body and they'd be fine. They'd be alive."

Harry shook his head and vaguely began to ask, "Why are you telling m- "

"I think you'll find it interesting, now shut up," Malfoy interrupted with annoyance. He cleared his throat, "The Ministry poured billions of galleons into testing this theory, and over time they basically proved it true. It's irrelevant how. Anyway, the next logical step was to make use of that knowledge, and in about the 1830s they built that room down there. They thought that if in the end all that mattered was the sanctity of a person's essence, you could theoretically…you could strip a person's body of that essence, colloquially speaking strip them of their soul, and, well, return it to their body. And if you could do that, theoretically you could send someone to…to whatever 'the land of the dead is' and then have them come back. That's why they built that archway." He coughed again, "Can't remember the date. Also irrelevant. What's important is that theory is very different from reality. And while the Ministry managed to figure out how to strip a body of its essence, they never figured out how to return it, especially without using any Dark Magic to help. And while they figured out - supposedly - how to send someone to…the other side, so to say, they never figured out how to get them back. I suppose one wizard claimed he did it by accident with his cat, but it's never been repeated and the guy was a nutter in the first place. Anyway…now when anyone walks through that veil, it doesn't matter who they are, they do have their essences stripped from their bodies, but no one knows what happens to either. Popular opinion's that it's not much different from just dying a normal death and passing on to…well, whatever there is after death."

He stopped at the faint outline of a rectangle and pushed against it. The wall protruded forward, and they walked around it and into the Atrium. "Interesting right?"

Harry had stopped right outside the door. This time it was unmistakable: Malfoy had actively tried to make him feel better. Even more surprisingly, if possible, he'd succeeded. Understanding why Sirius was dead, and why he was could never come back, somehow made thinking about it a little easier. "Thanks," he muttered confusedly.

"What for? I was just talking," Malfoy drawled. "Obviously I read too much." The anger, moodiness, defensiveness…all the customary characteristics seemed to have returned to his voice and he practically marched across the room to the the fireplaces and reached for Floo Powder.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Harry blurted out suddenly.

At that point he didn't expect Malfoy to reply at all, he just felt an urge to ask the question. But to his surprise, Draco turned around and faced him with a wide smile as he stepped backwards into the fireplace, "Of course not Potter. You broke it remember?"

"I don't get it. I just don't get it," Harry muttered in frustration. He was sitting in his bedroom with Ron and Hermione, ostensibly reading the Daily Prophet but having a hard time focusing.

On the floor next to him, Ron was rummaging through samples of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products that Fred and George had given him, "I don't get why you don't just tell Kingsley mate. Going into the Department of Mysteries without permission? That's got to be grounds for getting him fired...maybe arrested. Think of it, a year at Hogwarts without Malfoy."

Hermione rolled her eyes, "Harry's right Ron. He can't prove Malfoy went down there without admitting he did himself, and then Malfoy could just say Harry's trying to frame him and it's going to become this giant mess that the Ministry's general incompetence will only make worse. And Ron if you set those firecrackers off inside, your mother will have your head."

Ron glared at her but put the box away.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Plus I don't want to get Tonks into more trouble. Kingsley and Moody were mad enough at her than she left me alone to finish paperwork in the the interns' offices; they really don't need to know that I spent that time sneaking through the Department of Mysteries."

Hermione nodded in agreement. "Still," she continued, setting aside the textbook list from her Hogwarts letter, "It is weird. He was just sitting there?"

"Sitting and thinking," Harry replied quickly. He hadn't really told them about the entire conversation; he wasn't planning to. "But that's not what I mean." When Hermione shot him a confused glance, he continued quickly, "I mean, yeah that was really weird, and my first guess would have been that he had some underlining nefarious purpose, but now that I think about it, the whole thing was completely in the realm of typical Malfoy weirdness - and THAT is what I don't get."

"Wait..." Hermione said. "You lost me."

"What I mean..." Harry began again. "For someone who is so...so obscenely arrogant, he seriously undersells himself."

"Are you complimenting him?" Ron asked with mild disgust.

"Hear me out!" Harry said defensively. "The guy spends all his time at Hogwarts whining or plotting like a child and having Crabbe and Goyle ready to fight his battles for him, but I swear he could probably pummel anyone at school himself. He never sounds the least bit better than average or mildly interested class, but he gets eleven OWLs? In fact, he's actually really, really smart."

Ron shot him a surprised look, "Who are you and what have you done to Harry Potter?"

Hermione shrugged, "It's not easy to keep performing at a high level Harry. Just because Malfoy's smart doesn't mean he's willing to put in the effort to do well in a school setting. Or to work out instead of sleeping in. Or to read instead of...whatever Slytherins do."

"Yes," Harry said quickly, "which would be a perfect explanation, if he didn't try so hard to act like he was so superior to everyone else."

"He isn't," Ron said.

"I'm not saying he i-" Harry paused and thought for a while. "My question is this," he began slowly. "If you're so invested in having people think you're this great, accomplished wizard, person, whatever...if you think you're so much better than everyone else, why in the world would you hide the things about you that are actually most impressive? Why act like you don't have what would unquestionably be your best attributes? THAT is what I don't get. I mean, it's not exactly like the Malfoy we know to be modest."

Neither Ron or Hermione replied immediately, Hermione looking lost in thought as Ron didn't even try to hide his skepticism.

"Maybe," Hermione finally began. "It's some Slytherin thing. Something about..I don't know, needing to play your cards close to the vest or...or having only your friends know what you're really capable of until the last minute."

"Are those Slytherin qualities?" Harry asked.

"Well I don't know," Hermione objected. "It was just a theory off the top of my head. And honestly Harry, I don't really think it matters. At least, I don't think it's worth you getting worked up about."

"It's a very frustrating inconsistency," Harry insisted.

"Whatever mate," Ron said. "Just do me one favor: Don't ask him."

"What?"

"It might give him ideas," Ron continued earnestly. "And think of it: a more arrogant Malfoy?" He shuddered.

"Well from what Harry's said, at least it would probably be a less immature Malfoy," Hermione pointed out.

"Yeah, he'd be less prone to arguing and more to just...talking philosophically at you."

"You serious?" Ron asked. He quite possibly looked even more disgusted than before.

"I'm telling you," Harry said again. "It's weird. He does thing where he tal-"

At that moment, Ginny knocked on the door and poked her head through, "Hey guys, mum says dinner's ready. She also told me to get Tonks?"

"She's upstairs in Sirius' old room," Hermione supplied. Shooting Harry an apologetic glance, she softly added, "She sits up there sometimes."

As Ginny started walking up stairs, Harry stood up quickly, "Wait, I'll go get her."

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny quickly looked at each other in concern.

"I'm fine guys," Harry insisted. "Really."

He took a deep breath as he walked up the stairs to the topmost landing. He had actually been looking for an opportunity to talk to Tonks. For the past few weeks, he'd been coming to terms more and more with Sirius's death, but after what Malfoy had said, it was as if some last piece had clicked in his mind. For the first time, he felt that he didn't have to get over the emotional pain of a shock he couldn't grasp. He finally felt like he understood what had happened that night.

Harry knocked softly on the door to Sirius' room before opening it, "Hey Tonks?"

She was sitting on the window ledge looking out over the street and turned around quickly. Harry could tell she hadn't been crying, but her face nevertheless looked dull and empty. "Oh, hi Harry," she said quickly, surprised to see him.

"Dinner's ready," Harry mumbled.

"Ah. Um, thanks, I'll come right down," she replied, a little awkwardly.

Harry took another deep breath and entered the room. "Tonks," he began again. "It's...it's not your fault."

Tonks looked absolutely shocked that Harry was bringing the subject up, "I - I don't think it i-"

"Yeah you do," Harry interrupted softly. "But...Tonks, it was an accident. If anything, it's the fault of...of Bellatrix being who she is and of Voldemort helping make her into who she is and of...of Peter Pettigrew framing him for what happened to my parents and of all the years in Azkaban and of the Ministry being inept and Dumbledore keeping secrets and my going there in the first place...It's everyone's and no one's fault. He...he was there for a million reasons and he wanted to be there. And he didn't even really lose to her Tonks. He just...fell. There was nothing anybody could have done. Dumbledore himself could have gone through that veil and, well..." His voice trailed off and he swallowed nervously.

Tonks looked at him in silence for a while. "You, you're fine with what happened?" she finally asked.

"No," Harry replied quickly. "Of course not. But I - I understand what happened. And I accept it. And I - I know Sirius wouldn't want me to blame myself, and he wouldn't want you to blame yourself either."

For a long time, Tonks turned to look out the window again and didn't say a word. Then she smiled at Harry, "Thanks."

"Really Potter, you have to be the luckiest kid in the world," Aramis was saying. "I mean, for anyone to evade You-Know-Who constantly…but you?"

Harry took a deep breath and swallowed angrily. He was standing in line for coffee from Ministry Munchies, which had been relocated further inside the Ministry to avoid the media onslaught in the Atrium, Aramis and Hector standing behind him. It was far too early on a Monday morning for him to have the patience to put up with the two of them. He'd been trying to for the past ten minutes. The line was far too long.

"It doesn't bother you that you're so scrawny?" Hector added. "I mean, I'm sure you make an okay seeker but a stunned Bellatrix Lestrange could probably overpower you, and she's both a woman and a lunatic."

"What I'd give to see the two of you in front of Voldemort or Bellatrix," Harry muttered between gritted teeth.

"What was that Potter?" Hector asked as Aramis laughed behind him. "We're not afraid of Death Eater scum."

"Just of their names," Harry retorted.

Hector glared at him and continued, "And we're certainly going to out-duel them."

Harry snorted, "Right."

"Something you don't believe about that Potter?"

"Our dueling scores are the best the Ministry's seen in decades. Even old Mad-Eye Moody was impressed when he heard them. The last time we've lost a duel when we were both fully fit was -"

"Give it a rest," Harry said, tired of hearing the two go on about their scores yet again. "You're students."

Aramis looked angry, "Maybe now. But rest assured, in a year, we'll be the one's saving your fragile ass Potter, because HE is not getting the better of us."

"Oh really?" Harry snapped. He really couldn't believe the them. It was one thing to be arrogant, one thing to think of yourselves at the best duelers at the Ministry...it was another entirely to be so deluded as to think that Voldemort would just bend over before you. "You guys think you're so great? Why don't we see about that?"

Slowly, and simultaneously, they both smirked. "Are you challenging us to a duel Potter?" Hector asked.

"You bet."

"Challenges like that aren't allowed at the Ministry," Aramis said smoothly. "And certainly not with interns."

"What?" Harry challenged. "You afraid?"

The amusement immediately fell off Aramis' face, "Not a chance. You and the Malfoy boy against us. Today at five in the dueling room downstairs."

"Done," Harry said quickly and with bravado. "We'll see who's bragging then."

Hector snorted, "Trust us Potter. It won't be you."

Only when they'd all gotten coffee and he was sitting back at his desk far from Aramis and Hector did Harry realize the magnitude of what he'd done. Groaning, he lowered his head to desk and hit himself softly. He knew that he was prone to making quick and impulsive decisions, but challenging the Ministry's two best Aurors or Arctors to a duel in front of what he was sure would be the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement had to be one of the worst. He wouldn't back down, not after all that and certainly not for Aramis and Hector, but nevertheless, he knew it was a stupid idea. Not to mention that he hadn't exactly spoken only for himself...

Fifteen minutes later, Draco came back from the training floor, slammed his hands on Harry's desk, and shouted, "What the hell have you done?"

Harry swallowed heavily. "I see gossip travels quickly," he mumbled.

"Listen Potter," Malfoy continued shouting, "I don't know if you think we've been bonding or something, but if so you are terribly mistaken and under a massive, massive delusion. Almost as great as the delusion that I would fight ANYONE with you, much less Aramis and Hector."

"Come on," Harry objected, "They're horrible. They need someone to put them in their place."

"Oh I agree," Malfoy said quickly. "Which is why I can't wait to hear about how they both wet themselves the first time they even set eyes on Bella."

Harry's mouth fell open, "You really want to let them be until some hypothetical future when they meet your evil aunt?"

"Under present circumstances it's certainly the most judicious course of action," Malfoy snapped, heaving himself into his chair and not even trying to defend Bellatrix.

Harry groaned, "Merlin, FIGHT YOUR OWN BATTLES."

"Pretty sure Merlin wouldn't give a shit about Aramis and Hector," Draco muttered.

"But you do!" Harry insisted. "You can't stand them either, almost tried to blow their lights out didn't you? Think of it: all that stuff they've said about your family..."

Draco glared at him. "First of all," he snapped. "Baiting me by referencing my family is highly un-Gryffindor of you. I'd watch it before starting to fall down the slippery slope."

Harry rolled his eyes; he knew Malfoy was only trying to change the conversation.

"Secondly, what happened to the 'they're just bullies' approach?"

"They are," Harry replied quickly. "And sometimes it's necessary to give bullies what's coming to them. Something else I learned from putting up with you for five years." Malfoy glared at him again and Harry added quickly, "Not that that's important, because I know it isn't helping my case."

Draco took a deep breath, "Potter, let me say this in the clearest terms humanly possible: I've never been able to stand you, I can't stand you much better now, and I'm neither going to help you or make a fool of myself next to you, whatever the offer. End of story."

Harry sighed. "Fine," he snapped. "Be a coward."

"Thank you," Malfoy said quickly. "I will be."

Harry rummaged through the papers on his desk and grabbed a few. "At least," he began, "can you drop these off to Aramis and Hector?"

Malfoy froze with a shocked look on his face, "What?"

"Can you drop these papers off to Aramis and Hector?" Harry repeated.

"Did someone hit you on the head Potter? No, I'm not going to be the one to tell Aramis and Hector that the 'we' which never existed is surrendering lamely."

Harry rolled his eyes, "Don't worry, I'll go tell them…just, later."

"Believe it or not Potter, I have no interest in making this easier for you."

"All you'll have to do is put a few sheets of paper on their desks. You don't even need to talk to them."

Draco shook his head in exasperation, the day's sequence of events having clearly taken him by surprise. "Since when am I expected to do you favors?" he exclaimed.

"You're going to leave anyway in a few minutes to go raid the Ministry financial records anyway," Harry insisted. "Please."

Malfoy threw his head back in frustration, but he must have decided it wasn't worth the effort to object further because he got up, snatched the papers from Harry's hand, and hissed, "Fine."

He ran into to Susan as he was leaving the room. "Are you two really dueling Aramis and Hector?" she asked excitedly.

"NO," Malfoy shouted, pushing past her. "Fuck you Potter."

Susan looked at Harry in confusion. He smiled nervously, "Maybe. I still think it might work out."

"…Really? He seemed pretty emphatic."

"Yeahhh…" Harry laughed, "I'm sort of expecting that all three of them are going to be as insufferable as ever."

Telling Susan that he'd explain later and glancing through his case files distractedly, Harry fidgeted and waited anxiously for about half an hour until Malfoy returned. He did, however, have a hard time restraining himself from laughing in loud self-satisfaction when Draco slammed the door behind him and shouted, "Bloody hell, I can't wait to kick their asses."

Harry smirked, "I thought you'd say that if you actually saw them face to face."

Draco momentarily froze as he sat down, the realization of what Harry had done slowly dawning on his face. "Fate's a bitch," he finally spat angrily.

"What?"

"Never mind," Malfoy hissed.

Harry didn't bother to ask. He was pleased enough to have figured out a way to convince Malfoy of going through with the idea, even if it was against his natural, bigoted instincts. There was no need to push his luck.

A few minutes later, however, Malfoy groaned, "Potter, this is stupid."

Harry sighed, "I don't get it. You don't like them. You definitely want to get the better of them. You have an opportunity to. What's the problem?"

"Doing it."

"Come on Malfoy, if you want to, you could probably just try beating Aramis up?"

Draco pursed his lips, "Thanks for your recently discovered faith in my physical ability Potter, but, um…he'd clobber me."

"Really?" Harry asked, with some genuine surprise.

"Yes," Draco nodded emphatically. "If you haven't noticed, he's huge."

"You're not exactly scrawny..."

"Again, thank you, but that is more than a little deceiving. I'm built very differently from Aramis, suited far better for agility and reflex exercises. I assure you, he'd clobber me."

"Well," Harry shrugged off the conversation and continued cheerily, "that's why you have a wand then."

"I don't think you get it Potter," Draco insisted, "Aramis and Hector are partners."

Harry paused, "Wait -"

"Not lovers," Malfoy snapped quickly. "They're Ministry partners, Arctor partners…For the past two, say three years, they've trained to duel together. They know everything about how the other fights: They know where the other is at all times, they know where he's going to be. They know what the other is going to do before he does it."

"Oh," Harry said after a short pause. He'd given so much thought to convincing Malfoy to even agree to duel Aramis and Hector that he'd forgotten how awful of an idea it was in the first place.

"Oh," Malfoy repeated sarcastically. "You know, despite how much I've wanted to curse you again and again these past five years, I've had enough self-restraint to have learned nothing more about your dueling style than your almost compulsive use of disarming charms."

Harry snorted at the idea of Malfoy having self-restraint. "How do you know that?" he asked.

"It's a little obvious," Draco shrugged. "Plus I told you, Aunt Bella likes to talk."

"It's not a compulsive use," Harry replied defensively, once again ignoring Malfoy's reference to his aunt. At least until that afternoon, he wanted to preserve the peace as much as possible. "And of course dueling them won't be easy. They're Arctors, two of the Ministry's best. That's why beating them is going to be so satisfying."

"Except we won't," Draco emphasized.

They spent most of the day like that, doing snippets of work before Draco pointed out yet another reason why the idea of dueling Aramis and Hector was horrible and Harry tried, with little success, to refute it. There was also a particularly long tirade to Luciana in Italian that Harry figured was filled with a large number of obscenities, judging by how badly the girl's face had flushed.

Ultimately, Harry didn't care about being too convincing. He knew that Malfoy was right and that there was no sensible reason to have lost his composure in front of Aramis and Hector and challenge them to a duel that would most likely end with the Arctors victorious and their arrogances fortified. But he wasn't about to back out now, and he didn't need Malfoy to agree with him, just to agree to fight alongside him.

Around three o'clock that afternoon, Tonks hurried into the room, "You two are dueling Aramis and Hector?"

Malfoy groaned loudly and hit his head on the table.

"I may have drafted him without asking first," Harry explained, in response to Tonks' questioning glance.

"How many people know?" Malfoy asked.

"Most everyone? This is pretty huge. Savage is taking bets."

As Draco groaned again, Harry asked, "Wait, if the older Ministry officials hear about it, won't they make sure it doesn't happen?"

"Probably. It's against policy. But as of now, I think the most senior person to have heard about it is Dawlish and all he did was put thirty galleons on you two." She shrugged, "He kinda hates Aramis and Hector."

"Great," Malfoy began sarcastically, "We won't just be embarrassing ourselves; we'll be doing it in front of a huge crowd of expectant Mistry witches and wizards."

Harry smiled thinly, "You know Malfoy, I should congratulate you: today you're actually reminding me of the guy I know from Hogwarts."

As Draco glared at him, Tonks looked between them nervously, "Are you two sure you're doing this together? That was sort of the part that surprised me."

Malfoy leaned back in his seat petulantly and waved Harry on to answer the question.

"We are," Harry assured her. "Cooperating for a greater good and all."

"'Cooperation' wouldn't be the word I'd use," Malfoy drawled.

"I'm trying to inspire him," Harry continued drily. "It hasn't been easy. I'm about to resort to just telling him to channel his aunt." Tonks' mouth fell open in shock, and Harry added quickly, "Please don't judge me. I'm desperate here."

"Wow…" Malfoy smirked. "You know, if you're going to start jettisoning your principles away and engaging in the art of slyness, I'm going through with this just to witness the process."

"See?" Harry turned to Tonks. "It's working."

"Okay then…" she said, in a tone that lay somewhere between wariness and confusion. "Take care…both of you…I guess." She stopped on her way to the door, "Oh, by the way…I may have bid fifty galleons I can't really afford, so…please try and stay on the same wavelength long enough to win."

"You can't afford fifty galleons?" Malfoy quipped. Callous as it may have been, the statement was, much to Harry's relief, one of the last things Draco said that afternoon, short of a few odd mutterings of "Screw fate." It was as if talking to Tonks had made everything official.

The two hours until five o'clock flew by, and before either of them really knew it, they were walking in silence toward the Auror training grounds, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible every time they passed a senior Ministry worker.

"You know," Harry finally said, bringing up something that had been nagging at him for a while. "I hope you're not going to start whining in front of them."

Malfoy took a deep breath and hissed, "Don't worry Potter. As idiotic as I consider what we're doing to be, I have enough pride to act as if I have misplaced confidence in it."

"Good," Harry said with false cheeriness. "That's what I love about you."

They entered the training floor at that moment, and from where they were standing they could see that a large crowd had already gathered around the dueling room floor. A few of the young witches and wizards were clearly not from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; Harry could've sworn he could see the top of Seamus Finnigan's head.

"You'd think they'd have something better to do."

"It's good that they don't," Harry pointed out.

Malfoy grunted. "For the record Potter," he mumbled. "I hate you."

"It's not like we're not dueling to kill Malfoy. There's no need for last words."

"Oh I know," he said quickly. "It just felt like a good time to remind you."

The Ministry dueling room in the center of that training floor was an impressive arrangement. It had transparent walls and a shined stone floor, but both had been charmed to feel softer upon contact, so that witches and wizards could be thrown up, down, and across the room without experiencing serious bodily harm. Scattered throughout the floor were also a variety of columns, platforms, steps, and oddly shaped obstacles, intended to imitate the reality that duels were rarely conducted on a homogenous empty floor. Even more sparsely were scattered a few supplements for the fights: long, thin bars and rods that used to ward away opponents or magically flung toward them; classic swords, scimitars, daggers, and axes, which had multiplied in number ever since they'd become favored weapons of a few of the Death Eaters; occasional pieces of furniture or natural outdoor elements that mimicked the kinds of objects that might be found and used in actual duel settings; and a variety of other seemingly random items. And above the dueling floor were ropes, heavy wooden bars, and platforms that allowed the Aurors to practice above the ground.

Aramis and Hector stood casually in the center of the floor around which the crowd had gathered, naturally unimpressed by a room in which they'd spent so much time over their years of training and laughing with some friends with their customary pride and arrogance. As Harry and Draco approached, the crowd gathered tightly around them and the two Arctors took out their wands.

"There's still time to back out," Hector said. "Save your young psyches the humiliation."

"Thanks for the offer," Harry replied, "but let's just see how things turn out."

"Oh how could you even suggest it Hector," Aramis said, his tone almost salacious. "This is a big deal to them. Look, it's a bi-partisan effort."

"Aren't you a little old to be going on about Hogwarts rivalries?" Harry challenged.

"No one ever is Potter," Draco supplied. "But Ravenclaws are especially bitter. Unlike Slytherins and Gryffindors they don't actually matter and unlike Hufflepuffs they can't accept that they don't." At that, Aramis' smile fell a little.

"Get on with it," a voice sounded from the crowd.

"Our pleasure," Aramis shouted back. He and Hector backed away and bowed with excessive flourish.

Harry took out his wand and nodded. Next to him, he could see that Malfoy hadn't even pretended to bow. There was a tense moment of inaction as both sides waited for the other to strike. Then:

"Stupefy," "Relashio," "Impedimenta," "Expelliarmus." The four of them cast their spells simultaneously. None hit their targets.

"Told you Potter," Malfoy muttered. "Protego! Compulsive use of disarming charms."

"Shut up and fight," he snapped. "Verdimillious!"

"Levicorpus!"

"Protego! Immobulus!"

"Engorgio skullus!"

"Relashio Corpus!"

Hector's spell caught Harry in the chest, and he was thrown into the air and hit the ground with a thud. He winced. The room might have been charmed to make fighting less dangerous, but being hurled around still hurt and knocked the wind out of him. He scrambled up quickly and retorted, "Depulso!"

Aramis avoided the spell easily, then cast a knockback jinx. Behind him, Hector shot off a disarming charm before shielding the two of them powerfully. Malfoy had been right. Aramis and Hector knew exactly how to fight with each other. They moved into the spaces the other had left behind, they covered and protected each other to perfection…it was as if they could read each other's minds as they dueled.

"Aguamenti" Aramis shouted. Before the words had even left his mouth, Hector had spat, "Glacius." Harry had seconds to brace himself as the floor in front of him turned to ice. His foot slipped and he could feel himself falling as Aramis approached.

"Expelli -"

"Carpe retractum!" Harry felt his chest jerk as Malfoy pulled him out of the way of the Disarming Charm.

"Stay on your feet Potter," he snapped, as he pressed his heels down hard and squatted to avoid Hector's stunning spell. "Impedimenta!"

"Protego. Flipendo Tria!"

Almost half an hour passed like that, with Aramis and Hector pulling off the stronger and more persistent attacks while Harry and Draco managed to push them back. Even though the gap in skill was obvious, the duel was turning into a real competition. Harry was standing firm against the two Arctors, especially one-on-one, and even though Malfoy seemed to be the worst dueler of the lot and was being thrown across the floor far more often than any of the other three, he had the greatest tolerance for having the wind knocked out of him in the first place and was getting up in seconds. Aramis and Hector genuinely seemed surprised at how well the two underage wizards were holding their own. At least the smug grins had dropped from their faces.

As the time wore on, however, Aramis and Hector were steadily gaining the upper hand. Harry and Draco spent more and more time countering and less attacking themselves. The Arctors knew more spells. They'd been in more duels for such a long length of time. They knew the dueling floor better, knew how to move around the obstacles and use them to their advantage.

Harry ducked to avoid a hex from Aramis, who suddenly turned to the column Draco was backed against and shouted, "Confringo!" The pillar shattered into hundreds of pieces, and with a shout, Malfoy was launched in the air with them. He grunted loudly as he hit the ground, and a few pieces of stone hit his arm and back.

"That's got to hurt!" screamed an excited voice from the audience.

Harry managed to throw Hector backward and turned to see if Draco needed help. He was having a harder time getting up after those blows. Seeing him crouch over and gasp for breath, Harry groaned inwardly. The foremost reason for Draco surviving so far despite being a weaker dueler than Harry, Arctor, or Aramis was his heightened sense of endurance. It was the only reason Harry hadn't had to try and fight both Arctors at the same time. But his endurance seemed to be giving out, and Aramis was standing right in front of Harry with Hector behind.

"Protego!" He blocked Hector's cascading jinx as he tried to think of a way to ward off both Arctors. Malfoy was still catching his breath.

It was at that moment, a brief pause in the fighting as the four of them stood in limbo, that Aramis turned around and addressed the crowd. The arrogance was returning as Harry and Draco seemed be falling away in the battle. "You guys like that?" he shouted. "You're going to love this!" With a flourish, he reached over and grabbed a long sword from one of the tall barrels scattered on the floor. "Come on," he challenged. "You two afraid now?"

As he shifted his eyes quickly between Aramis, Hector behind him, and Malfoy, trying to decide what to do next, Harry noticed a change in the other boy's expression, the slightest tinge of Malfoy's customary, self-confident smirk. He could hear the words from earlier that day: "suited far better for agility and reflex exercises." For a moment, Harry hesitated; there was no reason for him to expect…But they were on the losing end of the duel anyway. If there was a time to risk trusting his sudden partner, that was it.

Taking a deep breath, Harry turned his back to Aramis and faced Hector, just in time to block the Arctor's latest stunning charm. He'd know in seconds if the gamble had been worth it; odds were it hadn't been and he'd soon experience a sharp, piercing sensation across the shoulders.

But he didn't. Harry's guess had been right. In response to Aramis, Draco had lunged across the room, grabbed the other sword, and pushed Aramis back. They were segregated into pairs now: Harry and Hector still dueling, while Aramis and Draco, their wands largely forgotten, thrusted, lunged, and parried across the floor. It was as if new energy had been injected into the fight.

Harry concentrated on Hector, trying to find some weakness in his fight. "Confundo!"

"Protego! Stupefy!"

"Depulso!"

"Tarantallegra!"

"Verdimillious!"

"Relashio!"

"Protego! Ventus!"

"Protego! Impedimenta!"

"Expelliarmus!'

"Fumos!" Aramis suddenly shouted.

"Shit," Harry cursed, as he closed his eyes against the smoke in his face and coughed. He hadn't realized that Hector had been pushing him backwards closer and closer toward Aramis, so that his partner could fight Malfoy and interfere in their duel as well.

"Flipendo!"

His eyes still shut, Harry couldn't see Hector's curse coming; his body flew across the floor and almost hit a spectator.

Wincing and still on his stomach, he grunted and managed to mutter, "Incarcerous." Ropes issued from his wand and grabbed Hector by the ankles, pulling him down and toward Harry before he could stun Malfoy from behind.

"Diffindo," Hector grumbled.

"Malfoy!" Harry shouted over to him as he got up. "Try to -"

Draco, however, didn't need any telling. Realizing what their opponents were doing, he'd taken advantage of Aramis' moment of distraction as he'd dealt with his partner to grab on to one of the ropes clutched to the ceiling and pull himself up on one of the bars above the training floor. "You afraid Aramis?" he spat mockingly. There was no way the Arctor wouldn't follow.

As Aramis clambered to face Draco above the training floor and the pairs separated completely, Harry turned all his attention back to Hector. His partner wouldn't be able to help him now, and Harry was beginning to notice something. Every time Hector need to use a shield charm to block one of Harry's spells, there was a significant time delay until he responded with another curse. If Harry could just take advantage of that pause…

"Verdimillious!"

"Immoblus!"

"Petrificus Totalus!"

"Protego! Rictusempra!"

"Flipendo!"

"Relashio!"

"Protego! De-"

"Stupefy!" Harry braced against the impact and cast his spell almost immediately after the first. It almost threw him backwards again, but it worked. Hector's weakness, that pause after every Protego, didn't give him enough time to react. His stunned body was propelled backward into the nearest pillar.

There was a shout of surprise from the crowd followed by round of loud applause, but Harry didn't acknowledge it. He looked up and saw Aramis and Malfoy still fighting, having made their way between the ropes and crossbeams to a wide wooden platform. They were exchanging blows quickly and forcefully as their feet worked around the obstacles and around each other. Harry could see the annoyed look on Aramis' face. Draco might not have been stronger than the Arctor, but he was better at this.

As Draco lunged toward Aramis and turned, Harry caught his eye. He nodded briskly. Draco didn't signal back, but it was clear he noticed. He started pushing Aramis backwards, toward the edge of the platform. And for the first time in years, the Arctor forgot his training: he failed to keep in mind where his partner was. Aramis was so preoccupied with fighting Draco off that he hadn't noticed Hector had been Stunned. So when he jumped off the side of the platform and landed nimbly, daring Draco to follow, he didn't expect Harry to be behind him.

"Expelliarmus!"

Aramis' wand flew out of his pocket and into Harry's hand. As the Arctor turned around in surprise, Malfoy jumped down and, laying his sword blade against Aramis,' twisted the weapon out of his hand.

"Game over," Harry spat, as he finally paused to catch his breath.

Aramis looked shocked; he turned red immediately, from his neck to the roots of his golden-brown hair. "Ho - How?" he stammered, his face still blood red. He looked at Malfoy in disgust, "How did you - ?"

"Next time you try to show off," Draco smirked, "don't do it with the Ministry's most kitschy combat elective. My great-grandaddy wrote the book. Literally."

Around them, the crowd had erupted. The observers were clapping fiercely, and there were more than a few catcalls. By the sound of it, Aramis and Hector had very few friends; most of them were crowded around the latter Arctor, reviving him.

Harry felt someone throw an arm around his shoulders. "Oh my God that was amazing," Lynx screamed. "You have no idea how bloody long I've wanted to do that!"

"Thanks!" Harry smiled widely.

"I mean, you two were great," Lynx said quickly. "The - the mere endurance, the - "

"I've won!" Tonks patted Harry on the back as she hurried by him. "Well, you've won. Which means I've won. I'm going to find Savage!"

"And the skill," Lynx was saying. "I mean, they're as trained as the Ministry gets!"

"Oh please," Malfoy drawled, as he threw his sword away. "We got lucky. It was an onslaught at the end of which we'd have had our asses thoroughly handed to us if Aramis hadn't suddenly decided to show off with an old-fashioned pastime I happen to be very good in."

Lynx and Harry stopped laughing. "Really Malfoy?" Harry asked. "Really?"

"It's true," he shrugged.

"Yeah it's true, but do you have to point it out now? You can't just...enjoy?"

"Oh who cares how it happened?" Lynx rolled his eyes. "A win is a win; a loss is a loss. Trust me, they'll be taking it that way." He nodded toward Aramis and Hector, who were retreating out of the room sullenly, moving slowly through the crowd of their peers and younger Auror students that were talking excitedly, laughing, and occasionally directing a "Tell us how you're going to defeat all the Death Eaters" toward them.

"No need to be so cynical," Lynx continued.

"Yeah Malfoy," Harry laughed, "Now is not the time to grow a sense of modesty."

"Oh trust me," Draco snorted. "I'm not." He took out his wand and put it to his throat, "Sonorus." Then, trying to make himself heard over the chaos, he shouted, "Seven at night to three in the morning. Open bar at the Leaky Cauldron. Tab's on me!" The announcement was met with possibly even more shouts of excitement than the defeat of Aramis and Hector had been.

"Quietus." Turning to Harry, Draco shrugged, "I'd invite you Potter, but I don't take you for being much of a drinker."

Harry rolled his eyes, "Thanks for the thought."

"Drinks!" Lynx began gushing again as Susan ran up and hugged Harry in congratulations, "A tavern! Wonderful! Perfect way to top this off. Really you should come Harry; you should be absurdly proud! The bravery and the - the advanced spell knowledge and - and blimey, you two make damn good partners!"

Harry was in a splendid mood that evening. It was like winning a Quidditch game, proving to Aramis and Hector that they could be beaten, especially if their arrogance got in the way. Plus, Kingsley had been called away to deal with some emergency, so he had yet to be reprimanded for breaking Ministry regulations against dueling challenges. Seeing Tonks look and sound genuinely cheerful, especially after their conversation, was a nice bonus. In fact, the only drawback was having to explain first to Ron and Hermione, then to Fred, George, and Ginny, and then to Moody and Lupin what had happened that day and seeing their looks of various surprise, disapproval, and bemusement, particularly at Harry's temporary alliance with Malfoy. "Deal with the devil," he kept insisting. "Completely worth it."

That devil seemed particularly worse for the wear as he arrived at the Ministry the following morning. Instead of his customary grey, black, or navy suit with perfectly matched shirt and tie, Malfoy was wearing a pair of white golf pants and preppy white sweater, the unusually casual and monochromatic choice doing little to draw attention from the fact that his skin was a little paler their usual, his hair was a little askew, and his eyes were still a little red.

"Long night?" Harry couldn't help asking.

"Night, morning," Draco drawled, "Today, yesterday…it all runs together after a while."

Harry rolled his eyes.

Luciana's thick laugh sounded from the doorway. "So che l'espressione," she said, looking at Malfoy as she walked in . "Qualcuno aveva un sacco di divertimento la notte scorsa."

"Che posso dire? Alcool, musica, danza, la compagnia di amici…quella sensazione di carne contro carne," he laughed. "Non posso resistere."

"Mi ricordo. In effetti, con tutto il tuo talento sarebbe un peccato per resistere."

"Ho sempre pensato. Dovremmo parlarne di più."

"Stasera sono libero," she giggled.

Harry bit his lip tightly as he watched the exchange. He had no idea what they were saying, but he didn't really need to. As the glass door slid behind Luciana, he laughed, "Have you…"

"Oh yeah," Draco replied indifferently. "Like, two weeks ago. Why, you interested?"

"Um, no," Harry shook his head quickly, "Not at all."

Draco shrugged, "Your loss. Good lay that one is. Better than that Chang girl anyway. She was the one you were chasing after last year wasn't she?"

Harry seemed taken aback, "She - I - You slept with Cho Chang?"

"Indeed. Don't worry, not while she was dating you. Way too much baggage."

"We weren't dating," Harry insisted.

"Whatever." Malfoy threw his feet on the table and smirked, his blasé attitude at its finest.

Harry paused, once again not quite believing he was entering into this conversation. "Then when…?"

"Fourth year sometime? Late winter, early spring. I told you, it all runs together after a while."

"She was dating Cedric Diggory?"

Malfoy laughed, "You say that as if you expect me to care."

Harry groaned.

"I guess," Malfoy added casually, "considering what happened to him, it does seem a little inappropriate."

"Oh my - " Harry shook his head in disgust. "Malfoy, you are -"

"A horrible human being, I know," Draco interrupted. "Please, spare me your self-righteous Gryffindor repugnance and disapproval at my indulgence, chauvinism, and wicked lack of sexual mores. It won't make me feel guilty, I assure you."

Harry sighed and turned back to his work. He'd certainly expected their relationship to go to back to normal after the duel, but there wasn't any harm in hoping. Clearly he hoped too much.

To Harry's surprise, Draco continued absentmindedly, "And not because I just don't feel morally guilty under any circumstances…however true that may or may not be…It would just be hard to take seriously the opinion of a guy who, along with his best friend, is waiting far too patiently for one giant prude."

As Draco had expected, Harry paused for a minute to figure out what he meant, then took the bait. "I don't like Hermione," he exclaimed.

"Defensive there Potter," Malfoy smirked.

"She's my best friend."

"That's one way to look at it…"

"No," Harry began emphatically. "It's the only way to look at it. I don't have 'feelings' for her and neither does Ron."

At that, Draco threw his head back and laughed, "Please. Maybe - Maybe - under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol and the exposure to evidence of your engaging in lascivious behavior with other members of the female gender, I could possibly be prevailed upon to believe that you aren't attracted to Granger, but WEASLEY? He'd be less conspicuous if he walked around with a sign around his neck that said 'I want to fuck the Mu -"

"Oh shut up," Harry snapped.

"Again, defensive." The smirk on Draco's face widened; he was enjoying himself thoroughly.

Harry tried to turn back to the file on his desk, but he had to ask, "Wait, how many people believe that Ron and I like Hermione?"

"How many people is…all of Hogwarts?"

"You're just being an ass Malfoy."

"Fine, don't believe me! Ask Bones. She's right over there. I'm sure she's far more familiar with Gryffindor gossip than I am."

Harry scoffed.

"No Potter," Draco insisted, "I don't think you get it. In Slytherin we actually have bets."

Harry's mouth fell open, "You're joking…"

"Please. I take my gambling very seriously. I've got 500 galleons on you by the way. Then 250 on neither of you. Don't really fancy Weaslby's chances in the long run."

"Wait - you - you guys - you guys actually bet on who at Hogwarts is going to end up together?"

Draco shrugged, "We bet on other stuff too, but you really don't want to hear about those."

"Oh Merlin…" Harry didn't want to, but he couldn't help laughing.

"Yet another thing Merlin wouldn't care about…"

"Listen Malfoy. Let me make this clear: I do not have a romantic interest in Hermione. Neither does Ron. He's my best friend. I'd know."

Draco snorted, "That's precisely why you wouldn't know."

"What?"

"It's called competition."

Harry groaned, "You're unbelievable you know that?"

"Yes as a matter of fact I do."

"Oh my G - "

"I'm being serious. No man with Weasley's lack of confidence is going to talk about his feelings to the one person he considers his biggest rival."

"Load of bull."

"Please. I barely know who Blaise or Nott or Warrington want to fuck in a given week, and we're all boastful, arrogant, and completely uninterested in forming lasting relationship based on deep, emotional bonds."

Against his better judgment, Harry laughed again, "Are Slytherins capable of those?"

"Well I'm not," Malfoy replied sarcastically.

Harry snorted and was about to retort, but at that moment, Kingsley entered the room, a solemn expression on his face.

"It was Potter's idea," Draco said, still sniggering.

"And everyone agreed to it," Harry added quickly and defensively. "And no one got hurt."

Kingsley was taken aback, "Wha - your stunt from yesterday? That…that's not…It's fine." There was a dull, stunned expression on the Auror's face. He was staring in front of him blankly, as if his mind was somewhere far from his body.

The smile fell of Harry's face, "Is something wrong Kingsley?"

The Auror swallowed heavily, "Yeah - yeah there is."

Harry felt his stomach sinking, "What happened?"

Kingsley stayed silent. Across the room, Malfoy slowly took his legs of the desk.

"Kinglsey," Harry stressed.

The Auror shook his head, "I - I don't really know how to say…You should sit down Harry."

Harry did no such thing, "Kingsley, what happened?"

Kingsley took another deep breath, "Albus Dumbledore's dead."

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It was pretty long and there was a lot going on and a lot of scenes, but I hope you found it interesting, exciting, mysterious, and even funny at times.

Also, disclaimer: I used Google Translate for about 95% of the Italian lines, so for those who actually speak Italian, I thoroughly apologize if I made a huge vocabulary or grammatical error.

Please, please review! Comments, suggestions, criticisms...all are appreciated and welcome, and I'll certainly answer any questions you have. Plus, comments make it more likely than I'll finish the next chapter quickly! Unfortunately I don't have an excerpt from the next chapter today, but prepare for the fallout following Kinglsey's announcement and for meeting Scrimgeour and Aberforth Dumbledore!