Chapter 15: Pivot

An owl hooted in the trees surrounding the cabin shortly after noon. Draco threw on some clothes and headed out past the confines of the Fidelius Charm to meet it. Harry followed as far as the porch, folding his arms with hunched shoulders against the cold air.

"Dippet's asking to see us." Draco indicated the note. "It's urgent, so if we could please hurry, and so on."

"All right."

Draco and Harry didn't need umbrellas for the walk to Hogwarts, although the wind could stop anytime. It was a relief to step into the Entrance Hall. Unfortunately for the preparations they'd discussed along the way, it wasn't Dippet that waited for them there. It was Dumbledore.

"Ah, Dumbledore," Draco greeted him all the same. "We were summoned by the Headmaster. He requested a timely visit, although did not elaborate why."

The Great Hall bubbled with conversation. Its buzzing quality was at complete odds with Dumbledore's doleful demeanour.

"Armando would apologize to have not met you," Dumbledore said. "He left me in charge down here while he attends to duty. Someone has allegedly confessed to perpetrating the attacks."

"'Allegedly'?" Harry asked.

"Only one person heard the confession before the confessor disappeared. The castle is currently being searched."

"Who confessed?"

"A fifth-year named Corban Yaxley," Dumbledore replied. "I believe you met him on Saturday?"

Draco popped his eyebrows up. "We did, yes. How was he doing the attacks?"

"That's uncertain, for he apparently didn't mention it to Tom before stunning him and making off."

"Tom," Harry repeated. "Tom Riddle?"

Dumbledore nodded. "I didn't hear Tom's account directly, so I can't speak with much authority on it. Horace did first, then Armando from him, and then Armando gave the rest of the staff a brief rundown."

"All right. . ." Harry's eyes were narrowed in thought. "So what happened, exactly? Yaxley said something about it to Riddle and then ran off? That doesn't seem right."

"Tom confronted him," Dumbledore said. "The story is that Corban had been acting strange ever since you two chatted with them. Tom apparently suspected him before that, but had nothing concrete to go on."

Harry hummed. "Well, that would close the matter as far as we're concerned. I would imagine that Dippet has requested Magical Enforcement take over?"

"He hasn't yet, as far as I know." Dumbledore released a long sigh through his nose. "He did state intent to reach out to Corban's parents if the search of the castle yields nothing. They may have been in contact, if he's left the grounds."

"I can't say I myself wouldn't run straight home," Draco mused. "Mother and Father can fix anything, no matter how terrible a thing you've done, when you're that age."

Dumbledore smiled, although it didn't reach his eyes. He looked very disappointed when it slipped away. That hit rather close to how the Dumbledore back home looked at Draco far too many times.

"What a great waste of talent, if this is all true," Dumbledore said. "Tom may be the star of the show, but Corban was a quiet force at his side. Rather than focus on his exemplary magical talent, he chose to do this instead."

That also hit a bit too close. Draco opted to nod pensively in agreement. Harry had taken to studying Dumbledore.

"Forgive me," he said in a slow manner. "From the way you speak, Dumbledore, I'm getting the impression you don't accept the sequence of events as you've explained them to us. Is there something else you suspect as truth, perhaps?"

Dumbledore pondered the question, his gaze moving like a pendulum between Draco and Harry. Draco resisted averting his. He wasn't on board at all with Harry extending this conversation any longer than it needed to be. At the same time, he was curious where Harry might be trying to take it.

"I don't know that I can give you a definite yes or no," Dumbledore eventually replied. "This is just difficult to believe, although I would likely be saying the same thing about any other student."

"It had to be somebody, though. Right?" Harry asked. "These sorts of things don't happen in a vacuum."

"No," Dumbledore agreed after a beat. "They don't."

"Are you certain you aren't keeping something to yourself? We don't belong to Magical Enforcement, if that's the reason for your reluctance. I feel compelled to tell you, though—with absolutely no offence meant—that your hesitation might come off as suspicious to someone with an eye trained for that."

Draco wished he could sideswipe Harry's ankle without Dumbledore noticing. He certainly had to commend Harry's immunity to wilt under the unimpressed look he was receiving.

"Are you insinuating I had some involvement in this?" Dumbledore went cold.

"Not at all," Harry said. "I'm merely stating that you've come off this afternoon—and Saturday too, actually—as though there's something you're holding back. I think you did suspect someone else of these attacks, and continue to now. A favourite student you'd hate to see trouble, perhaps? Or do you just lack evidence on a gut feeling?"

Although it was gradual and slight, Dumbledore unclenched. "I believe it's only natural in the course of investigating such matters that pet suspicions rise to the surface. I had mine, but no supporting evidence. The way in which things played out this morning did not entirely discount them."

"Was it Tom Riddle you suspected?" Harry asked, sounding purely curious. "I could see why his involvement seems suspicious, especially if he's the only student with any sort of authority on what happened. It's also rather convenient that one of his friends happened to vanish in a timely manner."

"That's what bothers me." Dumbledore furrowed his brow. "Corban and Tom have been close friends for many years. Tom is a little rough around the edges, but his friends aren't the types that would hesitate to turn on him should he show any loss of love or loyalty. I trust that their friendship with Tom is sound. So why would Tom turn on one at risk of alienating the rest?"

"There would certainly be nothing to gain if the victims will point the finger at Tom once they've been restored," Harry replied.

"That's what this will all have to come down to," Dumbledore said. "They're the only true witnesses. What I fear is that they'll have all managed to see nothing, and we'll never actually know what happened."

"Unless Corban is located." Harry tilted his head slightly. "Do you not believe he will be?"

"That's irrelevant, should Corban deny Tom's account. If the two boys point their fingers at each other, and there are no witnesses. . ." Dumbledore pulled his shoulders up before letting them fall in a shrug. "I suppose the only thing to do from there will be to keep a close eye on the two of them."

"Or punish both." Harry shifted on his feet with a quiet grunt. "Not that it's fair or right, without evidence."

"No," Dumbledore agreed, and then a silence passed. "This entire thing is just terrible. I hope this is the end of the attacks and that Corban is all right, regardless of what he may have done."

"Of course," Draco said.

"Unless you have other business in the matter, I suppose I ought not keep you." Dumbledore extended a hand again. "Will you require updates on the situation?"

"I don't believe so," Harry replied as they shook. "We were only asked to consult. It'll be Magical Enforcement now—if anyone—that would need to be kept in the loop."

He and Draco left. Draco opened his mouth when they'd passed beyond where they might be overheard, but Harry spoke first.

"I had a reason for it," he said.

"Making Dumbledore doubt his suspicions of Voldemort, in case he pursues it?" Draco wagered. "It wasn't necessary. We already know Voldemort manages to become exactly who he is by 1975. We don't need to meddle in that sort of thing."

"That wasn't why, not that it would matter if I just fucked up the timeline." Harry glanced at him. "We would have only just shifted into a divergent one if I did, right? You could check our address when we're back at the cabin to see if that happened."

Draco grunted. "So what was the point of that?"

"Hedging our bets," Harry said. "We shouldn't put all of our eggs in one basket with Voldemort."

"Are we planning on utilizing him?" Draco asked. "Him or Dumbledore?"

Harry pursed his lips in thought, falling quiet. He didn't say anything again until they'd passed the school gates. "I guess now that everything's settled with Yaxley, that'll be the question we answer as we turn our focus on Ron."

"We could begin sorting it out once we're back to 1975?" Draco suggested.

"Sure."

At the cabin, Draco fetched his Spacetime Turner and sat at the kitchen table while Harry started cleaning up in preparation for departure. When Harry put an arm around Draco's chest, Draco rested his hand on Harry's forearm. He almost resented that any lingering annoyance regarding Dumbledore evaporated completely.

"Well?" Harry asked.

Draco huffed, regardless. "We're still in the same universe."

"Cool." Harry gave him a brief squeeze. "Let's pack up, then."

Heavy longing clogged Draco's chest as he put his bag together on the made bed. He didn't like that the mark they'd left on the cabin could be so easily undone. They were halfway through the job—if not more than, given all the work that went into sorting out just what the job would actually be. Draco hadn't hardly thought the last few days about Harry's pending Obliviation. Even when Robards mentioned it back home, Draco had been too depleted to spare any energy for that particular concern.

Harry waited for Draco at the fireplace. They Flooed to the Department of Mysteries, headed into the travel room, and came out in 1975 at two o'clock in the afternoon. They confirmed with Diana Mathieson at reception that it was indeed the seventeenth of April—a Thursday.

Harry had one eye narrowed as they walked away from her. "Do you reckon she knew when we first arrived in this universe that we'd been here decades ago?"

"I don't know." Draco blinked. "Maybe."

"We did tell the bloke in '43 that we were coming from '75. . ."

"Maybe Diana expected us, then." Draco clicked his tongue. "That little minx."

"I guess it goes to show time's not really much of a straight line, is it?" Harry asked.

"It's just as bent as the rest of us, turns out."

Harry let out an ugly laugh that drew attention from nearby Unspeakables. He forced himself quiet in a rush of self-awareness, although snorted again when he glimpsed Draco's smirk. However proud to have made Harry fall about like that, Draco's facial muscles grew heavy as tendrils gently tugged him back down into the little pit of disquiet he'd found himself in.

They Flooed back to the cabin, which was in a comforting state of lived-in disarray. Draco did his best to drop his anxiety along with his bag in his room. He came to an abrupt stop after turning on his heel. Harry leaned against the doorframe.

Amusement returned to his eyes with a small smile. "You won't send me back across the hallway, will you?"

Draco put his hands on his hips. "If you think I'll be crawling into a single-sized bed with you, you'll be sleeping on your own."

Harry laughed again as he set his bag down just inside the door. "You're funny today."

"Implying I haven't been any other day," Draco lamented, and then shrugged. "It's just better to have a sense of humour than anything else after everything back home."

Harry's smile flickered, which was about the last thing Draco wanted to happen.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I didn't mean it like that. Jumping all over, and—you seem all right, is all."

"It's fine." Draco waved a hand. "I am all right."

Lips bunched to one side, Harry studied Draco.

Draco sighed internally. "I don't want to dwell on it. My father did what he did. I did what I did."

"You mean with, er. . ."

No doubt Draco would have to answer for the way he'd gone to his knees in front of Harry. He couldn't deny that some of his anxiety stemmed from that.

"It's been a long enough day already." Draco ran a hand down his face, eyes burning with fatigue when they briefly closed. "I think we ought to go over everything from handling Yaxley while it's still fresh in mind, call it, and then get properly started on planning Weasley's extraction in the morning."

"Sure," Harry agreed. "We definitely deserve a rest, if we can spare the time."

Draco felt slightly ridiculous to need recuperation when they'd basically taken a couple days off while in 1943. Sure, they were working, but Draco had also worn clothes for maybe an hour's worth of time on the Sunday of that weekend. He supposed he couldn't write off the cost of energy from romping about with a new lover. It hadn't felt too high until today, when crisis had trumped fun for motivation toward it.

Harry followed Draco out to the sitting room, taking a seat in the chair while Draco sought out the chalk. On the blackboard, he wrote Voldemort? under their Allies list. He erased unknown up by Yaxley's name in the top left corner, and put HOME in its place. Their Recourse list could also be minimized. All that remained of it was snatch Weasley during full moon (Friday 25th).

"All right," Draco said more to himself as he turned back to face Harry. "I believe it fair to state that we've closed the causal loop. We managed within that to extract Yaxley, determine that delinking is not necessary for the process, and mark Voldemort a potential Ally."

Harry nodded, folding his fingers over his stomach as he crossed his ankles on the tea table.

"Let's start with where we stand with Dumbledore." Draco wrote his name in the centre of the board. "What did you mean about hedging our bets?"

"I brought up Tom Riddle as an alternate suspect for the attacks so that when Voldemort rises, Dumbledore will remember that we were open to his capabilities," Harry said. "Do you reckon there's any questioning at all he either suspects or knows we're time travellers?"

"After he's seen us in 1975 exactly as we were in 1943, and believes us both to be Unspeakables? Whom he would know have access to time travel, seeing as at least one of his students once used a Time Turner?"

Harry grunted. "I guess when you put it that way. . ."

"I'm still a little stuck on why Dumbledore immediately asked us to leave Hogwarts when we first met him." Draco folded one arm across his stomach and rubbed his jaw with the opposite hand. "Let's start in 1943. Dumbledore meets two Unspeakables that attend to a slew of attacks at Hogwarts. Pretty much as soon as they arrive, the attacks are resolved. However, one student disappears, and the student Dumbledore suspected as responsible is similarly flagged as dubiously circumstantial. Fast forward several years, and Tom Riddle emerges as Voldemort. Dumbledore knows it's him—"

"Hold on a sec'," Harry broke in. "I want to maybe add something here."

"What's that?"

"What would have happened if Dumbledore ever tried to reach out to us, and we weren't around?" Harry asked. "What would the Department of Mysteries have said? They would have known in 1943 that we'd return in 1975, so it's not like they could just say we skipped back across the pond or something."

"That's probably exactly what they said," Draco said. "They wouldn't have known that we'd interact with Dumbledore again in the future. We never told them that in 1943."

"I guess it doesn't really matter, then," Harry replied. "Go on with what you were saying."

"Voldemort emerges." Draco picked up where he left off. "Dumbledore knows it's him, and then the war starts. Five or so years later, we reappear."

Harry let out a mirthless laugh. "What was it you said about why we were there, when we first met Dumbledore?"

"The same thing I always say." Draco wanted to roll his eyes at himself, even though he'd had no idea at the time how it would've sounded in context of Dumbledore's memory. "We need to locate someone that we can't find any record of elsewhere."

"Well, fuck." Harry's expression fell slack. "I just thought of something else."

"What?"

"We're running on the assumption Dumbledore figured out we were time travellers, right?"

Draco nodded.

"He's going to think the entire war is our doing."

Draco's stomach flipped unpleasantly. "Don't you think that's a bit of a leap?"

Harry pursed his lips, his gaze rising when Draco approached his chair. "There's something Dumbledore won't be able to explain—and this might be what made him get rid of us as quickly as he could. We were genuinely confused that he asked us to leave."

"Okay. . ." Draco said slowly.

"Actually, there are two things he won't be able to make sense of," Harry said. "There's also the fact that we didn't acknowledge we'd met before. If we were time travellers straight out of 1943—going off the fact we hadn't aged—why didn't we own up to that when it was clear our cover story wasn't panning out?"

"Maybe we didn't think he'd realize we were the same people," Draco suggested. "Which—obviously—he had. So yes, I don't think that would have made sense to him."

"Next question, based on that: what do you reckon the likelihood is he'll realize that we ourselves were in 1975 prior to 1943?" Harry asked. "That, if we're time travellers, we'd come further yet from the future?"

"Which would then lead him to ask why." Draco started in an amble back toward the blackboard. "Which would then lead him to question Yaxley's disappearance and Riddle's evasion of being caught for the attacks, which would then lead him to look into what came of Riddle afterward."

"The war," Harry concluded.

"It also probably doesn't help in the slightest that I'm so very obviously a Malfoy," Draco added with a scoff. "Voldemort and my grandfather were close. Dumbledore probably has little doubt my father followed in Grandfather's footsteps, so then why wouldn't his son? To be totally fair, I did."

"I wonder who he thinks I am."

"You're probably safe," Draco said. "Not even your father or grandmother suspected anything. It's not as if the Potter family had any nefarious connections, like the Malfoys did."

"Yeah." Harry paused. "So is that a safe assumption, do you think? That Dumbledore most likely expects we're from sometime beyond 1975 in this timeline, and we're meddling about to try and help Voldemort?"

Draco sighed. "Probably."

"Do you think he at all expects we might be from another universe?" Harry narrowed an eye. "Could he?"

"That, I doubt," Draco replied. "It would be an extra step in thinking he doesn't need to take in order for everything to already make some sort of sense. He also can't see that Yaxley and Weasley don't belong here. It's a consequence of the integration."

"I guess the most important question to ask then is if we can at all consider Dumbledore a potential Ally," Harry said. "My other thought in nudging Dumbledore about Riddle was that if we know who Voldemort is, how to contact him, and all that. . .you know, maybe we could set up some sort of trade for Ron."

Draco regarded Harry with raised eyebrows. "You should know better than anyone else how unwilling Dumbledore is to pawn one child for the well being of the wizarding world."

"You never know." Harry shrugged. "We're dealing with 1975 Dumbledore, not 1996 Dumbledore. He's not as central a figure in the first wizarding war as he became in the second, and he's also closer to his days with Grindelwald—and Grindelwald's defeat. He knows the value of taking down one malicious player for the sake of everything else."

"There wasn't the life of a child on the line, with Grindelwald." Draco rubbed his neck with both hands. "Still. . .I suppose it's an option."

"Mhm." But Harry didn't sound absolutely sure about it either.

"So the only thing we can say we know for sure about Dumbledore is that he has high potential to become an even larger obstacle than he's already been," Draco said. "Let's move on to Voldemort."

"Hold on a sec'."

Harry retreated briefly to the bedroom, returning with his journal.

"It's all a bit too much to put on the board maybe, so I'm going to start writing stuff down." Harry grunted as he dropped back into the chair, one leg swung over a rest. "Voldemort should be easier to sort out, shouldn't he? We only talked to him the one time. If Dumbledore thinks we did Voldemort a favour, Voldemort likely feels the same way."

Draco studied Harry. "You told Voldemort you killed him in '98."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, not looking up from his writing.

"You never mentioned the circumstances that led up to that," Draco said. "Just that it happened. Voldemort doesn't know there was two wars. He doesn't know he tried to kill you as a baby. We never mentioned his Horcruxes."

Harry's biro slowed as his eyes went narrow. "So all he knows from the quote-unquote original timeline is that the war ended in 1998, he was killed by a seventeen year old, and he was quickly forgotten."

"You also hinted that he watch for something significant in 1945, so he would have some extra validation that we know the contents of the future," Draco replied. "That's if Dumbledore actually defeated Grindelwald here. I don't see how our interferences would have changed that."

"We could make sure next time we go to Hogsmeade. Check the papers."

"All right. What else?"

Harry looked up from his journal, gaze steady on Draco. When he didn't say anything in response to the question, Draco started on answering it himself.

"We have more cards to our chest with Voldemort, certainly," he said. "We warned him about making any big moves too soon, which by all appearances worked out for him. The only difference Voldemort might know is that he's far more powerful a lot sooner than he'd originally been. If he thinks we only had one war, he might believe that he's waged it here twenty years ahead of schedule. As we ourselves know, he actually was on the verge of steamrolling the wizarding world when he ran into you."

"Right," Harry quietly replied.

"So. . ." Draco trailed off with a shrug. "Seeing as Voldemort had help from time travellers, there's more reason than not for him to feel grateful toward us."

"Unless he thinks he doesn't need our help anymore," Harry said. "He's proud. He won't want to admit he didn't manage on his own."

"This is true, but we ought to remember we're also dealing with a different Voldemort than we did as children," Draco replied. "I heard a lot from Father and Aunt Bella how he had changed when he returned. He was bitter and angry. Back in the seventies, he was charismatic, obliging. . .nearly amenable, if you exclude the homicidal streak."

Harry snorted, although it was almost closer to a scoff.

"Hey, people liked him for a reason. It wasn't all an excuse to corral Muggle-borns and torture Muggles. Otherwise, it would have been a lot more clearcut who his followers were in the interwar years, Imperius Curse or not."

"I know." Harry tapped his biro against his journal. "Voldemort being more receptive to us isn't something I'd like to just assume, though. Maybe the circumstances have changed, but he's still absolutely a wild card."

There wasn't much else to add from there without beginning to talk in circles. Draco mirrored Harry in fetching his journal, and was left alone in writing when Harry stirred later to put dinner together. He'd gone quiet—pensive—which put Draco back slightly on edge. It didn't help that Draco was starting to see a way to maybe put something to stone, and he had no idea how Harry was going to react to it.

Draco would leave it until tomorrow, as he and Harry had agreed for any further job discussion. He ended up laying down on the sofa to watch Harry work in the kitchen, which was dangerous for the heaviness in his eyelids. Draco had no doubts that, were he to rest them, he'd be out like a light—

"Hey."

"Hm?" Draco jolted. Rather suddenly, Harry was standing over him. "What?"

"I said come dish up," Harry told him. "Much as I hate to wake you. You looked pretty peaceful."

He didn't sound very serious on that, and indeed snorted when Draco wiped some dried drool from the corner of his mouth. Draco spared Harry a grumpy glare for the jest.

Harry made a slow roundabout to seriousness as they sat quietly across from each other at the table. "All right?"

"I'm fine." Draco twirled spaghetti around his fork. "Still pissed off from earlier and wore out, but that ought to be a given."

"You just seem. . .I don't know, distant." Harry glanced up from his plate. "You were about the opposite of that right after we came back to this universe, so I'm not sure if you being quiet now was more to do with that than Yaxley. Maybe you regret what happened, or think things went too far. I don't know unless you tell me."

Draco used having food in his mouth as means to think before speaking. He swallowed. "I do think I shouldn't have dropped that on you without any previous discussion, regardless of how well you handled it."

"I thought it was pretty clear what you were asking for," Harry replied. "And I'd seen your limits already in giving a blowjob."

As much as Draco wished this was the time to smirk about when he'd put his mouth and throat where his bragging was, it wasn't. "This was different. I wasn't in control at all."

"So. . ." Harry's brow knit together. "What should I have done instead?"

"Nothing. I put you in a situation, and you handled it."

"I feel like you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. What's the big deal?"

Draco blinked. "It's a big deal to me."

"Oh." Harry sat up straighter in his chair. "Is there something I'm missing?"

"If you've never had somebody submit to you like that before, then maybe."

Draco didn't have much hope of hiding the unbidden warmth in his cheeks. He would've thought that by now it would stop happening whenever he and Harry discussed something personal, but this ran rather deep.

"I'm not a stranger to topping," Harry said. "Surely you must have realized that."

"Topping and domming aren't the same things."

"I know." Harry paused with a quick glance away. "I mean, I guess I know. I've never—I know about safewords, and stuff. Which we didn't have."

"No."

"I would've stopped if you said anything that sounded like one." Harry shifted again in his seat, his bottom lip disappearing behind his top teeth when he pushed it there with his thumb. "I didn't even think about how I did that to a victim in my case."

"That's not all I am to you," Draco replied. "I hope not, anyway."

"'Course not," Harry said. "But that's what set it all off."

Draco hadn't expected this sort of conversation to be pleasant for either of them, but Harry bringing up how they worked in context of him as an Auror touched the plane beyond his Obliviation. How were they supposed to fall back together afterward if all Harry would see in Draco was a case victim? Draco wasn't opposed to laying it on as thick as needed, but it still made him even more nervous about something that already bothered him today.

"I think the crucial thing is we got through it just fine," Draco spoke after a lengthy silence between them. "That said, I'm of the opinion that we ought not do something like that again while we're on this job. I don't even know if I could willingly get into the right headspace for it with your Obliviation hanging over us. I also have no idea if that sort of dynamic is something you're actually interested in. It's not for everybody."

"Is it important to you?" Harry asked. "Do you do it a lot?"

"Not often," Draco replied. "I like it here and there. Sometimes, I. . ."

"Need it?"

However hard he tried not to be sheepish about it, Draco's face warmed again as he gave a quick nod. "It's. . .grounding. Nice."

"To get out of your head for a while," Harry said.

"Yes."

As if he'd remembered his plate, Harry started chasing a stray piece of ground turkey. "Given you're not too sure about it all, I hope I don't sound like a prat to say I liked it."

"Well, I'd hope you did."

Draco managed to smile when Harry chuckled. More of the uncertain air between them dissipated, and Draco felt his shoulders relax. He hadn't realized how tensely he sat there.

"So. . ." Harry's warm gaze helped, as well. "We are okay, then?"

Draco nodded again. "Like everything else, it all comes down to this bloody Obliviation. It hit me today that with only Weasley left to deal with, it's that much closer. I'm dreading it, but part of me honestly can't wait for it to just be done."

"Yeah." Harry ate a bite of spaghetti. "I hope I'll know enough later to appreciate how nice it is to not have it hanging over our heads. Although I'm sure I'll gather from whatever whinging you do about it."

Draco tsked when Harry grinned. "Why would I whinge if things go well for me?"

"I'm sure you'll find something."

That earned Harry a swat and cold shoulder when Draco took his plate for post-dinner cleanup. Draco did feel better overall, so he supposed he was happy the topic had come up. He didn't feel nervous so much as just curious when Harry went quiet again, preoccupied briefly with his journal before announcing his intention for a shower. By the time he'd emerged from there, Draco had made himself at home in Harry's hammock on the front porch.

"Just like a hermit crab," Harry mused as he looked down at Draco. "I move out, and you move in."

"I Engorged it for a reason, you know," Draco drawled. "Get in."

Draco had to shift about in order to accommodate the second body beside him. Once he and Harry settled, Draco nuzzled his nose into Harry's shoulder and closed his eyes. The cool breeze brushed over his cheek, and the combination of Harry's shampoo and body wash provided a familiar comfort.

"Can I ask you something?" Harry broke the silence with.

"Mhm."

"I've done well with all this, haven't I?" Harry asked. "Not losing my head about the time or dimensional travel, or seeing people I used to know?"

"Really well, actually." Draco slipped a hand up the front of Harry's shirt to rest it on his stomach. "Why?"

"What do you reckon the chances are Theta would hear a case against me being Obliviated?"

Draco blinked, his mind halting. He studied Harry for any sort of hint that he played around. He wasn't.

"I wish I'd thought about it before we took Yaxley home," Harry said. "We could've done something about it while we were there."

"Like what, exactly?"

"Send them an appeal letter, or something?" Harry shrugged as best he could while laying on his side. "I was thinking, what if this job had taken months or years to sort out? You know, if Yaxley and Ron had to be delinked. What could you and I have been, after all that time together? Would Theta have expected us just to let it go?"

"I don't know." Draco pulled his bottom lip back. "You might not have been allowed to come back on the job with me in that situation. That depends on how absolute Theta is on the Obliviation."

"We ought to find out," Harry replied. "I think I've proven myself capable of handling everything you've shown and told me. I can keep it all secret. I won't wonder what I could do with our own timeline if I got my hands on a Spacetime Turner. I get why they don't fix every single problem, and can't be used to save lives. There's no point meddling if it only creates new universes instead of changing our own."

Draco definitely felt nervous as he carefully considered everything Harry said. It made sense to him, certainly. He didn't doubt at all Harry's capacity to carry on normally with everything he'd learned on this job. Again, it all depended on Theta, or the Department of Mysteries as a whole. Even if Theta saw the points raised in a case made, it didn't mean they had the authority to waive protocol.

"I've been useful too," Harry said. "What would this job have been without me, as far as the things you've learned for your research? It was my suggestion Yaxley might be dead that helped you figure out the causal loop. I noticed that Hagrid isn't at Hogwarts past his school days, and was the one to point out Yaxley was in the same Hogwarts year as Voldemort. Would you have figured out how the Vanishing Cabinets broke if I hadn't asked you to look into delinking?"

"That's more pertinent to your work, though," Draco had to point out.

"Not completely. The creation of a natural wormhole is something new you took from it. Right?" Harry rested a hand on Draco's hip. "You said the Department had only ever made artificial ones before, which is how we've been moving around. Well, there you go. Now you know what a natural one looks like. You know the consequences of traveling through one."

Draco hadn't even thought that far ahead yet, having focused his efforts today on the current case.

"What if another job like this comes up?" Harry posed. "All this stuff is a gain for the Department of Mysteries. If you happen to find the rest of the Death Eaters, that's the same for Magical Enforcement. Wouldn't it be wise for us to stay in professional contact, so that we'd know if the other is beneficial to our own work? That connection didn't exist previously if it's you and me that ended up in this together, figuring it out as we go."

"Hm."

Harry assessed Draco. "You're not actually arguing me on it, are you? Or are you just playing devil's advocate?"

"Devil's advocate." Draco's heart pounded too heavily with sheer want to stem from legitimate debate. "Of course I don't want you Obliviated. Of course I'd ask."

"To be honest, I considered just appealing it quietly by myself so that if Theta said no, you wouldn't have to know about it. It's my Obliviation, after all." A flicker of dread passed through Harry's expression. "They're my memories. I'd prefer to keep them."

Draco could certainly appreciate why Harry might want to spare him that disappointment. To avoid becoming a basket case about the whole thing, he maintained a cautious emotional distance from the hope. "So then why tell me?"

"You might have more to add that could make the argument stronger." Harry's fingers gradually moved up the back of Draco's jumper, stopping when they'd reached skin. "I don't want to fuck it up because I missed something. This way, we can say we did everything we could."

"No half-measures," Draco softly said.

"Exactly," Harry agreed. "Besides, after earlier. . .I just like it better when we talk."

However Draco melted for that, a smirk emerged too.

Harry gave him a stern look. "Don't you dare say it—"

"Saccharine." Draco did anyway.

He grinned while Harry rolled his eyes. However unimpressed he'd gone with Draco, Harry lightened up again when Draco turned his chin. Harry's breath escaped his nose like a sigh through a soft, slow kiss.

"I don't know why you get so annoyed when I call you that," Draco murmured when they'd stopped. "I'll confess, I really do love it."