"I still don't like him," Ron grumbled. He, Harry, and Draco were clambering over a particularly rough set of scattered stones as they tried to make their way up the tor that Draco had identified as their next most likely location.

"Oh, shut up, Ron," Harry said tiredly. "You don't have to."

"People don't just change."

"You're trying to."

Ron gave a growl at that, but subsided. He had at least managed not to be rude to Draco's face over the past few days, which Harry considered to be a small miracle. They didn't really have the breath to be arguing anyway. Harry would rather have done the search from a broom, but Draco pointed out it was too easy to miss things that way, so here they were. Harry had discovered he was missing Hermione badly. Though she and Ron sniped at one another, at least he didn't feel as if they were actually going to kill each other if someone misstepped. Keeping an eye on Ron and Draco was exhausting, though, Harry had to admit, Draco had actually been politer than Ron, if distant.

Still, it was discouraging. Harry thought he and Draco had finally been getting used to one another, like they might actually be able to become something more than casual colleagues, and then Ron had to show up and fuck everything up. Even if he had been trying to be concerned, it was not a variety of concern Harry had a great deal of desire to deal with right now. And scrambling all over the country didn't leave him much time to do anything other than mentally complain about it, either.

In frustration, he started climbing faster, and managed to outstrip both Draco and Ron in getting to the top of the tor. Breathing hard, he pulled himself over the top and paused to catch his breath, then found himself shivering. Up here, the wind was suddenly bone-chilling, and there was a strange dimness in the air he hadn't been expecting. Harry felt his heartrate speed up—this might be it, finally.

He pulled his wand out of his robes as a precaution and scanned the landscape. Apart from the chilly feeling in the air, at first glance there was nothing terrible out of place, just a circle of uneven, rocky ground covered in moss. Still, the chill in the air and the way the back of his neck prickled told him that there might be something more here than met the air. "Ostendi carmeni—" he began, starting to incant a spell to reveal active charms on the location.

There was a loud whooshing sound, and he felt something that seemed cold and hot at the same time flare up in front of him, but before anything else could happen, Draco was there, tackling him to the ground. His wand was out as well, but Harry couldn't hear if he was saying anything over the sudden howling roar and icy chill. For a moment, it was like being caught in an earthquake, the world rocking and shaking around them. Draco grunted in pain, and Harry shut his eyes, trying to reorient himself.

He might have passed out for a minute, he wasn't sure. What seemed like a moment later, he was coughing out a lungful of dust, and Draco was groaning next to him while Ron shouted his name. "Shit, Harry, are you all right, mate?"

His first attempt at a response was unintelligible due to more coughing, and he waved a hand a Ron, who was hovering frantically and apparently trying to decide whether to slap him on the back. "I'm okay," he managed, on his second attempt at vocalizing. "How's Draco?"

"What the fuck happened?" Ron blurted out, kneeling beside them, and hesitantly turning to Draco, who, at this point, was swearing a blue streak. Harry relaxed slightly because if Draco was capable of the creativity required for some of the obscenities he was letting out, he wasn't dying.

"I don't know exactly," he said. "There was a spell geared to go off when I tried to use the revelatory incantation. Seemed like dark magic, but I didn't recognize it."

Draco coughed, sitting up. "Damn it, Potter," he said heavily. "Weren't you the one who was an Auror?"

Since this was one of the things Harry had already been thinking frustratedly, he groaned, and put a hand to his face. "Yeah, I just didn't recognize that spell at all."

"I've never seen it either," Ron pointed out. "The place felt off, but there's none of the obvious tells you'd expect from this kind of thing."

"Then I suppose it's lucky my father thought it necessary to drill me in medieval and pre-medieval curses," Draco drawled. "I should think that one was from as far back as Merlin's era or even earlier." He winced, trying to move, and hissed in pain.

"Luna didn't tell us about anything like this," Harry frowned. "D'you think we stumbled across another dark magic site?"

Draco shook his head. "Look there," he said. "Beneath the moss. The stones are broken, and in the center, the earth is churned up as if something was buried there. No, I think Luna just got lucky."

"She said she found the remains of a befuddlement charm, I think," Harry pointed out. "Surely her snooping around to find that out should've triggered this?"

"Old magic is unreliable," Draco returned, wincing again. "Old enough and the spell might have been unraveling, or maybe she just casts her spells oddly enough it didn't recognize her. Old spells sometimes don't recognize newer ones as well as they ought to, with the way magic evolves." He shrugged. "Ah, fuck, I should not have done that."

Staring at the drawn, pale face before him, Harry was abruptly concerned again. "Look, we can mark this spot pretty easily," he said. "We should head back now and make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine," Draco snapped, but when he tried to get up, he yelped in pain again.

"You're not." Harry stood first, putting out a hand to help his friend to his feet. "We can afford to wait another day. You're injured, we need to deal with it, and we need to make sure the curse won't have lingering effects."

Draco took the hand, but made a face. "As long as you promise not to send me to St. Mungo's."

"We'll take care of it ourselves. Ron and I've plenty of practice taking care of this sort of thing. Right, Ron?"

"What? Oh, yeah, sure, mate." To Harry's surprise, Ron gave a bemused smile. "Yeah. We can take care of it. Um. Draco." The sound of Ron calling him 'Draco' instead of 'Malfoy' made Harry's eyebrows rise sharply, but he decided not to make a big deal out of it.

After they'd managed to get Draco back on his feet, they had to mark the location, which they did on their map, Harry not being too eager to try any other magic nearby in case of setting off any other age-old curses. Finally, they started limping back the way they had come.

It took them twice as long to make their way back to the bed-and-breakfast as it had taken them to walk out in the first place. Draco was able to walk, but he could do so only painfully and slowly, and was reduced to muttering creative obscenities nonstop within the first ten minutes.

Once they'd finally made it back, Draco sat down on the bed, yanked off his singed robes, and started to pull off the shirt he wore beneath, but he stopped with a hiss of pain. "Damn," he managed. "I think it's stuck."

There was a long pause, and then Harry realized Ron was shifting from foot to foot and looking at the two of them. "I'll help?" Harry managed, in a questioning sort of voice. "We should be able to just disintegrate it or something. I didn't realize you'd been—did it burn you?"

There was another awkward silence, finally broken by Draco, who said irritably, "Stop looking at me like that. I'm not in danger, I'm just in pain. I need to get my fucking shirt off and put some ointment on it. If neither of you wants to help with that, then get out and let me do it myself."

Something spiked through Harry, and, for a moment, he almost felt a sense of vertigo. He should just take Ron and go, let Draco have a little privacy. But Draco looked both angry and lonely, and Harry felt abruptly guilty and—something else. There was another something boiling up in his stomach, and he didn't have time to figure it out right now. "I'll help," he said, after a moment. "Ron, can you go and see about getting us dinner or something?"

Ron frowned, looking as if he was about to object, and then sighed and nodded. "Yeah, sure, mate." He paused at the door, hovering, and then blurted, "Thanks, Draco," before leaving quickly.

Taking a deep breath, Harry turned back to Draco. "Right, let's get a look at your back," he said.

The expression on Draco's face was—odd. Stone-faced, almost belligerent, he seemed to be glaring at Harry, but when Harry got closer, he realized that his friend was actually trembling slightly. "Right," Harry said again. "Hold still, don't want to jinx you by accident." He took out his wand and seated himself gingerly on the bed beside Draco. "Evanesco," he murmured, carefully tucking his wand beneath Draco's collar, where it should have little chance of vanishing anything unfortunate. Normally, the Vanishing Spell was instantaneous, but for some odd reason, the shirt seemed to fade for a moment instead of just blinking out of existence. "Let me see your back."

Draco slid around on the bed. "It stings a bit, but I've had worse," he said, in a flat tone of voice that told Harry not to inquire further. Harry peered at the back that was presented to him. At first glance, it looked bruised, but something about the darkening coloration was off, and he frowned. Definitely wouldn't do to just leave this injury alone.

"You said you had an ointment, right?"

Nodding stiffly, Draco started to lean over to where he'd left his pack, but he stopped with a curse. "Can you get it?"

"Yeah, of course. Are you sure that's all you're going to need?"

"I've had a lot of exposure to ancient dark magic," Draco replied. "Yes. I will be fine, but I would rather you help me with the healing ointment than dither over whether I will need anything extra."

"Sorry." Harry felt his ears heating up as he ducked down to snag the pack and started rifling through it.

"It's in the purple bottle," Draco informed him, just as he found a number of potions that he would otherwise have had no way to identify. He grabbed the purple bottle and let the pack drop to the bed as he turned back to Draco.

He hadn't realized that Draco was so skinny. Robes weren't exactly a revealing kind of outfit; like this, in just his trousers and nothing else, Draco's ribs and knobby spine were clearly visible, and his shoulder blades were pointier than Harry might have liked. Awkwardly, Harry popped the seal on the purple bottle with a quick, silent spell, and let the fluid inside spill out across his hand. It was clear, with a faint pink tinge, a vaguely floral scent he couldn't quite place, and it made his fingers tingle ever-so-slightly.

Draco shivered as Harry carefully began to rub the ointment into his skin, and Harry tried to be gentler. The ugly dark color faded into a bruised yellow-green where the ointment had touched, but the tension in Draco's back hadn't eased; if anything, it had gotten worse at Harry's hesitant ministrations. "Is it helping?" he asked.

There was a moment of silence, and then a sudden intake of breath. "Oh—yeah, thanks," Draco said, almost vacantly, and he turned to Harry with an expression that it took Harry's brain several seconds to parse as an attempt at a smile.

"You don't look like it's helping."

"I don't like feeling vulnerable," Draco snapped. "Look, Potter, I can take it from here, all right? I'll just bandage it up, the ointment will work, and I'll be fine in twelve to seventy-two hours, depending."

There was still something here Harry wasn't getting. It was that same weird distance that always seemed to grow up between him and Draco whenever they were getting—well, close. "I can bandage it up," he offered. "It's probably easier for me. Look, if there's something else wrong—I mean, you know I'm absolute rubbish at the feelings thing, but I'd like to help. We're friends?" He hadn't intended the last to be a question, but it seemed to have come out that way anyway.

Draco took a long, deep breath. "Merlin, Harry, I—"

"Just tell me, I can't help if I don't know what's wrong." Ten years ago, if anyone'd told him he'd be saying this to Draco Malfoy—to a half-naked Draco Malfoy, some small part of his brain noted, oddly gleeful—he'd have laughed in their face. He hesitated a moment, then put a shaky hand on Draco's shoulder.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Draco twisted round on the bed, and his hand came up. For a moment, Harry thought he was about to be punched, and then Draco grabbed the back of his head, pulled him forward, and kissed him soundly on the lips.

Harry made a strangled noise, as a number of things abruptly made sense to him, and then he leaned into the kiss. Things were just starting to get interesting when Draco pulled back sharply and stared at him. "Sorry, Potter," he said stiffly.

"Sorry?" Harry echoed, in confusion, and one of Draco's eyebrows climbed into his hair.

"Unless I—shouldn't be?" he asked cautiously.

Flushing, Harry's eyes flickered down across Draco's naked upper torso. "Yeah, let's go with that one," he said, and pinned Draco to the bed.

Frowning, Ral watched as the ink traced another blurry blue line on the parchment by itself, as it paused and a blot formed. "Now she's somewhere on the fourth floor," he sighed in exasperation. "I don't get it." With Teysa's apparently encyclopedic knowledge of spells to help them, he and Chandra had set up a tracing spell on Emmara that ought to be all but imperceptible. So far, she certainly hadn't given any indication that she knew they'd cast it, at least, but the results were—peculiar.

For the past few days, every evening, she'd left the common room at about the same time and gone somewhere completely innocuous, as far as they could tell. Every day, Ral, Teysa, and Chandra had waited until she'd left, gone to where the spell had indicated, and found themselves wandering around in the middle of an empty corridor somewhere in the middle of the castle. It didn't make any sense.

"We must be missing something." Teysa leaned over his shoulder and stared at the dot. "Either she's disrupting our spell, or she's somehow hiding wherever it is she's actually going."

"This needs to stop taking so long," Ral growled. "The longer it takes, the more Jace—"

"And Nissa and Elspeth still aren't waking up," Chandra put in. "You're right, we need to speed things up somehow."

"We need help," Ral said grimly. "We need something she won't expect. Something she can't guard against."

"But we don't know anything about her motivations," Teysa objected. "How can we predict what she will and won't expect? She's in the position of power here."

Ral threw himself backward in his chair so hard that he nearly overturned it. "I know," he groaned. "God, this is almost as bad as what happened first year! Actually, it might be worse, at least Mirko wasn't really doing it on purpose."

"Who's Mirko?" Teysa asked.

"Mirko is a boggart," Ral answered automatically. "They live in the Forbidden Forest, but they're usually around for things like Halloween. Wasn't Narset going to do an independent study on communicating with them?" He looked at Chandra.

"I think she did some last year, but she's been really busy this year."

"Talking to a boggart?" Teysa sounded incredulous. "A mindless fear spirit? How?"

Ral waved a hand. "Mirko, uh, isn't really mindless. It turns out if a boggart is old enough, they can get pretty smart, and if you happen to let them share a mind with a powerful legilimens, they can become almost human."

"A boggart. A smart boggart." Teysa smiled suddenly. "I can't imagine anyone would expect that."

Tilting his head to one side, Ral considered this. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I think you're right. They're pretty good at hiding themself, too, so they could just follow her—all we need is a way to tell them all this."

"I can ask Narset," Chandra offered. "Didn't she say something about using a pensieve?"

"Yeah." Ral tapped his quill against his chin. "It makes sense, and I think it's what Professor Granger did back in first year."

"Then we just have to get hold of a pensieve somehow," Teysa frowned.

"Professor Potter has one, he used it for Jace's lessons sometimes." Ral kicked at the desk. "But he's not here, and he wouldn't listen if we asked to borrow it anyway."

"Who said anything about asking?" Chandra grinned. "No one would expect us to break into his rooms, so it'll be easy."

"That's certainly one way of looking at it." Teysa's eyebrows went up, but she didn't sound terribly perturbed.

"Right," said Ral, pleased to have a plan that might actually end in them being able to save Jace from whatever-the-fuck Emmara was doing to him. "Chandra can get the pensieve, and I'll get Mirko. They like me."

"And I'll stay here and keep an eye on the tracking spell," Teysa agreed, flashing him a bright smile.

"We've fucking got this!" Chandra chimed in excitedly.

"What the fuck?"

"Ron, it's not—okay, so it's exactly what it looks like." Harry sat up hurriedly and then realized that he might be showing a bit too much skin. Beside him, Draco frantically grabbed for a shirt.

"Dammit, Weasley, you could have knocked!" he snarled angrily.

"Sorry I wasn't expecting my best mate to be fucking a Death Eating poofter!" Ron snarled back, and Harry felt Draco, beside him, go very still.

"Ron, I don't want to hear this," he cut in, and Ron shut his eyes and took an explosively deep breath.

"Sorry," he forced out. "I just need—I'm going to go get a drink. I got us some Muggle food for dinner, chow down." He dropped a paper bag on the bed and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Harry looked awkwardly over at Draco, scratching the back of his head.

"Sorry, that kind of killed the mood, didn't it?"

"No, no, I enjoy it when the tail end of my lovemaking is accompanied by my lover's friend walking in and reminding me of all the reasons a relationship is impossible," Draco retorted caustically. He still hadn't managed to find a shirt—probably, Harry realized, as the endorphins started to clear up, because Harry had vanished the one he'd been wearing before all this started.

"What d'you mean?" he asked with a frown. Okay, they hadn't so much talked about this thing, more just fallen into bed, but he'd assumed if they were both on board with it, it wasn't just going to be a one night stand. He didn't want it to be a one night stand.

"Potter, really? Must I give you a lesson on exactly how impossible it is for the two of us to be—"

"—friends?" Harry cut in. "Because that seemed pretty fucking impossible a few years ago."

"You know that isn't what I was going to say." But Draco was starting to look rather nonplussed.

"I just think you're panicking," Harry shrugged. "Ron came in at a bad time and was a twat. That doesn't mean he's right."

Apparently giving up on the shirt, Draco sighed and sat back against the pillows. "Look, Potter, have you ever had a boyfriend?"

Harry blinked at him. "Uh, yeah."

"Then you won't—wait, what?"

"Oh sorry, did I derail your angstfest? I already had my bisexual awakening, Malfoy. After Ginny and I broke up, I dated a Muggle named Stephen for about a year. Didn't really work out, mostly because I couldn't tell him a lot of stuff about my personal life, but it was fine. It ended with less drama than the thing with Ginny, even."

"You—Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Savior of the Wizarding World—dated a man—a Muggle man, and it never made the tabloids?"

"Er, yeah, we were pretty discreet. Besides, no one expects Harry-Potter-the-Boy-Who-Lived-Savior-of-the-Wizarding-World to be dating a Muggle. Maybe we were just lucky."

"Well." Malfoy stared and sat back. "Hm."

"I mean," Harry said, in an effort to be fair. "Muggle culture tends to be more accepting of the whole, y'know, being gay thing. Still not fantastic, mind you, but definitely better."

"There is also the slight matter of me being an ex Death-Eater," Malfoy said cautiously, but the spark of bitter anger seemed to have died away.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me—not anymore—and I think that's pretty much the most important thing," Harry shrugged. "Don't you?"

Though his expression was still guarded, Draco's body was slowly relaxing. "I suppose that's a not unreasonable way of looking at it," he said stiffly.

"Okay, good then," Harry said with a smile. "And maybe now would be a good time to eat." He indicated the bag Ron had left on the bed. "When you dive in front of a curse for your boyfriend you tend to need to eat some food so your body heals up quicker, yeah?"

A slow flush was building across Draco's pale face. "I—I suppose so," he managed, and there was a smile twisting at the corner of his mouth.