Merlin, Give Me Strength

by AelysAlthea

Draco retreated after the war. Despite the Wizarding world turning a smiling, forgiving face to any and all with a black name and stained reputation, he wanted none of it. All Draco wanted was to be left alone. Unfortunately for him, Harry Potter doesn't want to leave him alone. And more than that, he finds himself with the most unlikely of house guests that he just can't seem...

2. Chapter 2 - Straining For Unobtrusive

Chapter 2: Straining for Unobtrusive

"Rough night, Malfoy?"

Glancing up from the sheaf of parchments piled before him, Draco met Edgar Yorkley's gaze with a flat one of his own. The fresh-faced young man, barely two years Draco's junior yet still unable to grow more than a pathetic attempt of pale fluff on his weak chin, appeared anything but cowed by his cool regard.

But then that was simply Yorkley. Unlike many who maintained a respectfully amicable yet professionally aloof distance from Draco, the man of not quite twenty-two seemed to hold an undying desire to be friends with everyone. Everyone. And nothing Draco could do would dissuade him from his attempts.

Maintaining eye contact for only a moment more, Draco turned his attention back to the parchments before him. "No, Yorkley, it was not."

"Oh. Out late then?"

Biting back a sigh, Draco flipped aside the paperclipped file atop the pile and began on the next. "No, I was not."

"Oh." Yorkley was silent for a moment Then, "I just thought, as you seemed to be looking a bit tired that you might have had a late night."

Draco did sigh this time. He closed his eyes for a moment – Merlin, save him from redundant questioning – before opening them once more and shifting his gaze to regard the man slouching casual in the doorway of his modest office. Did he not have work to be doing? Honestly. "It was no later than usual. I left when the office closed."

Yorkley's eyebrows rose and he blinked incredulously. "But that's not till nine o'clock at night."

"And?"

"And… we finish at six."

"You finish," Draco murmured under his breath, dropping his eyes back to the parchment before him. He scowled at the heading. Who had managed to slip a document on the West-Indian 1878 Goblin Treaty of Cooperation into those pertaining to illusionary hexes and curses? He shook his head, despairing once more of the Law Enforcement's filing system, and set them aside. "I'm hardly the only person to work late."

Yorkley nodded his head vehemently at that. "Yeah, I hear you. The Elites had a late one last night too, I hear. I think we had a bunch of Sleepers, actually."

"Really?" Draco muttered in a deliberately bored tone. Anything concerning the Elite Aurors did indeed spark his interest to a degree, but really, what did he care if some spit-and-firers spent the night at work rather than heading home to their own beds? He didn't really care. He didn't. "Fascinating."

"I know, right? I'd love to hear what the case was about; word is that it pertained to that coupe that's been going on down in Oxford, you know the one with the witch twins?"

"Really…"

"Yeah, well, apparently they're pretty aggressive. Have been every time we've stumbled upon them. But they're slippery little buggers, so Krax sent the Elites on them. Rumour is it ended in an all-out battle, but nothing too serious. I don't think there were any injuries." Yorkley paused for a moment and Draco heard him fidget as he leant against the wall. "You didn't see them come in, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

"Nothing unusual last night?"

Please, just go away. "Yorkely, the only interesting thing that happened to me last night was that a bird showed up at my window and rather demandingly pushed their way into my house to spend the night. Other than that, I know nothing."

It was the wrong thing to say. Not because Draco kept his personal healing service any particular secret but because Yorkley, moments before captivated by his idealised view of the Elites, jumped on Draco's words like a cat on a rat. A suggestive grin spread across his face, lighting up the young man's eyes. Draco didn't need him to speak to know he'd misinterpreted the situation. "Is that so? You don't sound all too thrilled by the matter. Beating away the birds with a stick are you, Malfoy?"

Draco didn't have the heart – no, the care – to bother informing Yorkley that he he'd actually meant he'd been invaded by a literal bird. "Hardly. I have little time for women."

"Blokes, then?"

Draco snapped his eyes up towards Yorkley. He frowned, glaring in a way that immediately dropped the smirk from his colleague's face and caused him drop his gaze sheepishly to his toes. "Don't you have work to be doing, Yorkley?"

Yorkley took the escape route generously offered. Nodding his head, he slunk from Draco's office and disappeared with hurried footsteps that Draco noticed quickly faded into a run. Shaking his head, he turned back to the documents. The positively enthralling documents of which he had to wade through pages of useless material to find that single glimmering golden nugget of usefulness.

Being an investigator in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was hardly the most glamorous of jobs. Being of the backroom researching cohort was even less so. Such a role obviously did not suit Yorkley at all; he was by and far captivated with the more active role of a Field Auror or even Field Investigator and, like so many of his colleagues past and present, simply used the role of investigative researcher as a stepping stone to that eventuality. If only the man knew that such an eventuality was slim if not impossible in likelihood. Draco could have told him that.

Not that Draco wished to pursue the career of a Field Auror himself. Far from it, in fact. Draco was perfectly happy in research, even more so with the knowledge that those glamorised Field Aurors would be nothing without the work he conducted behind the scenes. It once would have irked him to no end, to receive the absolute minimum of credit for the work he did while the darling faces of the front line fighters bathed in tides of praise. No longer. Now, he was perfectly comfortable to be firmly seated out of the public eye yet cast within the loop of law enforcement circles enough to still know.

Draco sorely loved the role of law enforcer. He thrived on convicting. It was a guilty pleasure of sorts, the thought of putting a Dark witch or wizard behind bars. He always felt as though, just a little bit, he was enacting justice upon those who had so wronged him in the past. A punishment more extensive than that that had been allotted to the convicted of the past.

Six years since the war had changed the Wizarding world in ways hitherto unconceived. Times were hardly as black and white, the consideration of 'justice' less than rigidly defined. Gone was the rigid discrimination of Muggleborns from purebloods, the resentment of the new blood to the old. Eased were the bindings of prejudice and restriction, the discrimination that pervaded Wizarding society as thickly as magic. Had Draco not borne witness to its rapid disintegration himself he would have thought the end product merely a façade draped over the dirty and tangled truths of resentment and continued hatred.

It wasn't. How something could alter so abruptly, so completely, was ground breaking. Draco put it down to the new turn the Ministry had taken; not only Minister Shacklebolt but just about every other Deputy Minister and Head of Department seemed to have taken a vow of sanity.

For Draco at least, circumstances settled in his favour. Disregarding – if possible – the mess of the post-war trials, the imprisonment of his father and the self-imposed isolation of his mother, he'd had been left largely untouched. Well, as untouched as was possible when his entire world had been flipped upside down. But persist he did, making a firm resolution to push himself into a frame of normalcy and to endure. To make something of himself in the Wizarding world outside of the stained name of 'Malfoy' that had, admittedly, been buffered remarkably clean over the years.

Draco was not oblivious enough to think that his segregation from his co-workers was the fault of anyone but himself. It was simply that he didn't particularly want to mingle, not with the plethora of wizards and witches that had enacted a rather drastic one-eighty over the years. And, after a time, the ever-optimistic band of employees in the law enforcement department accepted that. Well, most of them accepted that. Yorkley, was the exception to the rule. The man was sorely persistent.

Casting a final glance at the now empty doorway into his office, Draco shook his head and leant back into his chair. His gaze drifted idly to the clock ticking inaudibly on the wall opposite him. Ten o'clock? Was it really still so early? Or late, perhaps, considering Yorkley's time of arrival; Head of Department Sammael Krax was evidently becoming increasingly lax with enforcing exactly when work hours begun if the gossip monger was only just finishing his rounds now.

Flipping through his papers, Draco rose to his feet. Ten o'clock meant that Krax was finally actually in his office for a few hours. And ten o'clock, nearly a full hour after he'd arrived, meant that in all probability the department head would have shaken loose of the Aurors lining up outside his office and milling idly with the hope that getting to his office early would actually mean their business – work-related or otherwise – would similarly be dealt with early.

Fools. Draco had been working under Krax for less than three years and he still had a more profound understanding of the sheer workload of the Head's duties.

No, give it one hour. After that, the hubbub would die and Draco would be most likely to pass straight through Krax's doors and hand over the Lazenby files without having to wait. Which was what he always sought; there was something about the wide, single-windowed room stuffed to the brim with stacks of papers and filing cabinets that made Draco feel claustrophobic in his superior's office. And he was one of the few people in the world – according to Yorkley – that actually enjoyed paperwork.

To a degree, anyway. The term 'enjoyed' was used very lightly.

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was always swimming with activity. Draco was one of the first to walk through the doors in the morning, and even then those already signed in were focused with heads down and attention trained. As Draco stepped from his own office and into the corridor between individual offices, he was immediately bombarded with flying paper missives, raised voices as calls echoed between doorways and the unnecessarily awkward hallway dances as employees wove around one another.

Keeping his eyes trained on the papers in his hands – the most obtrusive way to indicate he wished to avoid speaking Draco could enact without verbalisation – he strode his way past open doors. From his periphery, he glimpsed Gisella as she scolded Frederickson from her office with orders to "pull your head in and get in done already". He paused as the skittish puppy of an intern Ryans panted past with armloads of boxes stacked beneath a wavering pile of papers. He took a left instead of a right at the end of the hallway, taking the marginally longer route to the Head Aurors office to avoid the intense and likely irrelevant conversation of the aptly named Chatterboxes of the floor and nodded briefly at the level-headed and hard-working figure of Uma as she passed, deep in conversation with Ivanhoe.

Only once did he pause, and that was in a moment of veiled amusement as he passed Gregory's office. He couldn't quite help himself; the sight of Greg hunched over parchment and squinting with a disgruntled frown at the printed words would always tickle his fancy. His old school friend had, after overcoming his own hesitancies, decided to enter the Law Enforcement Department under the impression that the brute strength he wielded so well would come in handy. And yes, the Field Auror Backup Squad was more hands-on than most sectors of the department, but there would always be reports to complete, target analyses to study, context to familiarise with. Poor Greg; he'd never been much of a reader.

Krax's office stood a little away from all but about three on the opposite wall due to its sheer size. But, like a queen bee in her hive, it sat nestled at the very centre of the floor. With a satisfied nod to himself that no line of waiters stood outside the plain door, Draco rapped his knuckles on the opaque glass window.

There was a faint, muffled grumble from inside before a voice spoke up. "Yes?"

"It's Malfoy, sir. I've the Lazenby report you required for this afternoon."

There was a pause, more muted grumbling, and Krax cleared his throat. "Of course. Come in, Malfoy, come in."

Draco invited himself inside. As claustrophobic as always, the room actually felt even more stifling than usual for the three additional people already within. Each filled one of the extra seats and each trained a pair of eyes upon Draco as he entered, inquisitive accompaniment to the flat, moderately welcoming gaze of Krax. The big, broad man always strove to emit that welcoming aura, which wasn't always successfully conveyed given the sheer size of the man and the similar vastness of his desk. Draco paused as the door clicked closed behind him.

Evidently, it was a rather important meeting he'd just walked into.

Tyrell Lurring was the Head of the Investigation sub-department. Draco's boss, to be more precise. A tall, thin man with papery skin and hair nearly as pale as Draco's, he never looked quite comfortable without his head buried beneath files and secreted tightly behind his desk. His awkwardness was only accentuated by his ramrod straight posture and crossed legs, even further by the death grip he held on both arms of his chair. Even knowing that Lurring sat in every chair the same way, Draco thought he looked uncomfortable enough to break out in twitches.

By contrast, Norm Jos was slouched easily in his own chair, legs splayed before him and solid arms crossed over his belly as though he were in his living room rather than his superior's office. A middle-aged man, his bronze crown was as bald as an egg, the hairs seeming to have slipped from up top to instead crowd his lip. Even larger and more imposing than Krax, and without the compliment of muscle sagging into fat that was a by-product of ageing, he was made even more so by the scarlet and black embroidered robes of the Field Aurors. Draco had always found him amiable enough. Not that he ever intentionally spoken to him, of course, but Gregory seemed to think well enough of him.

And then there was Harry Potter. Because of course, if Jos and Lurring were in a meeting with Krax then Harry would be there as well. He was the happy medium between the overly rigid Lurring and the overly comfortable Jos. Perhaps it was simply that he was the youngest of the Heads and Captains of the DMLE, but to Draco he seemed the only one that was presenting himself exactly as he should be. Harry was like that; he filled precisely the role he was supposed to as Captain of the Elite Squad. Almost too perfectly, sometimes.

At Draco's entrance, Harry was the only one besides Krax that offered even a muted smile and nodded head of acknowledgement. Draco had to very pointedly offer him only a nod before diverting his attention. It wouldn't do any good to be distracted before his superiors. Although, after a single glance, Jos and Lurring disregarded him as the irrelevant employee that he, admittedly, was.

Shrugging of the brief flicker of awkwardness that reared its head at his intrusion, Draco crossed the room. "I apologise for the intrusion, Mr Krax. You said you required -?"

"No, no, it's fine. Fine." Krax waved his hand, disregarding Draco's words. "We were done here anyway." He took the file Draco offered to him and flipped it open. He frowned thoughtfully as he scanned the front page. "This is all of it?"

Draco nodded, studiously ignoring his audience. "All magical traces detected at the Lazenby site since the nineteen thirties, sir."

"Up until…?"

"Present, sir," Draco supplied. As if that wouldn't be obvious. It was what had been asked of him, after all. Why wouldn't he have included as much? He wasn't so incompetent as to stray from his instructions.

Krax dropped his eyes back to the file, flipping through several pages too quickly to actually read anything. "Good. Well, then, Lurring? You expressed your desire to proceed?" Krax handed the reports to Lurring, who hesitated only a moment in his rigid immobility before reaching forwards. "Jump on it, then, I suggest."

"It's all here?" Lurring asked, already dropping his eyes and fingers to flick through the file. He was much more thorough than Krax had been. Draco tried not to be insulted by the suggestion, both in his words and his gestures.

"Of course it is," Krax replied. "This is Malfoy we're talking about." And he offered Draco a slight nod of his head in acknowledgement before smirking knowingly to Lurring. As though Lurring, as Draco's boss, wouldn't know of his work habits for himself.

It was gratifying, Draco supposed, that Krax held such confidence in him. Or at least he did when bespeaking his attributes to others. Draco didn't need acknowledgement itself – his own satisfaction was enough – but it was favoured all the same.

The grumbling clearing of a throat behind him overrode Lurring's flicking. Jos' chair creaked slightly as he shifted. "If that's all then, Krax?"

Krax nodded his head once more, towards Jos this time. "Of course, of course. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your time. Lurring, a missive when you've spoken to McFergusson, if you would. Jos, would you send over Esquere when he's finished with the clean up from last night?" Both men nodded, rising to their feet. Draco shuffled slightly to the side of the room, making room for their departure and feeling nothing if not obtrusive. Krax turned to Harry as he rose to his feet. "And Potter?" He paused.

Draco glanced towards Harry as he adopted a questioning expression. "Sir?"

Krax offered another sharp nod. "Job well done. Make sure everyone gets rested and fully healed up. I'll not stand for any 'R & R' avoidance strategies this time around."

Harry's lips crooked in a half-smile. "I'll do that, sir."

At a gesture from Krax, Draco followed the other three men from the room. Jos and Lurring immediately set off in opposite directions, strides as opposite as the lumbering of a bear to the stalking of a heron. Harry, as Draco had half-assumed he would, fell into step beside him. They were silent as they made there way through the rabbit warren of hallways.

Draco and Harry had a decidedly odd relationship. Odd was the only way Draco could really perceive it; they weren't friends exactly, but neither were they merely acquaintances. They certainly weren't the schoolyard rivals from days of old, either. Those times had long since passed. No, if Draco were to classify what the two of them shared it would be… closer-than-colleagues? Though that didn't sound quite right.

After the war, everything had changed. In all honesty, Draco had expected them to. How could the Wizarding world not attempt to remedy the damage that had been inflicted? To patch up the loopholes that had led to the disaster that had been Lord Voldemort? One of those changes had been to the judicial system. Gone were the wavering rules and guidelines that permitted the convicted to be shipped directly to Azkaban without a trial. Those days were safely buried in the past. Taking their place was a long-winded and almost excessively extensive succession of trials and meets, of interviews and assessments, to fully determine the facts of the topical situation.

For Draco's trial, weeks were not long enough. Shortly after the demise of Voldemort, nerves were still tightly wound and fear bubbled just beneath the surface, fear that, should potential moles be overlooked than the unsteady repairs to the foundations of society would come toppling down once more. The tangled hairs of any and every matter were plucked at as though by a fine-toothed comb. And Draco's was no exception.

It lasted longer than weeks. Longer than months. By the time his nineteenth birthday settled upon the horizon, Draco had long since given up any hope of the situation drawing to a close in the near future. So he had been entirely unprepared for the day that, at what he had assumed was another rudimentary and largely inconclusive sequence of interviews, he was declared innocent, his actions those of a child compelled, and set free. Entirely free.

It was only later that Draco had discovered that the reason for such could be attributed to one very particular person. Of course it would be Harry Potter.

Harry had used not his fame, nor money, nor what the press and the whispers of the higher-ranking nobles had come to refer to as a "blossoming – or perhaps long repressed – manipulative streak", but had instead simply told the truth as he'd seen it. Of what he'd somehow known of Draco's mission in his sixth year, of how he'd become embroiled due to the alliances of his family. Of how, at that critical moment in the manor, Draco had denied that Harry was indeed the misshapen figure presented to him. And for whatever reason, Harry's word, blunt and honest, had been enough. With merely a substantial payment of recompense for damages inflicted, Draco was let loose.

It had been a period of befuddled stasis for Draco following his trial. Suddenly gifted with the opportunity to live his life once more – albeit with the absence of his father and mother, forcibly and freely isolated from society respectively – he had little knowledge of what to make of himself. The opportunities seemed endless. To finish school? To pursue a career? To dedicate himself to the commitments of a Malfoy businessman, as so many of his ancestors had done before him? He could even break from tradition, taking himself on an international soul-searching journey, should he feel so inclined. He could do anything.

So he went to visit Harry. Granted, it took a while. A whole year and a half of a while to work up the courage and quash his pride for long enough to make the fateful reunion. Over a year after he'd firmly established himself in a position at the ministry, Draco found himself sitting across from his former rival over tea and a too-dense slice of bunting. Awkward had not been an adequate enough phrase to describe how Draco felt. Or at least it had felt awkward from his perspective.

Harry Potter had changed in the years since the war. Not all that much physically – that hair would forever remain apparently untameable and he'd just about finished growing in school – excepting for the replacement of those horrendous and ill-fitting round glasses with markedly more modern ones. That, and apparently someone had made an effort to outfit his wardrobe with something more appropriate than the cast-offs of an adolescent half-giant.

No, Harry was just… different. Calmer. Almost serene. Not dull or lifeless, to be sure, but whereas in the past Draco had only every beheld a fiery spark in his eyes, a barely restrained volatility, there now settled calm contentedness… and a faint a quirk of amusement the tilt of his eyebrow as he stared back at Draco. As though they shared some sort of joke that Draco was not partial to. And in spite of himself, for whatever reason, that amusement didn't irritate Draco as much as it once would have. And still should have.

There was no hostility. That was the biggest difference. Or at least, if it remained at all it was certainly not directed towards Draco. That raging lion of discontent and rivalry seemed instead in slumber. Not gone but simply… irrelevant. Draco could hardly fathom the amiable, almost openly friendly young man as evolving from the boy he'd known from his school days.

Finally the silence had appeared to come to a natural close for Harry. "Is there something you wanted, Malfoy?"

Dropping his eyes down to his tea – it really was quite fine; it was a shame the bunting was so poor when the beverage so good – Draco had tapped a finger on the table. "Why did you do it?"

Harry's bubbling amusement had faded into puzzlement. "Why did I do what?"

Clicking his tongue, Draco had frowned at him accusingly. "Why did you stand for me? At my trial. You spoke in my favour. I'm not a fool, Potter. I'm not oblivious enough to assume that I would have gotten off so easily had you not done so."

Letting his eyes drift, Harry had dropped his own attention to his cooling tea. He'd shrugged one shoulder. "There's no particular reason. It was just the right thing to do."

"For me?"

"For… everything." Another shrug. "I don't see any reason why I should have withheld the truth. And it was the truth, Malfoy." Harry's gaze drew back upwards to meet Draco's. His expression was intent. Still lacking in any heat, but intent nonetheless.

Draco had shaken his head slowly. "But you hate me."

Harry had snorted. "I don't hate you, Malfoy."

"Yes, Potter, you do."

"No, I don't. Maybe in the past, but not anymore. Especially not since…" Harry switched back to regarding his tea once more. He shifted in the first sign of unease he'd shown since arriving at the café. "After everything that happened, our petty school rivalry sort of seems a little trivial now, doesn't it? I couldn't imagine going back to those mundane fights. It just seems so… pointless."

They hadn't seemed trivial or mundane to Draco. Not until that point. Somehow, he'd always assumed that no matter what, some things – things like the butting of heads he'd shared with Harry – would last forever. But then, he'd always considered when he as young that his family would always remain close, that they would always have one another. At that time, school, Slytherin, his quidditch team, his exams; they had all seemed like the most important things in the world.

All of that had changed. And while Draco had still stared at Harry across the table in the little café, rocking back in his seat, he'd considered: why not this, too?

Shaking himself from his stupor, Draco leant forwards towards Harry. "Then what do you want, Potter?"

Harry had peered up at him from beneath lowered brows. "What do I want?"

"From me? What do you -?"

"You're the one who asked to meet me, Malfoy."

Draco had sighed, exasperated. "I know that. I mean, what do you want from me? In return. In payment. What do you want?"

Harry's frown had only deepened. "Payment?"

"Yes, Potter." It had been an effort to tone down the sarcasm in his voice as much as he had. "You did me a service. A favour if you would. I'd like to repay it."

"I don't want anything."

"That's not how favours work," Draco had ground out. Withholding a grumble at Harry's obtuseness had been an effort too.

Except that Harry hadn't appeared to be acting obtuse. Not in the least. Rather, he'd seemed genuinely baffled by Draco's words. He'd slowly shaken his head. "I don't want anything from you. And I don't need anything, either."

"But then…" Draco had trailed off, at a loss. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He had to offer something. It was distressing to be left treading water in such an unprecedented situation.

Harry seemed to realise as much and took pity on Draco. Or perhaps he actually had thought of something. "Malfoy, if you really want to do something for me, just act normal. Do what you've been doing."

"What do you mean?"

Harry had shrugged. "I mean the world's been turned on its head. Everything's crazy and no one quite seems to remember the little things of the past. The good bits. Sure, there's the 'post-war fever' running high and everyone's pretty much on board with that, but they're forgetting all the other bits that don't need to be forgotten, you know?"

Despite his lack of eloquence, Draco was left a little stunned by the maturity of Harry's sentiment. The good bits? At present, Draco couldn't quite recall such 'good bits'. He supposed that was largely the problem with everyone else, too. But there must have been some, surely. Not everything before the climax of the war had been darkness and despair. Far from it, really, when Draco actually thought about it.

"So you want me to act… normal?"

A beaming smile had stretched across Harry's face and Draco was left blinking in stunned surprise. He'd never seen Harry direct such an expression towards him before. "That's it exactly."

"You do realise you're asking for a bit of a paradox, don't you?" Draco had strived for casualness, not allowing the effect Harry's good humour had upon him to show. "You want me to be normal, and yet you don't seem to want to be my enemy? You don't want to fight?" Even to Draco it had sounded almost childish when spoken aloud.

Harry had quirked his lips, his frown resettling. It was almost sad to see his smile disappear. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." Then, like a dog shaking off water, he'd disregarded the thought. "Whatever. You can still fight if you want to."

"That would be a little difficult if I was the only one participating," Draco had pointed out.

Harry laughed. He actually laughed. At Draco. And it wasn't snide, or cruel, or mocking. That smile was back and it left Draco just as stunned as it had the first time. "That's very true. Well, you can always try?"

"What a pointless endeavour," Draco had muttered, burying his nose in his cup to distract himself from Harry's jovial expression.

"It doesn't have to have a point, so long as it makes you happy," Harry had replied. "Just do what you want, Malfoy. Whatever you want."

When Draco had lifted his eyes from his cup once more, it was that smile upon Harry's face, not quite as wide but somehow deeper, that had resounded with him. It was that memory which remained strongest thereafter, too.

From that point onwards, Draco unconsciously – or perhaps consciously, though he would forever deny as much – sought to pursue the vision that Harry had unwittingly presented. Which was how he'd wound up in law enforcement. Having been deprived of his final year of school and hence the chance to achieve his N.E. before the age of eighteen, he'd thrown himself instead into the arduous climb from the bottom rungs of begrudgingly obedient intern, to unobtrusive backdoor employee, to run-of-the-mill office worker and finally managed to plant a foot in the door of the Investigatory Department. It was very much the roundabout route for Draco, and he likely could have sliced the time it had taken him in half had he been prepared to return to school.

He hadn't been. Something about being a year older than his would-be classmates had left a bad taste in his mouth.

By the time he'd settled himself into the DMLE, he had similarly settled himself with the understanding that Harry Potter was a young but outstanding Auror. Weasley too, though that mattered markedly less to Draco; he had, somehow, been able to see past the years of rivalry he'd shared with Harry – it had taken months of careful consideration and contemplation, but he'd gotten there – but Weasley? No, they'd never be on what Draco could call friendly terms. Even if Weasley, like every other Wizard in Britain, seemed to be attempting as much with him.

They didn't see all that much of one another in the office, Draco and Harry, but it was enough to firmly establish that, yes, their rivalry had died. And oddly enough, Draco found that to be a rather pleasant surprise. For in the brief exchanges they'd shared, there was something decidedly different about Harry's treatment of him than everyone else's. There was no walking on eggshells or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, exaggerated joviality and forwardness in pursuing some sort of friendly relationship. Harry simply… was. He spoke with Draco, they conversed in formal words that gradually became less formal with time, and quite soon fell into a settled state.

Their 'closer-than-colleagues' status.

At some point along the way, in spite of his attempts at distancing himself from everyone but his oldest of friends, Draco had come to realise that, in a way, he was comfortable with Harry. Comfortable enough that he had, also at some point, come to call him 'Harry', just as Harry called him 'Draco'. For the life of him he couldn't remember the exact moment it had happened. It simply had.

Draco didn't refer to any of his other co-workers with such familiarity. That right was reserved solely for his friends. That Harry wasn't exactly a friend was… confusing.

For his part, Harry didn't seem particularly confused by any of it. Quite the contrary, he appeared perfectly comfortable with their arrangement. And just as he was walking side by side with Draco from Krax's office, so had he accompanied Draco on numerous occasions simply to walk. And chat.

Not that Draco ever did anything quite so casual as 'chatting'.

"You finished that more quickly than Lurring expected," Harry said, finally breaking their easy silence. It was always he that did so; Draco intentionally held his tongue for reasons he would rather keep to himself.

Draco glanced at him sidelong. "What?"

"The Lazenby report. He was fretting over it just before, but I got the impression he'd resigned himself to being unable to do anything about hastening it along."

Draco shook his head, rolling his eyes. "Fretting? Over a case of unidentified magic on an uninhabited plot of land? He needs more to think about if that is what consumes his mind."

Harry smirked. "You're probably right. Although, he seems to think it holds some relevance to what's going on down in Devon."

"Does he really?" Draco replied with mild interest. He wasn't the one paid to connect the dots, even if such a role did tickle his fancy. Devon was about as inconclusive as Lazenby so far, but at least it held more notable discord.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, they have an almost identical magical signature, he thinks. Or Mindle thinks, but Lurring pretty much takes everything Mindle says as lore. He wanted to compare the Hades Geiger readings, he was saying. I don't suppose you'd know…?"

Trailing off, Harry turned towards Draco expectantly. There was a question in his expression but no presumptuousness, which was as gratifying for Draco as it was vexing. Harry's resolution towards passivity, at least regarding Draco, seemed to pervade to the limits. Though he asked questions and infrequently even favours of Draco regarding his work, it never appeared to be mercenary. They were more the words of a colleague who appreciated that Draco knew more about a subject than he himself and was utilising such knowledge in conjunction to his own to reach a mutually beneficial conclusion.

It was so far removed from the Harry Potter Draco vaguely recalled from their schooling days as to seem almost a different person. Or perhaps that was just because his perspective had shifted. Surely Golden Boy Harry Potter, all-round favourite Gryffindor idol and defender of minimalistic workloads, hadn't been quite so objective. Had he?

Adopting a bored expression, Draco turned down the hallway to the right, once more avoiding the Chatterboxes that remained stationed at the chosen post. "And what interest, pray tell, does an Elite have in the Hades Geiger scale?" The Geiger readings, developed by the Half-blood Wizarding scientist who similarly specialised in radioactivity, was used excessively in measuring the residue of Dark magic. The very use of such a scale answered Draco's question itself, but he had no compunctions about playing ignorant. Or at least he didn't in this case.

Harry grinned at him easily, seeing right through him. "Personally, not all that much. It's too much number crunching for my taste, thank you."

"Ah, so that's why you avoided Arithmancy in third year. I thought you were simply appalling at mathematics."

"It's not the reason, actually," Harry replied. "But that's irrelevant. I'm just curious because I'm taking a look at Devon next week after 'R & R'."

Draco paused mid step. "You are?"

Harry similarly paused several paces further down the hall and glanced over his shoulder. "Yes. Is that so hard to believe?"

Shaking his head, Draco slowly caught back up to him, falling in step once more as they continued. "Not really. I was just under the impression that it was still undergoing the investigative stage at the moment."

"Yeah, well, the investigators are coming up blank, so Krax put my squad on it."

"Should you be telling me this? Isn't that sort of thing classified?"

Harry raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you going to tell anyone?"

"Of course not."

"Then I hardly see that it matters."

The walked a few more steps in silence before Harry spoke up once more. "So?"

"So what?"

"God, Draco, it's like pulling bloody teeth with you, isn't it?"

Draco suppressed his urge to smirk self-satisfyingly. He paused just long enough for Harry to favour him with another raised eyebrow and pointed look. "You want the Hades reading for Lazenby or Devon?"

"Do you know Devon's?"

"No."

"Well it's a good thing I do, then." Harry grinned at the scowl Draco directed towards him. "The Lazenby one, please."

Sighing long-sufferingly, Draco bowed his head. "Last week the Hades Geiger reading skyrocketed to higher than it's been recorded in the entire past century. Up to eight-point-four-one."

Harry's eyebrows rose. "Eight?"

"Point-four-one, yes," Draco added in slow condescension.

"Huh…"

"I'm assuming this holds significance to you?"

Harry's pace had slowed as his eyes drifted towards the floor. They stared unseeingly, however, and a contemplative frown settled on his forehead. "You could say that."

"Is it the same?"

Harry's lips quirked to the side. "Exactly."

Draco's own eyebrows rose. "Well. I suppose that does have some significance. Though the importance of such a similarity is unknown."

Harry nodded, eyes still downcast. "That's what Krax is sending me and my squad out for."

"To what, scout around? To just see what you can find?"

"Basically, yeah."

Draco frowned sidelong at Harry as they passed through the open communal offices of the Law Enforcement Department. It was strange that Krax would send the Elites into the field for such an inconclusive mission. They were the special forces enlisted for extreme and high-level magical combat situations. So few operations involved anyone working alongside them because they would undoubtedly simply get in the way.

It had been a year that Draco had been working at the ministry, finally having climbed to the role of a general office worker, that he'd realised Harry was a part of the elitist squad. Another year after that to reach the understanding that he was not only a part of it but was the captain. That fact didn't surprise Draco as much as it perhaps should have. Harry Potter, Once Saviour of the Wizarding world and Boy-Who-Lived-Twice, was basically a figurehead for Defender of Justice and Pursuer of Evil. Of course he would be the captain.

What did surprise Draco was that the Elite squad had not even existed before Harry had joined the Auror ranks. Apparently, he was too 'special' to warrant anything but his own tailored and exalted position. That fact didn't irk Draco nearly as much as it once would have either. Not at all, really. Truth be told, he would have been thoroughly disconcerted should Harry not have been afforded such a position.

That realisation, that understanding of himself, was one of many that informed Draco that while Harry had indeed changed, Draco had almost as much. He didn't actually resent Harry for his elitist position in the slightest Besides, it wasn't as though Draco himself had any inclination towards being a Field Auror. He preferred to keep his skin intact, thank you very much.

"Strange…"

"Not really. I think Krax is just a bit paranoid." Harry's reply was the only thing that alerted Draco to the fact that he'd spoken aloud. "A Hades reading of eight –"

"Eight-point-four-one."

"- is pretty bloody high. The Bilarny twins' operation out at Coventry was only about a six and a half and they're both exceptionally powerful witches."

Draco nodded, ceding. "Fair enough. Maybe you will find something."

"But you doubt it," Harry supplied, amusement touching his tones. "Where's the confidence, Draco?"

"I never said that," Draco replied. He tried not to let that familiar unease at the way Harry just seemed to hear his unspoken words show. The expression on Harry's face suggested he heard that thought, too. "I don't know all that much about Devon, but I'd be prepared to inform you of that which I am familiar with. At Lazenby."

The shifting smile Harry gave Draco was enough to mollify him of the pain offering such a favour caused him. For whatever reason, Harry's smile always had the capacity to do that to him. "Thanks, Draco. But I think it's –"

"Harry!"

Draco would have sneered at the sound of Weasley's voice had he not been so practiced at withholding the knee-jerk reaction. He and Harry had paused in the middle of a crossroads of hallways, on the brink of departing from their companionship and heading into respective directions, so of course Weasley chose that moment to appear.

The tall redhead strode towards them, eyes fixed on Harry with the deliberate directedness of one striving to overlook a rather unpleasant and unavoidable sight alongside him. He didn't quite ignore Draco, but it was a near thing. Draco knew that he kept a half-turned eye upon him, so settled his own rising annoyance at the very sight of the subordinate Elite by assuming an aloof, dismissive visage of mild condescension. It worked like a charm if the vein that pulsed briefly in the centre of Weasley's forehead was any indication.

Weasley, unlike Harry, had never quite gotten used to the fact that the war had passed. At least not regarding Draco. Similarly, he had not been able to quite overlook their schoolyard rivalry. Weasley was one of the many who strove for formal and respectable distancing from Draco and everything he entailed, rather than attempting to embrace – or at least attempt – an amiable relationship with him.

People like Granger, for instance. Unlike Harry's smiles, those of the Muggleborn witch would never appear quite so genuine, her attempts at friendliness never shaken loose of their stiltedness. Considering they were both Harry's friends – Harry, who seemed so capable of such – it was quite remarkable to Draco that they were so incompetent in that regard. Further still, Granger was supposed to be intelligent; one didn't get a reserve seat on the Board of the Cooperation with Magical Creatures with stupidity.

Deliberately ignoring the subtle, unspoken request of Weasley to 'clear out', Draco cocked his head placidly and regarded the two ex-Gryffindors. Weasley's vein throbbed once more, but Harry looked almost as amused as Draco felt.

Finally, after a stretch of silence, Weasley spoke up. Not to Draco, of course. He wasn't quite capable of that yet, not even after six years. "Harry, could I talk to you in my office for a moment?"

Amusement threatened to spread another smile over Harry's face, but he somehow managed to withhold it. "'Course, Ron. What's wrong?"

"My office," Weasley repeated, jerking his head in the direction towards the way Harry had been headed. Draco almost snorted.

So, apparently, did Harry. He withheld it by presenting a sigh instead. "Sure. Won't be a second." He turned his attention back to Draco. "Thanks for that, Draco. I might take you up on that offer. I'll see where Lurring goes with the collated reports."

Draco bowed his head in a nod. "You do that." And he turned to leave.

"Oh, Draco?"

Pausing in step, Draco glanced over his shoulder. Harry murmured something to Weasley – it looked like a direction for the gesture towards Weasley's office – before turning his attention back towards him. "Are you coming out for drinks tomorrow night?"

For some reason, no matter how many times Harry asked him, Draco was always a little surprised by the offer. "Drinks?"

"The same as every Friday," Harry said.

Draco fought the urge to cringe in distaste. "I will have to forego such an offer."

"You don't have to," Harry attempted.

"Oh, but I do. I sincerely doubt that some," and Draco cast a pointed glance towards Weasley who had retreated but a handful of steps down the hallway and now stood waiting with an expression of forced neutrality on his face, "would appreciate my presence."

"What happened to doing what you want, Draco?"

Ah, those fated words. How did Harry know they'd clung to Draco over the years? "I am choosing to do what I want. And that is not to come."

For a brief moment, something unreadable dimmed Harry's expression. It was gone before Draco could discern its nature, however, to fast for Draco to even feel sorry he had induced it. "Alright, then. Maybe next time."

Unlikely, Draco thought, but nodded nonetheless. As he turned back towards his office, he heard the barely whispered words of Weasley ringing deeply behind him. "I don't know why you ask every time. It's not like he'll ever say yes."

Draco could hear Harry shrug even without looking. "Maybe he will someday."

"Unlikely," Weasley replied, eerily voicing Draco's own thoughts. He resolutely closed his ears to their murmurs as he strode away

If there was anything that would induce him to partake in something so casual, so intimate, as a drinking night with colleagues, it would be Weasley's scepticism at his inclination. More even than Harry's mildly persistent encouragement. Unfortunately, for Draco, that was just one line he couldn't cross. Such familiarity, even with Harry whom he was almost comfortable with, would be pushing it too far.

Besides, Jack usually dropped by on Friday night. And it was mid-winter; he couldn't exactly leave the merlin out in the cold to freeze to death waiting for him. Only because he didn't want to have to pry a frozen bird from his window sill.

Of course that was the reason. The only reason.