Many thanks to YetiBettyFoufetti for beta-reading this chapter and for the useful notes.

Chapter Text

They were stuck in traffic. Draco tapped his foot nervously. The dash clock read forty minutes to nine. Forty one. He felt around his pockets for his phone before remembering he'd lost it at some point during the night and swore under his breath.

"Move, you dimwit!" David shouted, honking at the car in front of them. The cars behind followed suit. "Do they hand out driving licenses to whomever happens to ask for one now?"

He was now forty five minutes late to work.

Draco didn't pay any mind to the hoard of reporters by the visitors entrance, much too preoccupied with the hands of the grand clock above them. He failed to notice that the Atrium was uncommonly packed for this time of day as he strode towards the lifts. He didn't even pick up on the subject of conversation in the lifts, that's how consumed he was by his own thoughts and ruminations.

It was only on arriving on the fifth floor that he realized something was off. The open space was deserted with the exception of one Junior Auror desperately flipping through a file in the far corner of the room. The sound of the lift doors opening made him turn towards Draco.

"He's here!" he shouted as soon as his eyes settled on Draco. It took Draco a beat to process that the man was talking about him.

Felix's head popped out from the meeting room. He scanned the room until he found Draco before turning back to exclaim "Draco's here!" to the people inside.

Draco dashed towards the open door. He was sure that his lateness at the weekly departmental meeting couldn't possibly account for this over the top welcome committee. He was right. As soon as he entered the meeting room all hell broke loose.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Ulmer erupted as he stood up and hit the table with his fists.

"Draco just walked through the door," Felix said to a piece of paper in his hands. The paper turned into the shape of a bird and flew out above Draco's head at incredible speed.

Ron pulled his head out of the fireplace. "Where the hell were you?"

"I was just-" he couldn't bring himself to say the words stuck in traffic to a room full of angry wizards who could teleport wherever they wanted. "What happened?" he asked instead.

"How did you manage to get here without hearing what happened?"

"Cole's been poisoned," Ron answered him hastily, searching for something on the table full of documents. The news sent a shockwave through his body.

"The Minister of Magic was poisoned and the Head Potioneer of this department was nowhere to be found!" Ulmer boomed. "What do you think that looks like, Malfoy?"

"Excuse me?" he replied, feeling himself go hot. He put a hand on the back of the nearest chair to steady himself.

"We've been looking for you since this morning. We sent you an own at seven in the morning, we sent people to your house-"

"We don't have time for this," Ron cut him off, having found the document he was looking for. He gave it to Draco. "You need to go to St. Mungo's now-"

The door swung open and Harry burst in. Time, after having accelerated so abruptly a minute ago, slowed down. Draco took in Harry's appearance. He was wearing the same clothes as last night, just like Draco, only he had thrown a work robe over them. His shirt still had the beer stain from when he spilled some on himself after laughing too hard at one of David's comments. Harry avoided meeting Draco's eyes as he marched past him with an impenetrable look on his face, but the dark circles Draco saw indicated Harry hadn't slept much either.

"I just got word from Conrad. He secured the house and Cole's wife is in a safehouse," Harry reported to Ron and Ulmer. "I'll drop Draco off and go back to the house to thoroughly look around."

Ulmer nodded while at the same time opening a flying message that had just arrived.

"Let's go," he gestured towards Draco before turning on his heels. Draco followed Harry out of the meeting room. He opened his mouth, but Harry was quicker. "Have you been briefed?" he asked as soon as he heard Draco's footsteps behind him.

Draco looked at Harry's shoulders as he raced down the hallway towards the Apparition Room. He should reach out. Touch him. Initiate some sort of cease fire. But the hurt was still there, ebbing. The anger, even though considerably dimmed, too. "I haven't," he settled on, mirroring Harry's formality. If Harry wanted to play games, he was going to play games then.

"Cole was found unconscious by his house elf at around seven thirty in the morning. She alerted the Ministry as soon as she found him and he was moved to St. Mungo's fifteen minutes later. The elf's quick thinking saved his life." He held the door open, checked his watch while Draco entered the Apparition Room. "The potion is yet to be identified. Last information I had is that it's been traced back to the wine he had for dinner."

"Any leads?"

"As of now, there are no leads."

"Got it," he said, closing his eyes as Harry grabbed his arm. He braced, trying to prepare himself for the nausea. Nothing happened. They weren't moving. He opened his eyes to see what was delaying Harry from Apparating, but they twisted on the spot before he could make out the expression on Harry's face.

Once they reached St. Mungo's Potion Lab Harry handed him his phone. He didn't mention where he'd found it and Draco didn't ask; just pocketed the phone and followed Harry inside.

Ana was already there, working alongside St. Mungo's potioneer and the two expert Healers specialized in poisons. They nodded hello to each other while Harry made straight for the potioneer and asked for an update on Cole's status.

"No changes. He's still unconscious even though the effects of the poison had been slowed down."

He then left without as much as a glance in his direction. Draco took the ache and the spite and the hurt and put up walls around them. He had a job to do now and all the rest could wait.

He grabbed one of the black robes hung next to the door, willing the tiredness away, and took out the report Ron had given him, detailing the conditions in which Cole had been found. The others filled him in on the rest. They had been able to identify the main ingredients but were still far from developing a cure.

"This is indeed very strange," Draco commented, flipping through Ana's notes. "I've never seen such a complex poison. And yet, not at all effective."

"I'm pretty confident when I say the aim here was to take Cole out for a long period of time and not to kill. They're most likely counting on us spending weeks on a cure."

"Indeed," Draco agreed. He rolled up his sleeves. His job now was to determine the origin of the ingredients while they concentrated on identification and the cure. He spent the whole day hunched over lists of apothecaries, painstakingly crossing off the ones the ingredients couldn't have originated from. By the end of the afternoon his analysis resulted in a first lead and he had something - not much - to tell Harry and Conrad when they dropped by.

"It may have been brewed in Somerset. Sometime in the last six months. All of the known ingredients were readily available in the area, including a very rare fungi that only grows there."

Conrad accepted the paper on which Draco had written the name of the apothecaries carrying the ingredients. There were twelve addresses on it.

"Good job, Draco," Conrad said, slapping his shoulder. They left. This time, it was Draco who had avoided Harry's eyes.

Once all of the ingredients had been identified, Draco went back to the BAO. Since most of his fine analysis relied on muggle chemistry and the hospital lab wasn't equipped for that, it made more sense to continue working in his own space.

He wasn't the only one working well into the night: he could hear Aurors and other Ministry officials shouting orders at each other across the open space. After hours of this flurry of activity, Ron walked into his office. "I am exhausted," he said, collapsing onto a chair. Ron began to recount what was happening in the magical world outside Draco's office. The hysterical headlines stirring panic over what this attempt on the Minister of Magic's life meant. The public desperately owling in search for answers, afraid that the fragile peace of the last decade was ending. Draco tried to ignore the voice in his head that wanted to ask Ron if he'd been mentioned. He didn't need to know. He already knew.

Once Ron left to prepare for the next day's press conference, Draco found he couldn't concentrate anymore. The work was so laborious and repetitive that his mind kept getting stuck in loops. He sent a couple of letters to shopkeepers in Somerset in order to confirm inventory but even that proved too demanding for his current state. He needed to rest. He needed to change out of these damn clothes.

As he made his way to the lifts he noticed Harry's office door was ajar. A glimmer of hope - that he was there, that he was safe, that they'd be able to steal five minutes to talk - rose up in him. It died as soon as he pushed open the door, letting the light from the hallway flood the dark room, and discovered it was empty.

He went in anyway. The fatigue had washed away the resentment, the bitterness. As he touched Harry's coat thrown carelessly on a cabinet file he was overcome with want and need and longing. It was a feeling so familiar, so incessant, he had no choice but to welcome it like an old friend.

He took a seat on Harry's desk chair. Looked at Harry's belongings scattered between official documents: a picture of Ron and Hermione on their wedding day, barely visible between mountains of files. The same one he had at home beside the TV. A Holyhead Harpies coffee mug, still full, sitting on top of a pile of old newspapers. A jar full of quills. Between them, the engraved fountain pen Draco had offered him for his birthday.

He took out his phone and turned it on for the first time since Harry'd given it back to him. He scrolled through the dozens of missed calls, then read the texts.

I'm sorry.

Where are you?

I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.

Just come back and we can talk.

I'm at your house. Where are you?

Draco, where the fuck are you?

He put the phone back in his pocket and buried his face in his hands.

He was woken by a hand shaking him gently. His face and his back hurt from the uncomfortable position he had fallen asleep in, sprawled across Harry's desk. In the dim light coming through the crack of the door he could make out Harry's silhouette, kneeling next to him.

"Hey," he said drowsily, reaching for his hand but stopping just short of grabbing it. "What time is it?"

"It's four in the morning," he replied, opening the drawer next to him and starting to rummage through it. "Why didn't you go home?"

"I was about to. I must have fallen asleep." He raised up slowly, still disoriented. Looked down at Harry. "Did you find anything?"

"We're collecting memories left and right but nothing conclusive yet."

"I'm almost done tracing ingredients to specific shops."

"Great."

"Are you going home?" he asked, following Harry's movements as he took an odd looking pair of scissors - a Portkey, most likely - and placed it in his pocket.

"No, I just came to grab this and I'm going back to Somerset. Do you want me to drop you off at home?"

"No… no, I'll get back to work on the poison."

"All right then."

Neither man moved. Harry kept staring at the contents of the drawer, Draco at Harry. There was something sad in the way his shoulders sagged. In the way his hair fell over his eyes, covering them. It made the last bit of pride holding him back melt away.

"Harry," he said, grabbing him by his arm, pulling him towards him. It took him by surprise, the readiness with which Harry answered, jumping into his arms, burying his face in Draco's neck. The way he reacted to his touch as if it was something so precious, so hard to get. As if it wasn't his to take whenever he desired.

Giving into the longing in his chest, Draco held Harry tightly, breathing him in. They stayed like that, silently holding each other, until Draco's neck stiffened from the way he had to slouch down. He figured their awkward position couldn't be very comfortable for Harry either, kneeling on the hard floor. Neither of them dared break away, fearing to shatter the fragile truce they had somehow arrived at. The silence around them was broken only by unintelligible conversation at the far end of the hallway.

When the pain in his neck sharpened Draco started to loosen his grip, but Harry wouldn't let go, clinging to him with more force. "Hey," he whispered. "What's wrong?" He passed a hand through his hair, kissed the top of his head. He must have had a horrible day, searching for a poisoner who could have been anyone, with the pressure of the world on his shoulders.

"I thought you left me." Harry's words made their way to him mumbled, barely audible.

"What did you say?" Draco asked, stunned. Harry didn't say anything else, just hunching inward, making himself smaller. Draco backed away, breaking the seal of their embrace, and grabbed his chin. He pointed Harry's face up and searched for his eyes. They were glistening in the darkness of the room. "Harry. How could you think that?"

"You left," he accused, breaking free of Draco's grip.

"I was just upset-"

"You didn't come home. You left your phone in a taxi." Every sentence uttered by him fell in the space between them like the blade of a guillotine. "You didn't come to work in the morning." Draco slid down on the floor next to Harry.

"Harry…"

"Nobody could find you," he went on. "I couldn't find you."

"My darling," he said, taking off Harry's glasses and wiping away the tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes. "I'd never leave you. It was just a fight. A stupid fight."

Harry waved Draco's hand away and turned away from him. "Where did you go?"

"I went to David's."

"Why?"

"I-"

"You were shaking when you left. You looked like you were going to be sick."

"I-"

"I was so worried, Draco."

"I didn't mean to worry you like this…"

Harry took his glasses from Draco's hand, put them on and turned to look at him. "Never do that again."

Draco swallowed hard. "I won't. I promise."

Harry leaned in, wrapping his arms around Draco. It was Draco's turn to make himself small in Harry's arms. The feeling that he was something precious, something that needed to be taken care of, returned, more powerful than before. It made his eyes prickly.

"And I promise," Harry whispered, tightening his grip, "that when this is all over, we'll talk about what you wanted to talk about. We'll talk about the War."

Draco nodded, his throat too tight to speak.

The voices in the hallway were getting closer. Draco imagined what it would be like to be found in Harry's arms on the floor behind his desk, in the dark, but he didn't move. It was Harry who broke their embrace this time. "I need to go. Conrad's waiting for me."

They didn't see each other again until the press conference. Ulmer spoke from behind the podium, flanked by Ron and Harry on each side. Draco followed the speech from the back of the room. A handful of people turned to look at him when one reporter from the Daily Prophet asked why the department had been so slow to bring their Potioneer on site.

"Our Potioneer acted as soon as he was made aware of the situation," Ulmer replied flatly, gesturing to a reporter from a different paper.

"Do you have any leads?"

"At this moment in time we cannot speak publicly about any leads we might have but rest assured, we are working around the clock to catch the culprit."

"What about the former Death Eater working in your department with unlimited access to poisons? Are you considering him?"

This time, every pair of eyes in the room turned towards him.