Thank you for all the reviews and alerts! Sorry this one is a little later than my usual updates.

Part Four

Ginny's parting words to him had finally convinced him, and before he could talk himself out of it (as he had done so on occasion in the past), he made a quick visit to the post office in Diagon Alley, paid for a sheet of parchment, borrowed a quill and drafted a quick letter to Ron and Hermione asking them to visit that afternoon if they didn't have plans, sent the letter by post owl, and Apparated back home, thinking that perhaps it was time he bought himself a new owl; Hedwig had been gone for nearly eight years, after all. He decided to do so once Draco was human again. He didn't think he could cope with two crotchety animals vying for his attention at the same time. As he opened the door to his study, however, he could clearly hear the portrait of Walburga Black, screaming her usual supremacist nonsense. Harry quickly made his way down to the ground floor, where the shrieking was getting louder.

"Filth! Scum! Mudblood freaks! Half-breed aberrations! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers!"

Harry quickly took in the sight. There was a smashed vase which had rested on a small table Harry kept his keys and other trinkets upon. It had sent water and flowers scattering across the hallway as it hit the wooden floor, and the crash of it was obviously the cause of the portrait's awakening. Draco must have knocked it over. And he was currently staring face-to-face with the portrait, his fur up on end and tail swishing, meowing at it and attempting to scratch the painted woman within with his claws. Harry drew his wand and forced the curtains over the picture shut once more.

"Reparo," he said, pointing his wand at the vase. The pieces flew into the air and knitted themselves back together, before replacing itself neatly on the table. Harry then Vanished the flowers, which had seen better days and needed throwing out anyway really, and dried the floor with another spell.

"Meow!" said Draco. "Meow, hiss, purr meow!"

Harry took that for, 'What the fuck is wrong with that picture?' He chuckled.

"Lesson learnt," he said. "Be careful when you're playing in the hallway. Otherwise you'll wake up your great aunt, or whatever relation of yours she is. Although she'd actually probably like you if you were human." He thought of towards the end of the war, where Draco saved Harry's life in the Manor, and Narcissa lied outright to Voldemort's face. "Then again, maybe not. You're probably as big blood traitors as the Weasleys to her now."

He made himself a ham sandwich for lunch while Draco had a tin of smoked mackerel pâté that Harry had bought from an overpriced, and somewhat pretentious (in Harry's opinion) Muggle supermarket, but seemed to meet with Draco's approval, and that was worth every Knut of the Ministry's Galleon to Harry. He'd just finished clearing away the lunch things and washing up when he heard his fireplace whoosh with the sound of someone Flooing in, followed quickly by Hermione's voice calling, "Harry?"

"In the kitchen," he called back. "Be right with you." He turned to Draco. "Behave," he said quietly. "I didn't mind you scratching that Jacqueline bint, but if you go for my friends then you won't be sharing my bed with me tonight."

It was only once he was in the living room, greeting his friends, that he realised what the bloody hell he'd just said. He took a second to congratulate himself on his stupidity as he returned to the kitchen to make tea. Human Draco would have ripped the piss out of him for that statement.

It wasn't as if he'd never looked at Draco in that way. Most women, and quite a few blokes, had, at one point or another. Malfoy wasn't what would probably be referred to as a 'pin up boy' in the Muggle world. His handsomeness was more elegant, more subtle than that, but it was undeniably there. Harry remembered one time when he and Ron had met up with Ginny and Hermione in the pub straight from work and had walked in with a few other Aurors who were meeting their own friends. Malfoy had been among them and Hermione, drunk on her usual three glasses of spritzer, had fired off a three minute long soliloquy about those high cheekbones, pewter, come-hither eyes and toned arms and torso.

"It's just a shame it all belongs to Malfoy, really," she'd said. "Otherwise I could really quite fancy him."

"Wow," Ron had replied. "Thank Merlin there's no one here to overhear this conversation who would get offended by your words. Really dodged the Bludger with that one, love." Harry had laughed along with the others at the time, but his gaze had lingered on the very torso Hermione had described for a split second too long, and Ginny had shot him a most knowing look, before hiding a smirk behind her own drink.

The kettle on the stove whistled, snapping Harry back to the present, and he poured the boiling water into a teapot, allowing the tealeaves to steep, and opened a packet of chocolate Hobnobs.

Draco Malfoy was openly, and proudly, gay. Harry had always admired him for that; he hadn't even had the guts to come out to his two closest friends, let alone anyone else. Obviously, Malfoy didn't have the pressures of being the Boy Who Lived and have a perpetual (or so it seemed) posse of paparazzi recording his every move as Harry did, but he had worked bloody hard to rise from being seen as nothing but an accused Death Eater to a respected and accomplished Auror (most recent debacle of a case aside, that was), especially in a wizarding society that, while not homophobic exactly, was certainly less accepting of same-sex unions than Muggle Britain. It all came down to the passing-on of magical DNA- if a witch or wizard was in a same-sex relationship then he or she was unlikely to ever have children and therefore add to the magical population, which was already fairly small.

He made to pick up the tea tray and realised his palms were sweating. He could admit to himself that he was nervous about his friends' reaction. OK, so he was more than nervous. Instead of carrying a tray with hot water on it with moist hands and risk dropping the bloody thing, Harry chose to Levitate it into the living room, where the sight that greeted him distracted him from his nerves temporarily. He placed the tray on the coffee table and grinned.

Hermione had been true to her word, and had brought a catnip-filled mouse with her for Draco to play with. And he was currently rolling around the living room carpet like he was writhing in orgasm, almost moaning- or as close as felines came to moaning anyway- attacking the toy mouse as if it were a feast given to a starving man.

"Godric really loves his new mouse, doesn't he?" Hermione said, smiling. "Apparently, catnip has the same effect on the feline brain as marijuana does on the human one."

"You mean you've got my cat high?" Harry asked in amusement. He crossed the room to his dresser, opened a drawer, and pulled out a rarely-used camera. Draco needed to see this once he was human again. Or, he didn't, but Harry needed Draco to see it, simply for the hilarity factor and the fact that Draco would be mortified. He snapped a few shots, then replaced the camera in the drawer. He poured the tea, took a couple of biscuits, and handed the rest of the packet to Ron, where he knew they'd only end up anyway.

"So, I, um, wanted to talk to you both," he said, his nerves returning. He took a sip of his tea and grimaced. In his nervous state he'd forgotten to add milk. Sort yourself out, he chastised himself. This isn't a big deal, OK? He picked up the milk jug and poured some milk into his cup.

Hermione instantly sobered.

"Oh, Harry, is this about last night? Are you still angry with Ronald and me? Well, me mainly, because Ron didn't know about Jacqueline until just before we left, and- well, I'm sorry I brought her here, but I only have your happiness at heart." Harry smiled.

"No, it's not about that. Well, it sort of is, but not really. I mean, I didn't ask you here to have a go or anything. Last night just made me realise… um… oh, bloody hell." He took another sip of tea.

"Oo okay, 'ate?" Ron said, his mouth full of Hobnob.

"Yeah," Harry said uncertainly. He took a deep breath. Now or never. "It's just that… Hermione, even if you set me up with the perfect woman, I still wouldn't be interested in dating her. Not now, not ever. Because I don't like women. I mean romantically! I like women obviously, I'm not a misogynist, but I don't want to have sex with them. I want to have sex with men."

Well, that hadn't come out at all how Harry had rehearsed it in his mind. And it wasn't nearly as eloquent. In fact, he thought he'd just rather sounded like a class A tit. But it was out now, just like he was, and he couldn't take the words back. Hermione and Ron both froze, Ron with a half chewed biscuit visible (Harry wished he'd close his mouth), and stared at him. Even Draco stopped convulsing on the floor and looked at him, head tilted. Harry wondered exactly how much he understood in his cat form.

"You're gay, mate?" Ron said finally, once he'd swallowed the mouthful of biscuit.

"Yeah," Harry replied with an uneasy laugh. "That's kind of what I meant by 'I want to have sex with men'." The stupefied expression on Ron's face would be amusing to Harry if he wasn't so tense. A deafening silence fell across the room.

"For fuck's sake, Harry!" Ron bellowed finally, causing Harry to jump. "You've just earned me a month of performing cunnilingus on demand."

Harry blinked. "Um, what?" he said, confused. He looked at Hermione now, how was beaming.

"I told you so, Ronald," she said smugly. "Oh, Harry, I'm delighted you finally told us."

Harry had a massive feeling he was really missing something here.

"There's not a single part of this conversation I don't need explained to me," he said. Draco jumped on him then and began to knead his chest, purring. Harry scratched his head. Harry took the gesture as Draco's approval for his announcement.

"We had a bet," Ron said. "It's been going on since Christmas. Hermione reckoned she caught you ogling some bloke in the pub and said it all suddenly made sense, and I said no way. I was so sure I was right that I, um, proposed the terms of the bet. You had to come out by June, or I won. Merlin, I didn't think for a second I was going to lose it. Just think: a month of being able to demand blowjobs whenever I wanted. I was really looking forward to it." His eyes clouded over in what Harry decided was a wistful lust, and a look which Harry never wished to see on his friend's face again in his presence.

"So Hermione suspected I liked blokes, didn't say anything to me, and you made an insane and somewhat mentally disturbing- for me- bet over it," Harry summarised, really trying his best not to think about his friends in any sort of sexual contact. Eugh. "Am I following so far?" He felt rather annoyed about this, but on the plus side neither seemed to be about to disown him, and he suddenly felt ridiculous for not telling them sooner. "Hang on a minute, Hermione, if you knew I was gay, then why did you try and set me up with Jacqueline? Was this your plan? 'I'm going to set Harry up with the worst woman I can find, and it'll be so ghastly that it will finally convince him to tell us he's gay'?" He didn't bother adding that it had actually worked. Hermione already looked far too pleased with herself.

"No, Harry," she said. "Not exactly. I admit I thought that if I tried to set you up, you would eventually tell us the truth just to get me to stop, but I genuinely thought Jacqueline was OK. She has always seemed perfectly lovely at work. I wasn't trying to force you to come out by arranging some sort of horror date. Just a female one."

"So I guess this is why you and Ginny didn't work out then," Ron said. "You know, there was something odd about the, 'we have realised we are not meant to me together' reason you gave us. She already knows, doesn't she." It wasn't a question, and Harry didn't take it as one.

"Yes," he replied. "I thought she deserved to know the reason why we couldn't be together, so I told her." He conveniently left out the part about how they were shagging at the time. He didn't feel Ron would continue to be calm if he heard that. Besides, it wasn't a lie, exactly. It just wasn't the truth. "And she's been completely amazing about it, too. After she stopped yelling at me."

"So, is there a special man in your life?" Hermione asked, taking a Hobnob from the packet that Ron had taken possession of, and dunking it into her tea.

"No one," Harry replied. He tried to keep the resentful tone from his voice, but he didn't think he'd been very successful. Indeed, one look to both his friends' faces confirmed this. They were both looking at him in sympathy. "Not exactly easy for me to date, is it?"

"You know, Harry, there is a man in my department who's gay, maybe I-"

"No, Hermione!" Harry shouted, a little louder than he'd probably intended and causing both Hermione and Draco to jump slightly. "I appreciate the thought, I really do, but no. More. Set-ups. Clear?" He said it with a smile on his face, but his tone left no room for doubt that he meant his words.

"Crystal," Hermione replied, taking a sip of her tea. Draco began licking himself them, one leg cocked into the air while his rough pink tongue worked his abdomen. He had exposed himself fully to Harry's guests, and Harry didn't like it. Draco may be trapped in the body of a cat but it was still him, and Harry felt it was his responsibility as both Draco's temporary owner and his Auror partner to try and preserve Draco's modesty when he was incapable of doing so himself. He had just reached for the Afghan over the back of the sofa when Hermione looked at the cat and said, "Oh my, Harry, you need to have your cat neutered."

Groaning inwardly and wrapping the blanket around Draco's bits, Harry replied, "Godric is an indoor cat. It's too dangerous around here to let him out, what with the traffic around here and stuff, so it doesn't really matter if he's neutered or not as he's not coming into contact with female cats, and I've warded the house to stop him escaping." That had been one of the first things he'd done after he and Kingsley thought Draco had run off, on Draco's very first day at Grimmauld Place. "Besides," Harry added, improvising, "I'm not going to have him forever. Only until mid-February. It was a month's trial period, you see, and I just don't think I'm ready to have a cat."

"Bollocks, mate," Ron said. "Look at you both. He never leaves you alone and, Harry, you love that animal. I can tell. You need each other."

Harry didn't have a single cohesive thought to give in response to that.

Ron and Hermione ended up staying for dinner that night, where they talked more about Harry's sexual orientation amongst other things, then Harry curled up on the sofa to watch The Fellowship of the Ring with Draco in his lap. Muggle films involving magic and wizardry, and magical creatures, were his guilty pleasure. He loved to spend the whole of the film praising the accuracies, and yelling at the screen when inaccuracies occurred. Gandalf always reminded him of Dumbledore, and made him feel a bit melancholy. He switched off the DVD as the credits began to roll, called for Draco to come to bed, and went through his evening routine quickly. Once he was lying in bed, Draco curled up asleep in the warmest spot, Harry went over the afternoon's events in his mind.

Coming out to his friends had left Harry feeling like a prize prat, if he was honest with himself. He had managed to conjure up scenario after scenario in his mind where his friends disowned him, or were upset with him when they found out, when, in actual fact, Ginny had been spot-on as usual. Harry even though Ron had looked a little hurt at one point, when Harry was talking about keeping it to himself. Harry had more than once chastised himself for keeping it quiet for so long. Both Ron and Hermione had given Harry a heartfelt, genuine hug when they'd left, and Ron had said in his ear, for Harry's hearing only, "Trust me in future, Harry." He fell asleep that night with a contented smile gracing his lips.

The following morning Harry treated himself to a fry-up (serving eggs and some bacon to Draco), then headed out to the shops. He stocked up on ridiculously priced food for both himself and his fussy feline from Waitrose, returned home, put it all away, then Apparated to the pet shop he'd visited on Draco's first day to stock up on items.

He pulled anther large sack of cat litter from the shelf and dumped it into his trolley, and also picked up a grooming brush. Maybe Draco would like it if Harry groomed him? Was that too weird? Harry also picked up a packet of dried catnip, and laughed to himself quietly. Watching Draco Malfoy, cool, haughty Auror, rolling around on the floor in pleasure had been extremely amusing. And Harry definitely wanted to see it again.

After lugging all the shopping back to Grimmauld Place, Harry changed the litter tray, cooked lunch, then spent the rest of his Sunday afternoon reading the Sunday Prophet and watching some Muggle football match on the telly. He wished wizards had a magical equivalent of television; it would be brilliant to watch, for example, the Magpies against the Cannons on TV. Would beat having to stand in a freezing stadium with about fifty Warming Charms on him just so he could feel his toes, simply to watch a game of Quidditch, anyway. After the football he did his laundry, on which he'd become woefully behind, and cast a few quick Cleaning Charms around the house.

Grimmauld Place really was huge. Too big really, for just him. Harry wasn't lonely. He really wasn't. He had a job that he adored (when Robards wasn't being a complete bastard), good friends he loved dearly and saw frequently, and people he considered family in the Weasleys. He was genuinely happy with his life. But he couldn't help looking at Hermione and Ron, and feel jealous of them. He wanted what they had with each other, with someone. Someone who would stay home from work and make him soup when he had the flu, or scrub his back in the bath. Someone that sat up and held Harry all night after he'd been on a distressing Auror case involving a murder or other harrowing crime. Someone that Harry could kiss, and touch, and make love with, and wake up with in the morning holding. Someone he could share his life with. The huge space of Grimmauld Place just seemed to emphasise dramatically that Harry had none of those things. He realised with a jolt that he was really going to miss having Draco around, when he returned to his human form. Having another heartbeat around the house made the vast emptiness seem just that little bit smaller.

The first time Harry really, really missed Draco in his human capacity was towards the end of January, two weeks after Draco had first been trapped in his cat form. He had finally been removed from his role as the trainees' target practice (Harry strongly suspected Kingsley's intervention there) and sent out on his first field duty since the Brockway and Peterson case. Robards had teamed him with Alexandra Fairweather, a highly ambitious but standoffish witch, who greatly objected to Harry's 'act first, think later' approach. "Are you sure we should?" seemed to be her favourite saying, and after three days of being doubted and second-guessed continuously, one time which actually prevented Harry from apprehending his suspect, he found himself longing for his Slytherin partner back.

It's not something Harry ever thought he'd want. When Robards had paired him and Malfoy (who was fresh out of Auror training at the time) together, two years ago, Harry had pitched a fit. He'd appealed to Robards. He'd even appealed to Kingsley. Only his pride and sense of professionalism prevented him from trying to use the 'but I'm Harry Potter! Boy who Lived!' line. Nothing had worked, and initially, Harry had wondered just how long it would be until he and Malfoy ended up duelling one another. And the pair did have some humungous arguments, no doubt about that. But as the weeks turned into months, and they continued to be partners, Harry realised something else about himself and Malfoy. They worked extremely well together.

Malfoy was a gifted wizard, and his knowledge of barely-legal, but extremely effective, curses and hexes were second to none in the Auror department. He was nimble, athletic and fast-thinking, not to mention clever, and his work ethic complimented Harry's perfectly. They worked fluidly, instinctively, together, and had been partners long enough now to know what the other was thinking and how they were going to act in the vast majority of situations. Sure, they had had a few spectacular failures (Malfoy's current situation being the prime example) but they had had enough brilliant successes to counter this that they were considered amongst the best pair in the department. Of course they still rowed and bickered, but something else had grown between them in the two years they had worked together: trust. And, while he and Malfoy weren't exactly friends, they were no longer the enemies they had been at school, and even had a grudging respect for one another.

Harry had none of this with Miss Fairweather. And he missed it. And, worryingly, he missed Draco himself, he was beginning to realise. He missed the banter and the sarcastic remarks. He missed seeing Malfoy's arrogant face flushed and superior, glowing with triumph as he apprehended a suspect. But above all that, at this exact moment in time, he really, really missed the fact that Malfoy could aim his fucking wand accurately, which Fairweather seemed unable to do.

"Expelliarmus!" she cried, during their latest mission, on the first of February, which involved Harry and Fairweather chasing down the estranged husband of a woman who had turned up in St Mungo's with deep slashes in her wrists, having tried to kill herself. It had turned out that she had been under the Imperius Curse at the time, and once she came round and the curse lifted she told the Aurors that her husband had placed the spell on her and ordered her to commit suicide. The spell Fairweather cast was aimed for the husband in question, who was currently struggling with Harry in a duel (the former having snuck up on Harry while he was searching the address the victim had given), but unfortunately for Harry, her aim was off by several inches and it caught Harry squarely on his right arm. His holly wand flew in the air and landed several feet away with a loud clatter. The suspect laughed, while Fairweather froze in shock.

"Bloody women," he sneered, wand pointed straight at Harry. "Fucking bunch of incompetent sluts, the lot of them. Diffindo."

Harry gasped as the spell shot out of his suspect's wand and slashed his chest, causing white-hot pain to spread throughout his body. He heard Fairweather shriek and finally catch the suspect in a Full Body-bind Curse, before she rushed over to him.

"Oh God, Harry, I'm so sorry!" she said, her voice full of tears. She touched his chest for a second and, when she pulled away, Harry saw her hand was drenched in blood. His blood. Bugger. This was serious.

"I need to get you to St Mungo's," he heard Fairweather's voice saying, as his vision clouded, only to be replaced with swirling patterns of colour.

"Yeah, St Mungo's," he heard himself agree. "Um, Alexandra, can you make sure someone feeds my cat while I'm away? He likes chicken." And with that he finally gave in to the blackness.