This is some serious Auror investigation, is the first thought Harry has when he is calmed down enough to even think. Then he says it out loud, hissing, "This is some serious Auror investigation."

Fleur shifts beside him. Her hair tickles Harry's nose, and Harry wants to sneeze in the worst way and it is all Fleur's fault that he cannot—and then Fleur whispers right in his ear, "I always wanted to be an Auror!"

"Of course you did."

Because an Auror would sneak into a warehouse, hide inside a wardrobe, get locked in that wardrobe, get loaded face-up into a carriage, and then probably driven, or even flown across the country. Only someone like Fleur would get accidentally felony-kidnapped. So of course, Fleur wanted to be an Auror. Of course, Fleur Delacour, the most enthusiastic Auror in the British Auror Office to ever investigate a potential illegal potions shipment without calling for backup, leaving Harry to scurry after her like he is babysitting some amateur muggle sleuth, of course Fleur bloody Delacour loves being an Auror. Who else would hear footsteps coming and think, yeah, time to hide somewhere with only one exit and bring my partner with me so we are both trapped.

Fleur shifts some more and jabs Harry in the ribs with an elbow. "Ow, what the hell was that for?"

"Sorry, I was just trying to find my wand."

"Well, be careful."

"Yeah," Fleur whispers, "because I'm just going to wave my wand around when we have twelve square feet of space."

"You got us into these twelve square feet so at this point, I don't know what you're going to do."

There is another jab to his ribs, this time deliberate. "I'm improvising, okay? And besides, this way we'll definitely know where the potions are going."

Their unsuspecting drivers settle on a radio station. The wardrobe vibrates slightly with every floor-shaking bass beat. "Swimming is not my forte, so we better not somehow end up in the channel, is all I'm saying," Harry grumbles.

It has been an hour. Harry has already sent a Patronus to Gawain Robards, who responded with one of his own asking questions like, "Do you know your destination?" and, "Did you get a Portkey signature?" and, "Do you have any idea what's going on there, Potter?" Harry signed off with a, "Will send another Patronus with more info"

His foot's also asleep. "I still can't believe this is happening," he whispers. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that they obviously have a roster of warehouses that they cycle through when they're loading up, and it could be weeks before we caught up with them again, so I had to act fast."

"You didn't also think that was important to tell me?"

Fleur's shoulders shrug against Harry's. "I had to act fast. Besides, you ran in right after me without question, so I thought you'd come to the same conclusion."

"Why would you think that?"

"Because why else would you have come along without question?!" Fleur's voice goes a little too loud, and they both tense up, holding completely still for a full minute.

Harry glowers in the dark. Because that's what a good partner does, cover for their partner when she's doing something outrageously stupid. And yes, maybe call for backup beforehand because she's obviously forgotten, but Harry thinks about Fleur running not-sneakily-at-all into the warehouse, wand barely concealed, absolutely no recon and completely vulnerable, and-it's not protocol, but he thought that backup wouldn't arrive in time if something went wrong, anyway, and it'd be a waste of time with Fleur already moving fast out of his sight line.

He stands by that choice, but he's not going to tell Fleur, like, because I wanted to have your back and make sure you didn't get cursed while you were busy playing Flavia de Luce. Gross.

He's about to respond when the carriage coasts to a stop and the radio shuts off.

The back of the carriage opens, and the wardrobe wobbles for a bit before they're lifted completely. "This shit is heavy, damn," someone grunts on the other side of the wood from Harry.

"Bro," the guy on Fleur's side says derisively.

"Shut the fuck up. Don't say a fucking word, I swear to god."

They're jostled up a ramp, carried a few more seconds, and then dropped down with a clang. Harry's knees bang against the locked doors. Judging by the scraping sounds, they're in the back of a larger carriage. Great. At least they're set upright this time, so Harry can shake the feeling back into his foot.

"Is that everything?" the first guy says after a few more minutes of transferring stuff from, Harry's guessing, multiple, smaller carriages.

"All eighteen pieces, yup. Everything's in the usual spots."

"All right, Knockturn Alley here we come," he says, and Fleur slaps a hand over Harry's mouth before Harry can say anything. Harry rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue. He regrets it instantly. The taste of magic residue and broom polish and Fleur's perfume on her palm coats his entire mouth. Beside him, Fleur exhales long and quiet. Harry can just imagine the smug yeah that backfired, didn't it look on her face. Her hand stays in place, though, and Harry focuses on the faint waft of her perfume instead of the strange feeling in his mouth.

The carriage door rattles shut, and a minute later the engine starts and they start moving. Harry's not sure how it happens, but he tries to angle his head away from Fleur so he can freak out a little-maybe while Fleur is also relaxing her hand-and as he opens his mouth, his teeth catch on a finger. He does not know why, but his first instinct is to bite down, not hard, but enough to get Fleur back for covering his mouth in the first place, and without meaning to, his tongue flicks along the pad of her fingertip. Fleur freezes for a moment. Harry's brain goes terrifyingly blank.

Then Fleur moves away completely.

Heart shaking in his ribcage, Harry half-yells, "We're going straight to Knockturn Alley!?"

"I told you they were higher up in the illegal potions ring than we suspected!"

He ignores that for now, because ugh, Fleur, and focuses on the bigger problem. "That's at least a four-hour ride. We're going to be stuck in here for four hours."

"We should-"

"Yeah, I'm on it," Harry says, already pulling out a two-way mirror to communicate with Robards. Of course, Fleur's forgot to bring anything on this journey. Harry's pretty sure she could not have been less prepared, so, good thing Harry is trapped in here with her. Or something.

Ron answers the mirror: "Mmmm yeah, British Auror Office, what's your damage?"

"Stop messing around Ron, it's me, Harry, I need to speak to Robards."

"Yeah," Ron laughs, "you're going to have to wait on that, he's a little occupied right now."

"Like how occupied, this is urgent-"

"I'm not too sure, I saw Hermione come through with like a wholesale, like, party-sized tub of Floo Powder. Like big enough to drown a house-elf-"

"Wow, no, don't tell me more," Harry interrupts.

"And a cheap dress robe-"

"Ron! Just have him call me back as soon as he can. It is urgent. Super urgent."

"You got it, I will definitely remember that and make it his top priority."

"You're going to go hide in the broom closet so you don't have to deal with any responsibilities, aren't you."

"Yup."

"You're not gonna tell Robards I called, are you."

"Nope. Good investigating, Harry! Glad we had this talk, yes that's a lie."

It's been another hour. He got up with Robards eventually, but they can't do anything until they're actually in Knockturn Alley, and then Harry's Point Me spell can direct the Aurors to the right place. Not that he will be able to use the spell, if he keeps messing with his wand, bored and casting multicolored sparks.

"Can you cut that out?" Fleur asks. "It's hurting my eyes."

Harry sighs and puts the wand back in his pocket. "I'm starving," he says.

"I have some Chocolate Frogs."

"Gross, maybe if I was eleven again, no thanks."

A wrapper crinkles, and then the smell of cheap chocolate fills the wardrobe.

Harry listens to Fleur quietly crunch the Chocolate Frog for a few seconds before his stomach gurgles. "Okay, yeah, break me off a piece of that."

Fleur offers it up to his mouth. Fuck, Fleur's basically feeding him a Chocolate Frog. It's embarrassing as hell but like, they can't see and there's not much room anyway, so Harry just accepts it and resolves to never think about this again ever in daylight (or moonlight or any time that isn't right now). Fleur's fingers press lightly against his chin, skimming briefly over his lips before withdrawing completely. Harry starts to follow her hand instinctively, but then stops himself.

"Thanks," he says, out of rhythm and a minute too late.

Fleur hums to herself and shoves the empty wrapper in her pocket, her elbow only grazing Harry's side this time.

More time passes, and Harry's starting to feel antsy. He's been in the same position for forever now, and it's hard enough to sit still for morning meetings, much less, you know, accidental kidnapping.

Fleur must be able to sense it, because she asks, out of nowhere, "Why'd you become an Auror?"

"What?"

"We all told our origin stories a few weeks ago, but you weren't around and you haven't ever talked about it. Why'd you become an Auror?"

Harry fidgets, reaches for his wand, puts his wand back without checking it. "Why'd you become an Auror?" he asks back.

"My whole life I was only known for my looks, but I wanted to help people and I knew I'd be good at it, and you can't say the same thing."

Harry shrugs. "It's personal."

"You can call me Fleur, if that helps," Fleur says, a little mocking.

"Ugh. Fine. I'm a man of action and didn't know what I wanted to do out of Hogwarts, so, like, I did it out of principle."

"That's such a lie, everything I've read about you points to you never being able to stop fighting evil" Fleur laughs. "Oh wow, look at Potter with the jokes over there. Didn't know you had it in you today-shit."

The carriage hits a pothole, and Fleur loses her footing, falling heavily against Harry while Harry braces himself against the walls of the wardrobe.

"Shit," Fleur says again, but Harry can barely hear her over the feeling of Fleur's breath against his mouth. "Shit, I'm sorry," Fleur says. She tries to push herself back up, and yeah wow, ends up groping Harry instead. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Potter, I seriously didn't mean-"

"It's fine," Harry manages to say without going too high-pitched. It's totally not fine. And why is Fleur still so close, like, Harry can sense her lips a centimeter away and it's the least fine thing in the world. "I know it's hard for you to control yourself around my irresistible charm," he says, more confident than he feels.

"Right, yeah, that's it," Fleur says, and Harry knows it's supposed to be a joke, but Fleur sounds a little too serious and fuck, fuck-"Uh, Harry?"

"Can I help you, Fleur?"

"I'm gonna try something," is all the warning Fleur gives him before her lips are on Harry's.

It's the most fine thing in the world. It's petrifying.

Fleur pulls back after a second. "Okay, wow, Potter, I'm sorry. About the groping, and about the-that, I'm sorry, that was totally inappropriate and I shouldn't have done any of this, I'm sorry I got you stuck in this stupid wardrobe-"

Harry swallows a few times and gets his voice back. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Fleur. Slow down." He can still feel Fleur's mouth tantalizingly close to his, like a phantom limb. He lowers one hand carefully, first bumping into Fleur's shoulder before sliding over and up, fits his palm against the soft column of Fleur's neck, thumb on the corner of her jaw, and leans forward.

Fleur sighs into his mouth, lets out a tiny hum that sounds inexplicably sexy, that buzzes through Harry's mouth and straight down through his body, and Harry pulls her closer. His other hand splays flat against Fleur's spine. Fleur's lips are stupidly soft, stupidly smooth, and stupidly amazing. Harry can't lie, he's thought about this a lot, in scenarios way better than this one, and his imagination didn't even come close to how good Fleur really feels, solid and wanting against him, even if they are cramped and he can't see.

"This kind of breaks protocol," Fleur reminds him.

"Which part," Harry retorts, and Fleur doesn't answer with words.

So they make out, hard, for an amount of time that Harry doesn't care about at all. Then Robards pops up on the mirror to again check up on them, and Harry has to maintain a steady voice while Fleur presses her stupid, stupid mouth against his neck and sucks a delicate line up one side and down the other. As soon as he ends the Patronus message, Harry reaches out for Fleur with both hands, trying to get her to stop being so distracting.

"Robards says-fuck, Delacour, come on-Robards says the Aurors are on notice, so we need to start updating everyone on our status."

Fleur doesn't move away; she just reaches into Harry's back pocket-Harry goes dizzy for a hot second-and pulls his wand back out. "Lumos" she says. "Good thing you were too occupied to wear it down, huh?"

"Shut up," Harry mutters.

Fleur hands him the wand. By its glow Harry can finally see, and Fleur has such a goddamn smug look on her face that Harry has to kiss it off before he can start back on Auror business.

"Ron and Hermione are gonna give us so much shit," Harry says as he's trying to figure out how to Disillusion them so they can sneak out unnoticed.

Fleur scoffs. "Whatever. We're about to crack this massive case. We're gonna be heroes. They can suck it."

Harry notes the we, feels a hot rush low in his stomach at the pride in Fleur's voice.

They end up in the tiny, dark twisting back alleyway of Knockturn Alley, in the Harry crouches with his hand on his wand, ready to bust the hell out of this place. Fleur waits beside him, equally poised and coiled. They hear another door open and then slam shut.

Fleur squeezes his shoulder. Harry feels it all the way down his back, feels all his nerves set on edge. "Hey," he whispers, and he doesn't know why he's nervous when he's just spent so much time getting to know the inside of Fleur's mouth, "after we're done with this, do you want to go out and get dinner or something?"

"I'd love to," Fleur whispers.

The carriage door rattles open.

"Can it be at Borgin and Burkes?"

"Duh."

Three people haul themselves into the back. Harry takes measured breaths while they move out the rest of the furniture. A pair of feet pauses in front of the wardrobe. "This was really heavy when we were moving it in London, I'm gonna just empty it," the driver says.

Harry carefully readies his wand. He listens to the key turn in the lock. He watches one door swing back millimeter by millimeter. And then Fleur bursts out of the wardrobe, wand drawn. Harry leaps out after her, making sure Fleur's covered, while Fleur stands firm and bellows, "British Auror Office! Hands up, get on the ground!"