Knowing he'd hidden a body Potter was here to search for made Draco's Monday breakfast even less pleasant than usual.

Draco didn't like to spend a lot of time analyzing his feelings about Harry Potter, mostly because he always ended up feeling inadequate. How did you compete with killed an immortal madman and saved all wizarding Britain? You didn't. Seeing the bastard was always a punch in the gut. He drew every eye in the room and always had, and Draco was at least honest with himself enough to admit he was jealous. But the day Potter arrived, walking into the Dining Hall with Weasley predictably on his tail, head down to listen to whatever Headmistress McGonagall had to say, Draco was braced for him.

"The cavalry's here," Theo said.

"Christ, did they let him bring horses into the Hall?" Draco asked without looking up from the history book he'd very deliberately focused his attention on. "Fame does have its privileges."

Theo snorted. The other Slytherins managed to conjure a few awkward laughs. House solidarity warred with the awe Potter elicited even from them.

"Well, he has Weasley," Theo said. "Does horse-faced count?"

That elicited far more sincere laughter. Ronald Weasley's role in the war was vaguely understood at best, and their long-standing rivalry with his House made him a comfortable target. Draco risked a glance up. The pair of them were standing not at the Head Table, where as visiting Aurors they ought to be, but with the Gryffindors. Ron Weasley set a hand on Hermione's shoulder, which she plucked off. He moved a few steps back, hands returning to his pockets with an awkward casualness Draco didn't buy for a moment. He'd been rebuffed. It was beautiful to watch. He wished now he hadn't cornered Hermione into keeping their – whatever it was – a secret. It would be a thing of glory to go over to that group, slide in next to her, and wrap an arm around her shoulder.

Unless, of course, she flung that off too. He suspected she wasn't any more keen on being a weapon shoved in Weasley's face than he was.

Theo followed his gaze. "You're about as subtle as a brick," he said.

Draco returned his attention to the history of Grindelwald's rise. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

. . . . . . . . . .

excerpt of a journal entry

… dare he? As if he hadn't been in every society column, as if he hasn't made it very clear he's moved on. Which is fine and I do not begrudge that but coming in and pressing his hand down into my shoulder as if he bloody well owned me, as if we were still together. He's like a dog trying to piss on his territory. "You been seeing anyone?" As if it's any of his business. As if I would tell him. I should have. I should have said, "Oh, just Malfoy," just to see the look on his face. Hah. It would be like McClaggen, only worse.

Shite.

Was Malfoy right?

. . . . . . . . . .

You can feel Draco's eyes. You got used to it last year. You'd scan the room and notice what everyone was looking at without reacting, and Draco is staring right at Ron's hand on Hermione's shoulder. The hand she is pushing off with a grimace on her face.

"I just asked you a question," Ron says, shoving his hands down into his pockets. "I thought we were going to stay friends."

"And I don't talk about my sex life with my friends," Hermione says primly. It's all you can do not to look over at Draco, but you manage to keep your eyes on Harry Potter's face. Harry who, thank god, looks as uncomfortable as you feel.

"Maybe we can talk about something else," Harry says. "Like Filch." He twists his mouth, and you're grateful for all the practice you had hiding your feelings last year because you keep a bored, vague expression in place.

"Why was he even here?" Hermione demands.

Ron blinks at her a few times. "What?"

"He shouldn't have been allowed back," she says, and she twists on the bench and leans toward Ron and Harry the way she does when she's got a topic she is going to go on about at some length, because she cares, and you'd better care too. Ron looks at Harry, a nervous grin on his face. Please make her stop, that grin says, but you want to cheer. She's going to push suspicion right off herself by going on and on about Filch.

She waves a hand up at you. "He tortured Neville," she says.

"Technically, he helped the Carrows torture me," you say.

"Oh, that's so much better," she says. "I stand corrected. He didn't actually do the torturing. He aided and abetted the torturing. He chained students up so they could be beaten, did you know that?'

"I, uh." Harry is looking just as lost as Ron. This isn't the thing people like to hear. No one publishes stories about this. It's all brushed under the rug in favor of the much more interesting quest Harry went on. His story has a happy ending. He found the magical items and defeated the big bad evil. The Hogwarts story is less uplifting.

"And someone let him back in this school," Hermione is saying. "They decided, hey, sure we have an entire population of basically enslaved elves to do the cleaning – "

"Are you still going on about spew?" Ron asks.

"Ess pee ee double-yu," she says. "And yes. But stay focused. Hogwarts already had an entire staff of elves doing the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and the mending, so Filch wasn't even necessary, but here he was, pushing a mop, leering at students, reminding them of what he used to do to them. You yourselves used to say he was a menace."

"Well," Ron says. "That doesn't mean he should be murdered."

"It doesn't mean he should be working in a school alongside the very people he tortured."

"Abetted the torture of," you say softly. This is so beautiful. She's on an absolute tear and no one – absolutely no one – would ever think she had any guilt about Filch's unlamented disappearance. Guilty people tried to hide. They avoided questions. They certainly didn't lecture Aurors on the character flaws of the deceased.

Harry sighs. "Hermione," he says. "Do you have any idea who would have wanted him dead?"

"Me," she says promptly. She holds up a hand and starts ticking off fingers. "Every student who was here last year. Probably half the staff. And I wouldn't be surprised if more than one Death Eater locked away in Azkaban sits in a stew of curdled resentment that they're locked up and he's still here, mopping away."

"Except he's not," Ron says.

She shrugs and it's so utterly callous, so indifferent, you're amazed. "Good luck finding who did it. But I think you're going to get a lot of 'glad he's gone' and not much else. Who are you talking to first?"

"The portraits," Harry says.

It's a good thing neither of them are looking at you, because you can't control the brief moment of panic.

. . . . . . . . . .

"They're going to talk to the portraits," Neville said softly as he passed Draco in the hall. "Fair warning."

"She knows?"

"She was there when they told me."

. . . . . . . . .

excerpt from Auror Report #89456, Missing Person (Filch, Argus)

… proved universally unwilling to cooperate in any meaningful way. While no student refused to be interviewed, none of them recalled seeing Argus Filch on the day he disappeared and more than one suggested it was 'no loss.' "I'd like to shake the hand of whoever got rid of him," was repeated in slight variations over a dozen times.

Faculty were more cooperative, but no more helpful. However, it was the interviews with the Hogwarts portraits that were the most …

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco was good at following people, especially Potter. He'd been a little shite long before he'd become a

(right bastard, unforgivable, scum)

Death Eater and he'd been obsessed with beating Potter. Potter, with his fancy broom and his permission to join the Quidditch team a year early. Potter, who was an Auror now and interviewing portraits. Draco kept casually out of sight around corners and in classrooms. He had a book open everywhere he went because he wasn't following Potter. Christ, you really do think you're the Chosen One don't you, and the rest of us of have nothing better to do than trail after you. For your information –

He had arguments in his head with the man as he tailed him. Told him off. Thanked him. Listened to him, because if anyone gave up Granger he planned to be hammering on her door and telling her to get out before anyone came for her.

"He splashed water on me once," a dryad said from her painting, flimsy towel held with something approaching modesty over her ample chest.

"I'd think you'd like that," Weasley said. "Given all you do is splash around in a pond."

"Dirty water," she said with a sniff. "From the floor."

"I didn't ask if you liked him," Potter said. He'd been doing this all morning, and so far, Draco hadn't heard a single portrait give them up. Some flirted with him. One suggested he take her painting back to his office because she didn't want to talk about Filch – such a slimy, pathetic little man – but she'd be more than happy to tell him all sorts of things all day long. Potter told her he didn't think McGonagall would let him do that, and the plump Renaissance beauty refused to tell him anything else. Portraits didn't like rejection.

"No one liked him," the dryad said. "Elves know how to clean a girl up."

"I don't even want to know," Weasley muttered.

"Neither did Filch."

It was a long day of skulking and at the end, after Weasley went off muttering about how he'd be in Hogsmeade getting a drink and what a bloody waste of time this had been, Potter walked into the room where Draco sat, history book out, quill neatly taking notes on a sheet of parchment.

"Have fun today?" he asked.

"No idea what you're talking about," Draco said.

Harry picked up the book and Draco sat seething with resentment. He couldn't snatch it back. Couldn't use magic, not on an Auror, and he had to just sit there and take it. Sit there and let Potter stand over him when he'd wasted a whole day trying to keep his little Muggle-born friend safe. Wanker. Prick. Half-blood bastard.

"Grindelwald's rise to power. Interesting choice of reading material."

"Some of us are in school, Potter, and we have to sit N.E.W.T. exams. Not all of us got swept up into the loving lap of the Ministry." Where we suck government cock, but Draco didn't say that part out loud. Just kept the scornful sneer in place and tried to imply it.

Potter never was stupid. He tossed the book back down. "As I recall, your father has spent more than a little time in that lap. And it's not that loving."

"Try not to choke on it."

"I'll keep that advice in mind, Malfoy."

. . . . . . . . . .

You raise the glass of very much not blended whiskey – Theo had stalked his way down to Hogsmeade and come back with something so expensive it made you gasp – and the others do the same. You can't quite bring yourself to say, "Here's to getting away with murder" out loud, so you say, "To fairness."

"To fairness," they echo before drinking. The Aurors have come. The Aurors have gone. None of them have been hauled away. Harry didn't even look down in the Chamber of Secrets, where Filch lies, rotting. He went in tunnels, and poked into rooms that didn't always exist, and in the end said that without a body, all they really had was a case of dereliction of duty, and it wasn't as if quitting your job was a crime.

He clapped you on the back, hugged Hermione, and looked straight at Draco while mouthing something you couldn't make out. Draco had raised two fingers to his lips in the shape of a V and kissed them before sending the gesture Harry's way.

And the world is the same. Filch is gone, and the Carrows are in prison, and Corban Yaxley has a book coming out. Fair. You want things to be fair.

A good person would make things fair, would make things right, even if he became a monster in the process.

You take a sip of the whiskey and lean your head back against Theodore Nott, Slytherin, son of a Death Eater, and a man who rests a hand against your shoulder as if you were the most perfect gift he's ever been given and he still can't believe it. Your parents would have liked him, you think. Someone brave enough to turn his back on his history, his House. Someone who might love you, someday. They would have thought he was good.

. . . . . . . . .

Draco shoved her against the wall. It had to hurt, but all she did was grab his hair and pull his mouth toward hers. "I don't even like you," he said, but the words were as false as the way he'd pretended not to be afraid of the Carrows. She didn't care, anyway, so his lie didn't matter. She probably preferred this as hate sex. Safer that way. Easier. And he shouldn't expect more. No one wanted to like Draco Malfoy. He was good for sex, a blow job, a quick hand with the potions. He wasn't the sort of person you cared about.

One of her hands fumbled with the button on his trousers and he groaned into her neck. A nail scraped at his skin, and then she had him. "You want this?" she asked.

The answer had to be obvious, and he closed his eyes. "Granger," he said, but her hand didn't move. He twitched in her grip, thrusting himself forward in a wordless, humiliating plea she do something, do anything, other than keep her hand resting, unmoving, on his prick the way she was.

"Tell me you want it."

"I want you," he said hoarsely. Honestly. "I want you any way I can have you. I wake up wanting you. I go to sleep thinking of your mouth, and, and, and…"

But her hand had started moving, and then she was on her knees and it was her mouth, and he had to reach his hands out to brace himself against the wall to keep his legs from buckling out from under him, and any more talking was impossible.

. . . . . . . . .

You stand with your hand spread out against Snape's plaque. You hated him. He'd seemed like such a bastard. Such an utter, unending well of cruelty. He'd been ugly, and he didn't wash his hair often enough, and he could slice into a person's soul with a single, well-crafted phrase.

He'd never beaten a student.

Never tortured.

Get called to his version of the Headmaster's office, and he'd come up with some seemingly unpleasant task like send you out into the Forbidden Forest to collect something. Surely even you, Longbottom, can't bumble your way to failure with a task as simple as this, he said once, handing you a list of plants needed to brew healing potions. Plants that grew in a forest no one was allowed to go in. Try not to get killed by the spiders. It would involve tiresome paperwork.

You hate him.

You want to hate him.

Why can't you hate him?

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you to the inimitable OlivieBlake for beta reading.