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Harry knocked on the door to Hermione's hospital room. "Can I come in?"

Tucked neatly underneath her sheets, Hermione looked like she'd been transported back to First Year, her hair flying everywhere. Her brow was drenched with sweat, but she beamed wider than he'd ever seen. "Harry! Yes, please, come in! Did you see her? Isn't she wonderful?"

"Just like her mother," Harry agreed.

If possible, Hermione's grin widened. "How's Draco doing?"

"Draco?"

Hermione glared at him. "Please don't tell me you still call him Malfoy."

"No, I call him Draco. I just thought that you'd call him Malfoy." Harry sat down beside her bed. No need to bother her with his personal life right now. "He's doing fine. Can't say he liked your cooking much, though."

"I do feel awful about that. I thought about sending him a fruit basket or something, but with my luck, he'd be allergic to apricots or something."

"He's fine," Harry repeated. "He asked about you and Rose. I told him you were fine."

"I see."

Harry waited. "What?"

"I just went through four hours of labor," Hermione said. "He had to take an anti-allergy potion. If he's fine, then there's something you're not telling me, Harry James Potter."

Harry sighed. "How can you tell?"

"You're not a very good liar."

Harry scowled. "Apparently, I'm better at it than you'd think." Not needing any further prompting, he told her about the letters, how George had sent them (maybe), how Draco had found out about them, how Draco was a hypocrite for expecting Harry to be completely honest after the whole murder fiasco. Hermione waited patiently throughout the rant, nodding at all the right moments. She would make a fantastic mother, Harry reflected. After a long pause, he added, "And Rose really is beautiful."

"Don't change the subject." Hermione sat back on her hospital bed. "So you were both lying to each other."

Harry snorted. "I'm not sure covering up murder and neglecting to mention a few letters can be put in the same category."

"Maybe in a court of law, but that's not what this is. You're acting like he's one of your suspects in a case! Harry, he's your…" Hermione paused. "Come to think of it, you never did tell us what he was to you. But it doesn't matter, it's obvious enough. You love him."

Harry stared at her. "How do you know that?"

"You may love him, Harry, but that doesn't mean you're going to love him every moment of every day. I want to kill Ron sometimes."

"Draco and I have never had a problem with that," Harry muttered.

"Harry…" She paused. "I got a letter too." Harry frowned, and she quickly explained, "Not one like yours, a real one. Draco sent it a few days ago. He said he was sorry for what he'd done during the war and congratulated me on expecting my first child."

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it, remembering when Draco had quickly hidden what he was working on when Harry had walked over to call him for dinner the other day. "He's not the only one I've been lying to," Harry said. "I should have told you about Draco earlier."

"I had my suspicions," Hermione said. "But yes, I would have much rather found out from you than reading it in a letter—not that Draco stated it outright, but it wasn't hard to read between the lines. I imagine Draco feels the same."

"Only worse because of all the awful things George wrote about him." Harry sighed. "How could I tell him that for the longest time, I believed them?"

"By telling him that you believed them and fell in love with him anyway." Harry stuttered, but she gave him that classic Hermione look, the one that said, I'm right, and you know it. Haven't you read Hogwarts: A History?

Something occurred to him as he stood up. "Ron didn't get a letter."

Hermione smiled. "I know. That's how I knew Draco was sincere."

~D~H~

Draco was asleep when Harry peeked his head in the room. He withdrew immediately. It was better to let Draco sleep it off. The blond didn't get enough sleep as it was.

"And just where do you think you're going?"

Harry winced. Apparently, his getaway hadn't been as quiet as he'd thought. "Drac—oh."

Instead of the blond, Scorpius stood in the hallway, attempting to mimic Draco's sneer. Based on the noise coming from the nearest trashcan, Albus was here too, scavenging for food.

"How did you two get here?" Harry asked.

"We're the ones asking the questions!" Scorpius shouted.

Ignoring Scorpius, Albus poked his head out of the garbage can and answered, "Scorpius pretended to be pregnant."

Scorpius pouted. "How was I supposed to know only girls get pregnant?"

"So then I pretended to be you and said I'd been transformed into a doorknob during a raid," Al continued. "The receptionist asked for my autograph."

Harry started to protest before realizing that being turned into a doorknob wasn't far from getting hit by a curse that turned his hair into seaweed, which had happened to him on his last raid. (The curse wouldn't have been so bad if it had only involved the hair on his head.)

Scorpius cleared his throat. "Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that when everything goes to pieces, I get custody of the sink."

Harry got the feeling that the second part of the sentence should have bothered him more than the first. "First off, that's not even remotely how custody works. And second, Draco and I are not breaking up." Draco's reaction to the letters made him add, "Probably."

Harry felt a tugging on his robe. Looking down, he found Albus looking up at him with impossibly wide eyes. "Will Scorpius and I have to be separated?"

Harry had to struggle to remind himself that this was a Ministry doorknob, not a child. A pet, maybe, that Harry and Draco had fed and toilet trained together. A pet whose eyes were starting to rust from welled-up tears. Harry knelt down and patted Albus's head. "Of course not. Everything will work out."

Not one to be left out, Scorpius hopped under Harry's other hand and started purring. "In fact," Harry declared, "that's what I'm going to work on right now." Hermione had warned him not to act like an Auror, but that didn't mean he couldn't do some investigating. It was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place. Hopefully it would be able to redeem him now. He gestured towards Draco's room. "Watch over him, will you?"

Albus and Scorpius snickered.

"Do I want to know why that's funny?" Harry asked, hoping it didn't involve the kitchen sink.

"Normally, he's the one who asks us to watch over you," Scorpius replied with a smirk. "He doesn't trust the Weasel to watch your back."

"Or your face," Albus added thoughtfully.

Harry thought he should probably feel insulted for Ron's sake and irritated that Draco felt the need to spy on him, but right now, it only brought a smile to his face.

~D~H~

George looked surprised when Harry appeared in his Floo. "Is something wrong?"

"You said you experimented on birds. Were they peacocks?"

George looked like he was about to shake his head again, then stopped. "Now that you mention it, yes. I've been using their feathers for the 'I Can't Believe It's Not Stutter' quills."

Harry leaned back from the fire. It couldn't be a coincidence that George's most disturbing letter had featured a peacock around the same time when he was experimenting on the quills. Just like it wasn't a coincidence that there was only one place in Wizarding Britain that housed peacocks.

"Why?" George asked. "That's not against Ministry regulations, is it?"

The only answer George got was the ashes settling as Harry's face disappeared.

~D~H~

Malfoy Manor didn't look like a haunted house. The remaining House Elves had ensured the weeds were cut, the peacocks were fed, and the bushes were trimmed into beautiful shapes. Had it always been this way? Harry desperately wanted to remember the courtyard as an overgrown wasteland but try as he might, he failed to summon any images whatsoever of the house's exterior during Voldemort's occupation.

He couldn't say the same about the interior. Although the House Elves had cleaned up after the Auror raids, no one had bothered to replace the furniture or cover the blank spaces on the wall where portraits used to hang. It made Harry think that being raised in a mansion must have been as lonely as growing up in a cupboard.

Beside him, Toothless growled. Following his failure to figure out how Toothless had been inserted into the portrait, Harry had realized there was another way to find out where Toothless had come from: finding where Toothless had gotten Draco's scent in the first place. The answer, if Toothless's growl was anything to go by, was Malfoy Manor.

Harry yanked on Toothless's leash to stop him from devouring a stray peacock. If the peacock feathers had contributed to George's letters, Harry didn't want Toothless to be infected by whatever magical properties they possessed. The Crup had a habit of urinating on the furniture as it was.

Had Lucius Malfoy really let the birds roam the house unsupervised? The peacock didn't seemed fazed by its near fatal encounter. It cawed once, then went back to chasing its tail feathers. Harry frowned. That seemed more like the behavior of a Crup than a peacock. He felt a little foolish after casting a few spells that confirmed that the peacock was indeed just a peacock. Between Voldemort's occupation and all of the Auror (and apparently joke shop) raids, he didn't blame the creature for going a little mad. He petted the poor bird's head.

"You know, I could make a million jokes about you liking cock, and then a million more about you liking birds."

"Draco?" For the second time that day, Harry turned at Draco's voice only to find the blond nowhere in sight.

The Draco-sound-alike sighed behind him. "Over here, Potter. I thought those glasses were supposed to help your vision."

Turning, Harry found himself face to face with a portrait of Draco in his Hogwarts uniform. If Harry had to guess, he'd say the portrait was taken sometime before their Fifth Year, young enough not to carry the shadow of the Dark Mark in his eyes but old enough that Harry didn't feel like a pedophile for admiring its features. "Malfoy," he greeted in what he hoped was a neutral tone. "I didn't know you had a portrait."

"Considering that I am a portrait, I think the proper expression would be, 'I knew you had a human counterpart,'" Malfoy replied, insufferably smug. "So, Potter. Come to loot from us like the rest of your department? Are you finally ready to admit that I have impeccable taste?"

Harry couldn't resist. "That would be slightly narcissistic of me."

The portrait's lips curved into a frown that could be better classified as a pout. "I don't know what you're implying."

"That any of your jokes about me liking cock have probably already been used as foreplay," Harry replied.

Malfoy sputtered. "I would never associate myself with the likes of you."

Harry shrugged. He was starting to remember why he used to think Draco was such a git. Then again, he'd acted like a git when he was fifteen too. He was just lucky no one had chosen to capture his fifteen-year-old self for public display. "Maybe that's why you're the portrait, and he's the human counterpart."

Mafloy scowled at him but didn't have time to make a comeback. Toothless had finally gotten bored of sniffing his own testicles and started barking. He swiped his paw playfully at the portrait.

Malfoy withdrew further into the portrait towards a roaring fireplace, which Harry recognized from the Manor's drawing room. The painter had included a few embellishments, like a golden egg on the mantle and some Parisian pillows on the floor. "Potter, if you can't contain your beast, I will Floo the Aurors," Malfoy insisted.

"You can do that?" Harry asked, glancing at the fireplace skeptically.

Malfoy sneered at him. "I may not be able to do magic like you, but I'm not a Muggle." Toothless started licking the bottom of the frame. Malfoy stomped his foot, either as part of a temper tantrum or an attempt to shake the frame and scare Toothless off. "Get down, you stupid beast!"

Somewhat reluctantly, Harry pulled on Toothless's collar. He didn't want a repeat of the Buckbeak incident, as funny as that would be. "I'll bet you keep tabs on everything that goes on in the Manor."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "You'll have to do better than that if you want help with whatever case you're working."

Harry thought it would be wise not to mention the letters. "The real Draco Malfoy is in the hospital right now. We think someone slipped something into his food." No need to mention that that something was shrimp and had no weight on his current investigation. "Whoever's behind the attack might have come poking around here to gather information. Have you seen anything suspicious in the past year?"

"I'm afraid I haven't seen very much besides that dusty patch of wallpaper," Malfoy replied. "For a janitor, the real Draco Malfoy doesn't seem to care much for the upkeep of his ancestral home."

"Technically, Grimmauld Place is his ancestral home too, and he's made the place look better than it has in centuries," Harry pointed out.

Malfoy sniffed. "Then maybe you should ask the portraits of Grimmauld Place if they've seen anything suspicious lately. I'm sure the ones in your bedroom would have plenty to say. Now if you'll excuse me."

Harry winced as Malfoy started to walk off. He'd forgotten how fragile Malfoy's ego had been back then. "Malfoy, wait!" He tried to think of what arguments might appeal to the Slytherin. "If Draco dies, that's the end of the Malfoy lineage. No more Malfoys."

"And if he lives, the closest he'll get to continuing the family line is adopting Mudblood orphans whose last names begin with Potter and a hyphen." Malfoy sneered down at him. Harry didn't think mentioning how they were currently raising two Ministry doorknobs was going to win him any favors. "I'll take my chances, Potter."

"Well, I guess you're just going to have to get used to seeing a lot more of me then," Harry replied, tightening his grip on Toothless's leash as if he were about to walk away.

"What do you mean?"

"Draco willed the house to me," Harry lied. "If he dies, I inherit Malfoy Manor."

Malfoy sputtered. "He can't do that! Malfoy Manor has been in the family for centuries."

Harry smiled sympathetically. "So was Grimmauld Place, and look what happened to that. I really do feel guilty. I hardly need to two ancestral homes from families I'm not even related to. But I suppose it will remind me of Draco when he's gone." The words had the bitterness of truth. Judging by how Draco had reacted to George's letters, he might not be lying.

Malfoy hissed. "Don't call him that."

"Gone?"

"Draco," Malfoy said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "It's… disconcerting."

If Harry had known that was all it took to make Malfoy uncomfortable, they would have been on a first name basis ages ago. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Draco. You see, Draco specifically told me that I had to call him Draco. Especially when we're having sex. Especially when we're having role playing sex, and Draco's the Auror…"

Malfoy covered his ears and shouted something about some sort of a blade or blaze. Honestly, Harry wasn't all too surprised that Malfoy was threatening to set him on fire, although he didn't think it was the wisest course of action given that Malfoy was the one made of paper. "Excuse me?"

"I said, Blaise Zabini," Malfoy repeated, avoiding eye contact. He looked a little queasy—although, come to think of it, the portrait had always seemed a little paler than the real Draco. "He was here a while back, snooping through our things. I never liked him. His mother tried to flirt with me once."

That was all he needed. "Thank you—" Harry smirked. "—Draco."

Behind him, Malfoy gagged. "Potter."

Harry turned.

"If I had fought in the war, we would have won."

"The way I see it, we did," Harry replied, and kept on walking. Beside him, Toothless drooped dejectedly. He barked again as they passed the peacock, which was now circling aimlessly in front of an empty frame. Harry frowned. Maybe thinking the peacock was a Crup in disguise wasn't so foolish. After all, Toothless wasn't really a Crup, he was…

A painting.

A pair of spells that had been ruled too invasive to cast on humans revealed that the peacock was actually made of oil pastels and Bohemian parchment. Harry would have bet the entire Black fortune that George had gotten his feathers from this peacock, or one just like it.

Harry snatched a few feathers off the peacock and thanked Merlin he hadn't tossed George's 'Can't Believe It's Not Stutter' quill all those months ago. Somehow, the Animal Artist had used the quills to manipulate what George was writing. Harry shuddered, not wanting to think about who or what was powerful enough to do such a thing. It probably helped that George had already hated Draco. And this Animal Artist hated him even more.

~D~H~

Harry dropped Toothless off before returning to St. Mungo's. Bringing the Crup to Draco's bedside would have been a sure way to get dumped. He regretted the fact when he heard shouts and loud crashes coming from Draco's room. Mainly because one of the voices belonged to Blaise Zabini.

Harry raced into the room to find Albus and Scorpius launching themselves at a suit of armor. The same suit, Harry noted, from the portrait on the far wall. One quick glance confirmed that the frame now only contained one knight whose gauntlet had been cut off by the large tear running through the middle of the portrait.

Draco defended himself as best he could by throwing the nearest object at the knight. Unfortunately for Draco, that object happened to be his wand. At the far wall, Blaise Zabini stood, his wand outstretched.

Harry raised his own wand. Simultaneously, they both aimed at the knight. "IMEDIMENTA!"

The armor exploded spectacularly. Between that and Draco's thunderstorm from earlier, the patients in the ward upstairs must be getting curious. Or furious, maybe, but it was only a difference of a letter.

The doorknobs popped out of the smoking armor. "How was that for watching over him?" Albus asked with a grin. Behind him, Draco raised his eyebrows, correctly interpreting who "him" was. Harry looked away sheepishly.

"I'd go so far as to say we were his knights in shining armor," Scorpius preened.

"Or maybe the dragons who eat the knight," Albus added, inspecting the hollow armor.

"Don't you ever get tired of playing the hero, Potter?" Zabini was smirking at him. "I had the situation completely under control."

"I know," Harry replied, and pushed him against the wall.

"Harry!" Draco sounded horrified. "What are you doing?"

"He's behind the attack," Harry shouted, holding his wand steady over Zabini's forehead. "Or he knows who is."

"That's ridiculous," Draco insisted. "Why would he order a portrait to attack me while he was visiting? He could have been hurt."

"I was hurt, actually," Zabini said. "I stubbed my toe on my chair when the suit of armor—" He fell silent at Harry's glare.

"Harry, he didn't do anything," Draco protested. "Which is more than I can say about you."

Harry didn't lower his wand. He directed his attention towards Zabini. "You were snooping around Malfoy Manor. Why?"

Zabini blinked, lacking composure for the first time in all of their encounters. "I haven't visited in ages. Although…" He thought for a moment. "I did visit earlier this year to gather some financial information. Draco's mother wanted me to look at all the paperwork that got disorganized during the war." Narcissa had mentioned hiring Zabini to get her paperwork in order. "Why? What did Potter do?"

"One of his friends wrote him some nasty letters that were supposedly from me," Draco replied. The fact that he gave the information so freely suggested Draco's opinion of Zabini had changed since his portrait had been created.

Zabini glanced at the floor, where some of the letters had fallen in the chaos. He grimaced. "As much as it pains me to admit it, Potter may be on to something."

Harry jabbed his wand at Zabini, accidently sending harmless sparks careening into the wall. "You do know something about the attack!"

"No," Zabini said slowly, as if talking to a five-year-old. "But when I was going through Mrs. Malfoy's papers, I found a bunch of Draco's old letters to you. And I was getting sick of Draco complaining about how stupid your hair looked and how annoying your voice was, so I may have sent one of the letters. Either to get you to start talking or him to shut up." He didn't sound very apologetic.

"I never said his voice was annoying," Draco protested.

"And you said you didn't send the letters," Harry added. "On Veritas paper."

Zabini grimaced. "When he says stuff like that, his voice is definitely annoying." He flicked Harry's wand out of the way. "As I recall, I wrote that Draco had sent them. Which he had. And I had only sent one of them, so I wasn't lying when I said I didn't send them both. Really, Potter, I think Draco would be more interested in what you wrote."

Fortunately, Draco didn't seem particularly interested in what either of them had written right now. He was staring at the scattered letters. "Why did my mother have my letters in her files?" he asked, half to himself.

Zabini shot him a skeptical glance. "I guess they were right when they said people in love became more and more like each other every day. Honestly, Draco. Did you really believe your parents would let you write to Harry Potter?"

Draco's eyes widened. "You mean… they never got sent in the first place?" Perhaps if he had been on fewer medications, he would have taken more care to sound less dumb-founded. As it was, he ran his fingers through his hair, staring into space as if he were putting together a puzzle behind his eyes. "But… why would she keep them? Why not burn them?"

Zabini shrugged. "She's your mother." Which would have been reason enough. "Ask her. Now, if you don't mind, Potter, I have an appointment I really must keep." When Harry's eyes narrowed, he added, "An appointment with my wife and a can of whipped cream." He grabbed his cloak. "I hope your recovery goes well, Draco."

"Thank you, Blaise," Draco returned. Harry didn't see how he could possibly be so calm after what Zabini had just told him. "And I apologize for my—" He sniffed in Harry's direction. "—my Gryffindor's behavior."

Harry winced as Zabini departed. My Gryffindor was certainly a downgrade from my boyfriend, but it was better than nothing. He turned to face Draco. "I came to apologize. Sort of. I know you hate when I do that."

"I think I hate it even more when you falsely accuse my friends."

Harry sighed. "Hermione says I've been acting like an Auror when I should be acting like a boyfriend. If that's what I am still." He cast a cautious glance in Draco's direction.

Draco sighed. "You let me get away with murder. That doesn't sound very Auror-like to me." He moved over so that Harry could sit beside him. He bit his lip. "You believed that I wrote those letters. That I did those things."

It wasn't a question, but Harry answered anyway. "At first, yes."

"But you didn't believe I would kill people?" Draco asked. "It seems like the logical next step, after mutilating peacocks and joining a terrorist cell."

Harry frowned. "It does." For a moment, he wondered if the Animal Artist was somehow influencing Draco's nightmares as well, trying to frame him. Then, he shook the thought away. He had had nightmares about becoming the next Dark Lord after the war. Ron even told him that he sometimes spoke Parseltongue in his sleep. Draco's nightmares, while longer lasting, were completely natural. He had bruises from being punched by the blond in his sleep to prove it.

"Was that why you were attracted to me?" Draco asked. "Because I tortured House Elves, because I—" He gestured at his Dark Mark, at the IV needle sticking into the skull. "—this?"

Harry shook his head. "I didn't fall in love with the boy in the letters. I fell in love with the sarcastic janitor who fed dog biscuits to my doorknob."

Draco sighed. "But I am the boy in the letters. Not completely, but I did push House Elves down stairs. I did try to ride on the backs of the peacocks."

"And I once fed Mrs. Figg's cat some laxatives," Harry said. "There's a difference. You're not a bad person, Draco."

"I'm not a good one either."

"I don't care." Harry grasped his hand and squeezed. "Few people are, and I wouldn't want to sleep with them."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "Even if I kick you in my sleep and dream about killing people?"

"Not the kind of sleeping I was talking about," Harry replied, leaning in and giving Draco a kiss on the lips. Draco didn't protest. Harry's lips curved into a smile, thinking of what portrait Malfoy would say if he could see them now.

"I was going to make you beg for my forgiveness," Draco admitted.

"I wouldn't be averse to getting on my knees," Harry teased, laughing as Draco swatted at him and missed. He leaned his head on Draco's shoulder. "No more lies?" Draco rolled his eyes. "What?"

"We've been lying to all of our friends for months," Draco pointed out.

Harry grasped his hand. "Not anymore." He cleared his throat. "That is, if you don't mind…"

The mediwitch walked in with Draco's medication. In response, Draco pushed him against the bed frame and stuck his still slightly swollen tongue between Harry's lips.

To be continued early next week! Thanks again for your support!