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Albatross Around His Neck	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3219 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Albatross Around His Neck
- 1
Title: Albatross Around His Neck

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: ~30,000

Warnings: Violence, profanity, unusual Animagus transformations. DH Spoilers but ignores epilogue.

Summary: When an unregistered Animagus commits murder, Harry Potter investigates the agency that trained him, Malfoy’s Magical Menagerie (“Discover your inner animal in two days, become one over a lifetime!”) Things would be so much easier if he was not growing disillusioned and if Malfoy were less intelligent.

Author’s Notes: Happy birthday, leochi! Thank you for the wonderful art you gifted me with. Your request was I’m not very interested in dark themes or smut. My favourites are credible stories with lots of psychology and inner developments. Accordingly, this story has no smut or extreme darkness, although it has some violence, and focuses a lot on both Harry and Draco’s inner perspectives. Hope you enjoy it!

Albatross Around His Neck

            The façade of Malfoy’s Magical Menagerie was meant to overwhelm. It loomed twice as high as the front of any other shop in Diagon Alley, with the gaudy, flashing letters of the motto marching around the doorframe and the windows in curlicues of red and gold on black that Harry thought George Weasley must have designed. The windows showed elaborate scenes of running wolves, foxes, stags, and lions in stained glass. Some magical effect Harry hadn’t seen before and couldn’t track to its source made the whole building shimmer as if it stood in moonlight instead of sunlight.

            Discover your inner animal in two days! proclaimed the lettering. Become one over a lifetime!

            Harry scratched at the stubble that remained from yesterday—he’d felt too tired to use the Shaving Charm that morning—and tilted his head back to study the top of the building. Yes, it had honest-to-God battlements, probably because Malfoy was always living in the shadow of Hogwarts and needed some psychological connection to the most important place of his life. There also appeared to be a flat green space on the roof where winged Animagi could practice their takeoffs and landings. As Harry watched, a plump brown bird of a kind he didn’t know took off and skimmed over the grass, struggling the way that no bird would. A few moments later, it sank out of sight, and Harry saw a feather drift up into the air. He smiled briefly as he imagined it crashing.

            Only briefly.

            He lowered his gaze and fixed it on the front door again, made of some frost-blue stone with a knocker as dark as obsidian. The knocker was in the shape of a hawk, wings flung back as it alighted in a dramatic pose Harry was willing to bet was not copied from nature. He didn’t want to knock on the door and go in there.

            But then, he rarely wanted anything to do with Auror cases these days, and yet he took them anyway, because what else did he have to do with himself?

            Efficiently, Harry banished the thoughts. They occupied the time he spent in his flat and his pub. They weren’t allowed to interfere on the job, where he had prided himself for the last ten years on acting like a professional.

            He stepped towards the door and knocked with his fist instead of the hawk. He heard several bells go off at once, like fireworks. Harry pushed his hair back from his forehead, perfectly willing to use the scar, in this case, to awe whatever shop clerk answered the door. Merlin knew it would have no appreciable effect on Malfoy.

            But of course, Malfoy himself opened the door, and his gaze flickered to Harry’s forehead in a way that said he understood the effort Harry had made with the scar and was unimpressed.

            Nothing ever goes the way I plan it.

            Whinging wasn’t allowed on the job either, Harry reminded himself, and made his voice like iron, as heavy and as inflexible. But polite. He could do that. “Good afternoon, Malfoy. I’m here in my official capacity as Second Auror. I wondered if I might ask you questions about a recent student at your school.”

*

            Potter would be a lion, Draco decided immediately. No other answer for it. The Chosen One had grown taller but hadn’t otherwise changed, as his ridiculous stunt with the scar showed, and he would have been a lion Animagus if he’d chosen to undertake the training in school, because what else could so pure a symbol of Gryffindor change into?

            Then Potter shifted, perhaps because Draco hadn’t answered him inside one second, and Draco caught his first glimpse of those shadowed green eyes. He paused. It seemed thirteen years of looking at crime scenes, if only ten as a full-fledged Auror, had taken their toll on that Gryffindor purity. Perhaps he would be a wolf. Draco had trained his share of wolf Animagi in his time, because it was felt to be a symbolic animal and one’s form depended in large part on what one already thought of one’s soul.

            You can’t be an animal you’ve never heard of, and you can’t be an animal that you feel indifferent to, was the way one of Draco’s trainers had phrased it.

            “I really don’t see what one of my students might have done to require the attention of the Aurors,” Draco said, his voice perfectly respectful. Potter didn’t react one way or the other. Draco found himself stepping closer and adding a touch of insolence to his tone before he thought about it, because that indifference was just so disappointing. “Of course, you’ve always been ready to believe the worst of anyone associated with me, haven’t you?”

            The shadows in Potter’s eyes glided into motion. Draco hoped he was remembering one of the times Draco had seriously threatened or changed his life. There was the presence of his hawthorn wand in Potter’s hand during the final battle with Voldemort, of course, but Draco didn’t think enough people remembered that.

            “In this case,” said Potter, “it was an unregistered Animagus. It was only by carefully scrutinizing a few of his letters in recent weeks that we learned he trained at your school.” He reached into his robe pocket and started to pull something out. Draco took a step back to put distance between them, again without thinking about it.

            Potter paused and glanced at him. Draco was sure his mouth twitched.

            “Impossible,” he did manage to say. “All my students are required to register the day they transform for the first time.”

            “And this is someone who didn’t,” said Potter. “Exceptions exist all around us, Malfoy.” He finished pulling out the object he’d reached into his robe for. Draco lowered his glance and realized he was confronting a familiar photograph. The young wizard in the picture blinked up at him from behind large glasses and then grinned shyly, waving a hand before he looked towards the far side of what seemed to be a Hogwarts courtyard.

            Septimus Gully. Yes, if anyone was going to do something like that, it would be him.

            Draco swore under his breath, then stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”

*

            The inside of the Magical Menagerie was dimmer than Harry had expected it to be, with all the magical lighting on the outside and the enormous windows. It was also filled with drifting scents that didn’t seem to come from potions. As his eyes adjusted, Harry made out candlewicks floating in pools of glimmering liquid, shedding small trails of smoke and the scents of new-mown grass, raked leaves, wet earth, and the salt of the sea.

            “It comforts the students the first time they transform,” said Malfoy matter-of-factly, stepping around him so he could gesture Harry towards a chair. “Most of them are confused and overwhelmed by their new senses, and they need something that smells like home to their animal bodies.”

            Harry nodded, and watched Malfoy for a moment. He had changed, but what hadn’t in the years since the war? He had a guarded, listening face and stripped-down movements, as if he wanted to accomplish everything he did with the least waste of time and energy possible. His hair hung in fine, loose strands past his ears, cropped at an angle that made the ears look almost pointed, and his robes were entirely white, to point up the pallor of his skin. When he looked back at Harry, his eyes had a flinty shine that the sunlight had hidden when Harry stood on the doorstep. In fact, if Harry hadn’t been forsworn from intimacy for a great many excellent reasons, he might have—

            Once again, Harry banished the thoughts that didn’t belong on the job, and sat in the chair Malfoy offered him. “How well did you know Gully?” he asked.

            Malfoy sat down opposite him and gave him an oblique look. “Why don’t you start by telling me what he’s supposed to have done?”

            Harry sighed once, and then nodded. That was only fair, he reckoned, especially because Malfoy looked to have no idea what this was about. Harry had made such quick judgments before in his experience as an Auror, and they rarely failed him.

            “His Animagus form is a scorpion,” Harry said, recalling the details from the file he’d been handed with an ease born of long practice. Malfoy stirred in his chair but said nothing to contradict him, so Harry thought he was safe to continue. “He’s discovered a way to fill his sting with more powerful venom; we know that because the poison that Councilor Ferguson died of was not natural to a scorpion. On the other hand, there were signs of his having been stung by one.”

            Malfoy was sitting straight up, his face pale. “Ferguson?” he asked. “Gerald Ferguson?”

            Harry let a faint smile touch his mouth. At least that had got a reaction out of Malfoy. “As in Gerald Ferguson the Wizengamot member, yes,” he said. “Did you not hear of his death?”

            “I read an article that he was sick and had been taken to hospital.” Malfoy closed his eyes and bowed his head. It made his face look much more pale, his hair tumbling like a fall of snow across his brow. Harry flicked a whip of discipline and banished the inappropriate thoughts again. “I was busy right after that, helping a student who had changed into her quail form and couldn’t change back. I never read the end of the story.”

            “He did die.” Harry half-closed his eyes and stared at a candle. If his brain would insist on taking note of things it had no business taking note of, then it could take note of a spot of light instead. “We didn’t think it was murder at first, but then one of his secretaries reported seeing a scorpion.” He bared his teeth in an expression Malfoy could take as a smile if he wanted to. “It didn’t take much time to come up with a report of Gully in the area shortly thereafter. And then we managed to find people who confirmed that he was a scorpion Animagus, and that he had trained here.”

            “I don’t see what information I can give you.” Malfoy’s voice had dropped the politeness he’d greeted Harry with at first and now crackled with old ice and old animosity. “You know more about the crime than I do.”

            Harry didn’t turn a hair. He had prepared himself by doing all his complaining in his head before he actually entered the shop, or the school, or whatever it was. “I’m told that you know more about his personality,” he said. “That you must, because you were his teacher and the teacher learns a student’s soul whilst he coaches him to become an Animagus. Sometimes he has to guide him in the right direction and teach him to envision the animal he actually is, rather than the animal he wishes he was.” He looked at Malfoy, his breathing calm and steady. “Is that true?”

*

            Draco’s perception of Potter’s possible Animagus form was rapidly changing. Not a bear, because though he had the same coiled danger about him now as a bear did when emerging from his den, he didn’t have that slowness of temper. He was quicker, more lithe, more deadly. A bear would often be satisfied once it had chased the initial threat away. A leopard, perhaps? Those striking, wary green eyes would fit one.

            It had been a while since he had such a challenge. Draco regretted that it was Auror business which had brought Potter to the Magical Menagerie. Had he entered as a student, Draco could have had fun belittling him, laughing at him, and tugging him in the right direction against his will. No doubt he would have wanted to believe he was a stag, like his Patronus, or some neat compact animal like a house-cat. Not anything dangerous. Potter had never wanted to be dangerous to anyone but Voldemort.

            At least he’d done some research before he came, or got Granger to do it for him. “Yes, that’s true,” Draco said. “But Gully was one of my more puzzling students. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a scorpion. He came to me when he was barely out of Hogwarts, wide-eyed and begging to become an Animagus. He was humble and learned from his mistakes, although he didn’t learn quickly. He never seemed dangerous or aggressive, which is usually the case for those who become venomous animals, no matter how small.”

            Potter gave a small frown and lifted his head. The candles made dancing flames appear in his glasses and his eyes. Draco was startled to feel his stomach tighten with want. Then he shrugged and dismissed it. Well, why not? He’d always been attracted to bright eyes, and he’d never minded green.

            “I did some reading on scorpions, too,” Potter said.

            Granger did some reading, Draco translated in his head. He nodded wisely.

            “I didn’t think scorpions were aggressive. Is it possible he was a better fit for his form than you expected?”

            Draco snorted. “And beetles like Rita Skeeter aren’t naturally nosy.” Potter frowned. Draco took pity on his small intellect and explained. “What is important is what the students think of the animal, Potter, and not what they actually are. Natural snakes don’t have a great deal of cunning, either, or ambition. But many of my Slytherin students to whom House pride was important become snakes of one sort or another, because they’ve been taught to associate snakes with qualities inherent in them. Had the lion been our symbol, I would expect many lion Animagi among them.”

            Potter smiled faintly. “It’s been a decade and a half, Malfoy,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “Do you think you could let the grudge based on House points go?”

            Draco stared at him. Suddenly the brilliance in Potter’s eyes and the stubborn lack of knowledge he was revealing couldn’t hide the fact that Draco didn’t know him anymore. He had up and changed his soul in those fifteen years, and that made speculations about his possible form based on their shared past useless.

            I resent that, Draco thought, and then wondered why. Surely he should have known Potter would move on without him.

            “Very well,” he said, aware that that wasn’t much of an answer to Potter’s statement, and not caring. “But it’s the students’ own perception that’s important, that and the students’ knowledge of themselves. Sometimes they take months or even years to transform because they’re clinging to one perception of themselves and they have to come to see that they’re not actually as clever or brave or strong as they thought they were.”

            “Could Gully have seen himself as secretly venomous, then?” Potter leaned forwards. “How fast did he transform? How accurate was his perception of his soul?”

            Stop demonstrating brains, Draco thought, intensely irritated. His perception had shifted again. No, Potter couldn’t be a leopard; he was no longer restless or monofocused enough.

            “You may have something there,” Draco said. “His transformation itself, once he got past his learning mistakes in the process, was swift. I thought it was simply because he accepted the form of the scorpion the first time I suggested it to him, rather than arguing with me, as others have done when they didn’t want to believe themselves venomous.”

            Potter nodded. “And do you happen to know who visited him during the time he was training here?” He spoke as if he thought it highly possible Draco wouldn’t remember every odd visitor his students had.

            Draco glared at him. “As a matter of fact, yes, I do. His sister visited him, and a woman he called his Aunt Medea.”

            Potter snarled. Draco flinched before he could help himself, but then he realized Potter’s eyes were trained past him on the far wall and his hands were clenched into fists, aiming his wand at someone who wasn’t there.

            “That wasn’t his aunt, Malfoy,” Potter said absently. Draco felt a dim surprise. Most of the Aurors he had known wouldn’t have bothered explaining. “Neither of his parents has any siblings. That’s almost certainly Medea Shrivelfig. We’ve been after her for months. She’s trying to overthrow the Ministry—“

            “Is she?” Draco laughed. It seemed to him a saner goal than trying to assert blood purity as Voldemort had done. “Good luck to her, then!”

            “—and set herself up as sole dictator in its place,” Potter finished, with a sidelong glance at him, “allowing the use of Dark magic. She wants to use Transfiguration and experiments to make Muggles into various species of magical creatures to serve wizards.”

            “Oh.” Draco kept his acknowledgment to that simple word and saw the faintest shadow of amusement slide over Potter’s face before he rose to his feet.

            “Please write down every bit of information you can remember about this ‘Aunt Medea,’ and send it to us with a post-owl,” said Potter. He stood with his head bent for a moment, his hands clenched at his sides, and Draco could feel his magic gathering in his shoulders and arms, as if he were preparing himself to charge out and arrest Shrivelfig immediately. “I’ll need to report to the Minister himself, and don’t have more time to stay and collect your testimony.” He began to stride across the room towards the door.

“Wait!” Draco wasn’t entirely sure why he scrambled to his feet and called after Potter, except that he hadn’t encountered someone whose Animagus form he couldn’t narrow down to within a few possibilities in months. “Why do you need to report to the Minister? Is it something that could damage the reputation of my school?”

Potter looked back at him with his eyebrow raised, a hand balanced on the doorframe and a foot uplifted. He seemed utterly unconscious that he was assuming a strange stance. For a moment, Draco saw the grace of a hoofed animal about him, the shadow of antelope or deer, and then that faded as he caught sight of the shadows in Potter’s eyes again.

“A threat of treason goes beyond the Aurors,” said Potter. “And that’s really all I can tell you if you don’t want your school implicated.”

            Draco nodded slowly. He watched as Potter opened the door, not bothering to shut it behind him, and stepped out into the middle of the street. He Apparated by seeming to spring forwards into space, as if he were about to take flight.

            A winged form, maybe? Considering how much he loves Quidditch, that might make the most sense.

            Draco shut the door of the shop and sat down for long moments. He knew this mood in himself, and it was useless to try and work on anything else until he solved the puzzle. He would decide what Animagus form would best suit Potter, and then he would go and investigate other documents, to prove to himself that Gully could have no further connection with his school.

*

            Had the Ministry’s senior advisers not been sitting around one end of a round table, and had Harry not been looking directly at them when Kingsley began to speak, he might have missed the very small headshake from Acheron Hidefell.

            The Wizengamot member was an enormous wizard, both tall and big, though Harry would have been wary getting into a wrestling match with him; more of his weight was muscle than fat. He wore blue and silver robes, apparently the official heraldic colors of his family, and a tall pointed hat that rivaled McGonagall’s. His long flowing dark hair and beard almost obscured his face. Harry, who had always needed to look someone in the eyes and read his expressions to tell if he was being honest or not, objected to this on principle.

            And because he had shaken his head at Kingsley, Kingsley said something different than what he otherwise would have said; Harry was sure of it.

            “That’s very interesting news, Auror Potter, and we will be sure to follow up on it.” Kingsley nodded twice and shuffled some papers in front of him. Harry had known for some time now that was a distraction technique for the Minister, designed to make him look busy and dignified when he was neither. “For the present, however, we will need to turn to the case of the Obliviators in South London. They’ve been overzealous, and destroyed the memories of several Muggleborn wizards and Squibs visiting relatives as well as those of the Muggles who actually witnessed the explosion of a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheeze.”

            Harry leaned forwards, interrupting the attempt of the Head Obliviator to defend herself. “Minister,” he said, working hard to control his voice and his temper and make them both sound calm and unruffled, “I’ve just given you evidence of a possible treason plot, and you want to discuss what’s essentially a political squabble?”

            Kingsley looked at him with cautious eyes, the expression he always wore when trying to handle the dangerous political commodity that was the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry closed his hands into fists behind his back. He wouldn’t be dangerous or a mere commodity to Kingsley if he was allowed to use his influence to actually protect the wizarding world, or if Kingsley listened to him instead of people like Hidefell, who probably wanted the matter of Shrivelfig swept under the carpet because it connected to his business or a relative.

            “This is more than a political squabble, Auror Potter,” Kingsley said, a warning note in the back of his voice. Harry didn’t give a bloody damn for his warning note. “It involves the human rights of Squibs and Muggleborns, which I’m sure your friend Mrs. Granger-Weasley would be interested in—“

            “Well, yeah, I’m not her.” Harry leaned forwards and only became aware then that he was quivering like a bow strung too tight. Well, fuck that. If it made the Wizengamot members and the others underestimate him, it was all to the good. “I want to know why we aren’t pursuing Shrivelfig more closely, why Councilor Ferguson’s murder has been shuffled away and kept as quiet as possible, why—“

            “You only have the evidence that a woman called Medea visited this Gully at an Animagus school,” Hidefell interrupted, his voice soft as always. “It could have been an assumed name. It could be an entirely innocent coincidence. It could be a red herring. It has not been hard for the enemies of the Ministry to learn that you are impulsive, Auror, and to use that to their advantage.” He paused delicately, and if he had ended there, then Harry could perhaps have forgiven him, but no, he just had to keep going. “I believe there was the matter of two Aurors who died because you simply had to charge ahead and try to rescue a little girl who turned out not to exist?”

            Harry stared at him. The air around them grew thick and syrupy, and then two of the legs of Hidefell’s chair broke and he sat on the floor with a rather sudden thump.

            “Harry,” Kingsley said sharply.

            “I know, I know,” said Harry, keeping his eyes on Hidefell’s flushed face as the man scrambled to right his chair. He was also glaring at Harry, or Harry thought he was, though it was rather hard to tell in all the mass of hair. “I’m a political liability when I’m not doing exactly as you tell me to. I already understood that.”

            Hidefell looked at him contemplatively, one hand locked on the back of the chair. “I suggest you control yourself, Mr. Potter,” he said. “You do not understand how many lives might be made harder because you chose to exert your strength where it was not wanted.”

            Harry snorted. “Is that a threat? I’m sorry, I can’t give you a fair hearing for one. I’m afraid Voldemort spoiled me for lesser performances.” He watched in intense satisfaction as Hidefell flinched at the name, and then turned back to Kingsley, who was slowly rubbing his brow as if he were trying to ease the headache forming there. “Sir, what do you want me to do about Gully?”

            “You treat the case as an ordinary murder case,” said Kingsley, opening one eye. “That, and nothing else.”

            Harry felt his mouth tighten. “Sir, beyond the name of this aunt who visited him at Malfoy’s school, there are some other oddities we’ve discovered. Correspondence during his Hogwarts years with an owl that matches the description of the one that delivered Shrivelfig’s threats to several of her targets, for example. And his family is related to one of the Wizengamot members who lost the election ten years ago. We think he may have entered this plot believing it would give his family a chance to—“

            “That is enough, Auror Potter.” Kingsley leaned forwards with his hands splayed on the table like a newborn foal’s legs. “Do you understand me? You have nothing but your intuition and a series of coincidences as evidence. You cannot base an investigation on a resemblance of owls and family connections.”

            “Sometimes,” Harry said, eyes never wavering from the Minister’s face, “I can.”

            Kingsley flushed deeply. He was likely remembering, as much as Harry was, the evening six years ago when someone had made an assassination attempt on him. Harry had figured it out because his intuition had told him something was wrong with a witch in a long sweeping set of violet robes and wearing a unicorn earring who had passed him several times.

            That was why they couldn’t simply dismiss him and refuse to take his concerns seriously, though Harry knew they would have liked to; most of the “new” Wizengamot and their compatriots considered that Harry was too wild and crass for serious politics. His brand of uncanny guesses and half-madness had saved not only the Minister’s life but the lives of various other people around this table many times.

            “Not in this case,” said Kingsley. “This is not a targeted assassination plot, Potter.” It was the first time the Minister had neglected to call him Auror in months, Harry noted absently. That probably didn’t bode well for his chances to investigate the case. “Insisting on dragging innocents into this—“

            “You really think Gully is innocent, sir?” Harry had perfected a tone that made it seem as if he agreed, with sarcasm lurking so obviously under the surface that most of the time people couldn’t resist calling him out.

            “I do not.” Kingsley hung onto his temper with a death grip, if the glare he gave Harry was any indication. “What I do think is that innocent people, Hogwarts students especially, follow Medea Shrivelfig in fun, because they don’t understand what she believes and it gives them pleasure to call themselves rebels or anarchists. Until we have a better idea of what plots she is and is not involved in, especially whether she has any connection to Councilor Ferguson’s murder—“ He shook his head. “I will not rip innocents up by the roots and demand the names of their playmates from them, especially when questioning those people might not produce anything concrete.”

            Harry breathed lightly, his eyes locked on Kingsley’s. There had been a point when Kingsley trusted him to investigate on his own and to follow up on any lead, but that had ended, because Harry had made his mistakes just like anyone else and acted sometimes on insufficient evidence. With the authority of the Minister’s office behind him, those mistakes became Kingsley’s own. And when Kingsley began to gain real political support and not simply the thundering popular tide of the moment that had elected him because he was associated with the revealed Order of the Phoenix, he had become less willing to take risks. He had explained to Harry several times how those pointed, sweeping investigations Harry made disrupted the lives and livelihoods of the people he targeted.

            Of course they do, Harry longed to say. That’s what they’re meant to do. The innocent can stand a bit of questioning and a bit of suspicion. The wizarding world is like a weighted candle. It always wobbles back to equilibrium in the end, except for the truly guilty, and people who stared hard at their neighbors one day are nodding to them the next.

            But Kingsley had long ago ceased to believe that. Probably about the time he had gained the backing of influential people who didn’t like trouble, Harry thought.

            “And if I bring you concrete evidence, sir?” Harry asked at last. “Would you let me open the investigation further if I could prove that Shrivelfig is once again trying to stir up animosity against you?”

            “I believe I understand the young man,” said Hidefell, before Kingsley could respond. “He grew up in a time of conspiracies and active double agents, and of course he would see shadows around every corner when he had become an adult as well, because there was a time when ignoring them would have cost him his life.” He gave Harry a sympathetic smile. “He does not realize that circumstances have altered, and our world has come to political maturity. We don’t have to worry about Dark Lords any longer, because the average wizard knows better than that. There’s only one madman seeking immortality every few generations, and thanks to the efforts of wizards like Potter and Albus, the majority of us will never have to battle them and can live normal lives.”

            It always burned Harry when Hidefell spoke as if he had known Dumbledore as a personal friend. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to try that with Harry. He narrowed his eyes and curved his lips into a false smile that was good enough to pass in photographs and memories, which was all the Ministry required. “But the existence of those madmen is remembered and imitated, Councilor,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether Shrivelfig really has the power to become a Dark Lady. The point is that she’s trying, and this murder will upset the balance of the Wizengamot and necessitate the election of a new member. She’ll try to slip in someone who has ties to her.”

            “Ties to a rebellion are not always evil,” said Hidefell, and then made a real mistake: he tried for jollity about Harry’s past. “After all, during the period when You-Know-Who was taking over the Ministry, someone could have been called a rebel for supporting you? Eh?” He made a movement as if he would nudge a companionable elbow into Harry’s ribs, and then stopped, perhaps because he’d just now taken in Harry’s real expression.

            “Harry, that is enough.” Kingsley’s voice was soft and furious. “I am removing you from the Shrivelfig case as well as the Gully one. And I don’t want you to investigate on your own, either.” Harry tensed; that took away the silent permission to do so that removing him from a case had once constituted. “You’ve already caused more trouble than this murder is worth.”

            Harry laughed bitterly before he could stop himself. “More trouble than a murder is worth, sir? Are you only doing this because Ferguson was your political opponent? I agree, the man was a pompous arse, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

            Kingsley’s face froze, and Harry understood that his careless words might have inflicted a wound between them that would not heal.

            “I care about justice, Potter,” Kingsley said. “Get out.”

            Harry bowed and went.

            Of course, he had no intention of dropping the Ferguson case or his pursuit of Shrivelfig, especially when he found an owl waiting on his desk.

            Potter:

            You’ll need to come by the school again. I’ve uncovered information about Gully and another student of mine that I think you should read.

            Malfoy.

*

            Of course Draco could have investigated the information he’d discovered on his own, but he wanted another chance to observe Potter. Perhaps he would be able to identify his proper Animagus form if he had him at close quarters for a longer period.

            He received Potter this time at a side door of the Magical Menagerie, which led into his personal living quarters. Potter looked around the blue and white room without any expression on his face. Draco waited to hear what he would say about it—surely he would make some reference to Hogwarts, surely he would say something about how he had never expected a Slytherin to have any sense of beauty—but instead he simply nodded and turned to Draco. He might have expected Draco to live in a room with all the colors of the sea. Draco narrowed his eyes as a stab of disappointment came to rest below his breastbone.

            “There’s one thing you should know before you share any information with me.” Potter’s voice was calm today, though the shadows in his eyes were deeper than before. He was looking at one of the walls behind Draco covered with a seascape, but Draco doubted that he really saw it. “The Minister has officially removed me from the Ferguson case. You could risk censure from the Ministry if they discovered that you’d associated with me, or helped me track down Gully.” He looked sideways and met Draco’s eyes.

            Draco stared at him. Then he said, “Explain to me how that makes sense, Potter, when you’re the Auror with the best record for tracking and arrests.”

            “The movement Shrivelfig has started is quite extensive,” said Potter. Draco nodded; he had reason to believe that after the documents he’d discovered. Potter moved papers gently off a chair and sat down in it. Draco blinked. He found he liked the simple, unpretentious quality with which Potter performed that action, not asking but not flinging the papers impatiently aside, either. “They’re afraid that my investigations would disrupt the lives of ‘innocent’ people,” Potter continued, bringing Draco’s attention back to his face. “And business, according to Councilor Hidefell.”

            Draco laughed. “I hadn’t realized he won his election,” he said. “Your Minister knew what sort of snake he was letting into his henhouse, I hope?”

            “You speak as if he weren’t also your Minister, Malfoy.” Potter was looking at him with a touch of interest on his face that Draco hadn’t managed to rouse before.

            “I don’t consider him so, since I voted for his opponent.” Draco shrugged. “None of that means I won’t obey the laws he passes. But I don’t feel bound to obey his lesser commands, like removing you from this case.” Anger tightened his gut. “They were using the space and the trust I gave them, this Shrivelfig of yours and at least two of her people.”

            “Two? Not just Gully?” Potter’s fingers tapped on his knee as he leaned forwards. Draco caught his breath. It was very hard to look away from Potter when he pinned you with a gaze like that. Perhaps his Animagus form would turn out to be something striking, like a peacock or a butterfly.

            Then Draco revised his assumption, and shook his head. No, he couldn’t imagine Potter as something that had so little impact on the world.

            “Yes,” said Draco. “It turns out that another student of mine was in regular contact with Gully at the time he was training, before he left and she came here. I didn’t realize it because she used an assumed name when she wrote to him. But he left her letters here, and she has the same handwriting as a student who arrived the day after he completed his training.”

            “Why would he leave the letters?” Potter bared his teeth like the wolf Draco had decided he couldn’t be. “That seems like the obvious bait in a trap.”

            “The letters are innocent on the surface,” said Draco. “And he moved hastily when he finally did leave. I think he must have received a summons, or been informed that they would need his magic and his venom earlier than they thought they did.” He waved his wand, and the wall in front of Potter shimmered and became a screen like that of a Muggle computer. Potter blinked, looking briefly impressed before he focused on the information in front of him. Draco preened. To capture the attention of someone as forceful as Potter—a whale, maybe? Simply for the size of his impact on the world, Draco would not be surprised, but he hoped not, because he didn’t have the facilities here to train a whale Animagus—was a coup.

            “I’ve created a timeline,” Draco explained, and dates began to swirl and dart in blue letters across the screen, courtesy of the same spell that had changed the wall in the first place. “Based on when Gully arrived, how fast he trained, and how quickly he left and this second student—Athena Wellward is the name she used with me—arrived, I think I’ve worked out what happened.”

            “Thank you,” Potter said.

            Startled, as he’d just begun to get absorbed in the information again himself, Draco stared at him. “What do you mean?”

            “I mean,” said Potter, a small smile crossing his mouth as he stared at the dates, “that I’m used to collecting information like this and noting connections myself. And asking someone else to arrange it? I would have been lucky if I could get someone who loved me as much as Hermione to do that.”

            “Why don’t you have a partner, Potter?” Draco asked. It hadn’t struck him as odd that Potter would continue working on the case despite the Minister’s orders, but surely he should have had someone trailing him when he came to Draco’s school the first time. “Don’t tell me they’re not knocking each other down in the corridors to work with you.”

            “They aren’t, actually.” Potter stretched his legs out, the only sign of his discomfort, and kept his eyes fastened on the screen. “They used to, but they discovered that I was too bullish, as they termed it. I kept smashing into the lives of people who should have been left decently alone, and who didn’t turn out to have as much connection with the case as they might. I asked painful questions. On a few occasions I implicated my partner’s family.” Potter caught Draco’s eye as he glanced over his shoulder. “And the opportunities for promotion and for keeping peace with the Wizengamot aren’t good if one works with me. Not everyone cared about the first, but on the other hand, not everyone has the power of my name to protect them as far as the second goes.”

            Draco nodded slowly. Potter had grown in political astuteness, as well as the ability to answer Draco civilly. But on the other hand—“If you know it annoys people, why don’t you try to act differently?”

            “Because I don’t want the guilty to go free,” said Potter. “That happened often enough during the war.”

            Draco drew back with a hiss. “I reckon you’re referring to my family.”

            Potter laughed. Draco blinked. He hadn’t expected to hear that sound with a bitter twist to it that wasn’t directed at him.

            “Not everything is about you, Malfoy,” Potter said, looking away. “And the exact opposite is true. The Wizengamot tried to cast all the blame on families like yours instead of acknowledging that some of their own relatives and friends had been caught up in the madness or done horrible things in order to survive. I wouldn’t have minded excusing people who made mistakes, but they didn’t want to do that. They wanted one side that in some cases did nothing worse to take all the blame. I argued for your family to be set free and ignored those people who tried to say that your father bearing the Dark Mark was enough reason to send your lot to prison. That was when I made my first enemies on the Wizengamot.”

            Draco licked his lips. He was getting a full insight into the mind of Harry Potter and his conflicts with the people Draco had always assumed he served without question. Should I feel privileged or appalled? “Tell me again why you’re still an Auror.”

            “Because I want the innocent to be protected and the guilty to be punished.” Potter gave him an oblique glance. “Now. Shouldn’t we pay attention to the case instead? My conflicts with the Minister and the Wizengamot will only affect you if your association with me is discovered, and I don’t intend that it should be.”

            “Ashamed of a Malfoy helping you?”

            “If I were, I would never have told the Wizengamot about your mother lying for my life in the Forbidden Forest.” For the first time, a gleam of real temper showed in the backs of Potter’s eyes, and once again Draco wanted to preen. He wondered how long it had been since someone not associated with the Ministry had managed to rouse Potter’s temper. “No, it’s because I want the innocent to be protected. Why does Wellward’s date of arrival make you so suspicious?”

            “It’s that combined with her other behavior.” Reluctantly, Draco turned back to the timeline. Potter at thirty and with an edge of jaded annoyance to his behavior was certainly much more fascinating than Potter at sixteen or seventeen had been. Draco waved his wand, and a date near the bottom of the timeline glowed. “She arrived the same day Gully departed, and without making her previous association with him clear. But there are some inferences I can make, now that I know her true allegiance.”

            “You’re certain she’s part of this rebellion?” The fire in Potter’s eyes had been banked, and a reptilian cunning had taken its place. Crocodile? Draco thought. There was an animal that was striking, had a large impact on the world—or at least its particular river—and possessed Potter’s kind of intelligence.

            “Yes. She referred to the legend of Medea in her letters to Gully, and many times to fig trees.”

            Potter’s soft snarl showed that this amount of proof satisfied him. “Go on.”

            “She didn’t come in with the perception and self-awareness that Gully showed,” Draco said. A flick again, and the very last date of the timeline glowed. “She was impatient with the training and the exercises that were designed to help her clear away various symbolic rubbish from her awareness and help her find her animal. I attribute that to her having seen that the Animagus training could help Gully and wanting to do the exact same thing.” Draco laughed coldly. The rage he’d felt on first confronting the evidence and learning how he’d been used was bubbling back up within him, but along with it came amusement as he thought of the way Wellward had been disappointed. “This is the date she discovered her Animagus form. She left in a huff, not even seeming to care that the manner of her departure ensured that I kept the fees for boarding she’d paid me.”

            “What was her form?” Potter tapped his fingernail against his teeth, a habit Draco usually found annoying, but which he let happen this time because of how civil and complimentary Potter was being.

            “A swan.”

            Potter laughed again, and Draco felt a burst of happiness travel through him. At the moment, he was the only one sitting with Potter and inspiring that amusement from him. No one and nothing else.

            “I can see why she was disappointed.” Potter rubbed a moment at the stubble on his chin, which he didn’t seem to have taken the time to attend to in the few days since Draco last saw him.

            “A swan can break someone’s arm with a wing,” Draco said, shrugging. “But it’s true that it doesn’t have the venom or the huge teeth she was perhaps anticipating.” He smirked. “I knew she was a good candidate for being a swan from the first day I saw her.”

            “Did she have grace about her?” Potter was studying the labeled dates, probably committing them to memory.

            “No.” Draco controlled his annoyance that Potter had fallen prey to the common symbolic perception of the swan. After all, that perception was important, and not entirely useless; it had changed some graceful people into swans in Draco’s time. “Rather, a certain nastiness of temper, suited to hissing over eggs and a mate she might not be able to keep anyway, considering how many male swans pair with one another.”

            Potter laughed yet again and glanced at Draco with his eyes still shining with amusement. “You had reason to think such things with her?”

            Draco blinked, thrown by the direction the conversation had taken. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

            Potter rose to his feet, now staring at him. The air between them had shifted and become charged. Draco licked his lips and rose to his feet in return. He was not sure he wanted to be sitting down in front of a Potter who looked like that.

            “I mean,” Potter said softly, “that she might have been chasing a man who preferred to be with another man.”

            Draco just managed to keep from staring like a gosling confronted with a dog for the first time. Potter’s frightening intuition was also new. “Yes,” he said at last. “Me.”

            Potter nodded quickly, seeming satisfied. “I would have been in the same situation,” he said.

            “But I’ve never heard anything about that,” said Draco. “I mean—I would have.” Though homosexuality was not unaccepted in the wizarding world, the Daily Prophet would have had enormous fun in talking about all the witches who had lost their chance of becoming the honored and celebrated wife of the honored and celebrated Harry Potter.

            Potter shrugged. “I told you that I’d learned to understand the power of my name. Bribing gossipy reporters happens to be one of those gifts.” He grinned. “Besides, I think they overdosed themselves on gossip about my love life when I broke up with Ginny, at least for a few years.”

            Draco took a step close in spite of himself. He didn’t normally move this fast, but Potter had several qualities he found attractive—despite his maddening refusal to conform to one set of personality traits and allow Draco to identify his Animagus form—and he was fit. He’d always been fit; Draco had admitted that to himself in the days when he was still coming to terms with his own preference for men.

            “And are you ashamed to let others know about it?” he murmured.

            “No more than I’m ashamed to let my name be splayed all over the paper when I capture a Dark wizard.” Potter met his eyes. “I only want the truth, that’s all, instead of unfounded gossip that I was trying to capture a member of the Wizengamot or a happily married husband.” He smiled slowly and leaned forwards as if he were testing the problems Draco might have with his personal space. “I don’t think either of those is in effect here,” he whispered.

            “Especially not the second,” Draco breathed, “much to my mother’s despair.” He lifted a hand, not entirely sure where it would come to rest on Potter’s body, and thrilling to the uncertainty. Potter’s eyelids dropped, and Draco licked his lips. Why not? He didn’t work in the Ministry, there was some initial fascination here, and whilst they might not be suited and might not last, they could have some fun in the meantime.

            The Magical Menagerie rocked. One of the pieces of tile that constructed a mosaic in the corner fell away from the wall. Potter cursed in startlement and whirled so that he was safely away from Draco and in fact standing in front of him, his wand aimed at the doorway. Draco, who had a better idea of what a shaking like that implied, swore and Summoned his wand, which he often left upstairs; most students learned better without a wand and the distracting possibilities of spells it presented at first.

            “Attack on the wards?” Potter had recovered his balance already, and his eyes burned for battle as fiercely as they’d burned for Draco. Draco wondered if he should admire or be annoyed at that.

            Wonder will be my most frequent emotion around Potter, I think. “Yes,” Draco said. “I can’t say I didn’t expect it, once I read Wellward’s pursuit of me as an attempt to recruit me into Shrivelfig’s rebellion, but—“

            “My arrival here twice in a few days probably decided them on the attack,” Potter said, voicing Draco’s thought so neatly that he stared in amazement. Potter didn’t notice, his eyes fixed on the doorway to Diagon Alley by which he’d entered. “What kinds of protections do you have? Where are they most likely to come in?”

            “We have to assume that Gully and Wellward told them about the common protections,” Draco said. “There’s a more uncommon one, but I’ll have to get to the roof to begin it. Because Gully’s form wasn’t winged and Wellward refused to train, neither of them had reason to be up there.” He frowned as a ward in his head began to wail a silent alarm. Yes, I know about that already. “Can you distract them whilst I make it to the roof? I should need only a few moments.”

            “Do you have staircases that you can float up?” Potter was flexing his arms, his fingers tapping on the wand as if on a wall. “Judging from the power of these attacks, they could break through when you’re still running.”

            “Ah,” Draco said, and smiled at Potter in a way that made him turn around and stare. “But you don’t know what I am.” He bowed his head and began to transform.

*

            Harry had watched Animagus transformations before, but none as fast, smooth, or skilled as this one. Malfoy vanished in a whirlwind of white and black feathers, and Harry barely caught a glimpse of his arms or his nose lengthening. Then an enormous seabird with webbed feet and powerfully beating wings had replaced him, and one of the walls was falling away to give Malfoy the space he needed to fly out.

            An albatross, Harry thought, his gaze pinned irresistibly to the seabird for long moments. It would make sense. He was always so pale.

            A juddering crack from the wall on the other side of the room, the one that faced the back of the shop, reminded Harry that he had more urgent things to worry about than Malfoy’s Animagus form. He dropped to one knee to brace himself as the shop shuddered and lifted his wand, sketching it in a quick cross pattern in front of him. He rarely spoke his spells aloud anymore. It was unnecessary for them to succeed, and he preferred not to give his enemies the warning.

            The magic began to glimmer along the lines of the cross, and then it caught fire in the air before him, burning brilliant blue and white. Small crosses began to spin off it, whirling away and crashing into the cracks Harry could see opening in front of him, a spell designed specifically to attack stone and which seemed to be shaking the building to its foundations.

            The crosses divided; they were an all-purpose protection spell, one that would become defensive or offensive as the caster required. Half of them vanished into the cracks in the wall and began to spread a glowing mortar that dripped and flowed and then froze like water suddenly turned to ice. The rest swooped outside in a motion that Harry imagined would mimic the motion of Malfoy’s Animagus form in flight, and there came several shrieks and the smells of burning flesh.

            Kingsley would scold him for using spells so dangerous when he couldn’t see his opponents, and might strike an innocent by mistake. Harry had long ago made the decision that protecting the innocent people he knew about, and himself, was more important than worrying about bystanders who might not have fled when they saw hostile spells flying.

            He could not be responsible for everyone. He’d learned that when he attempted to take on the guilt of the deaths during the war and it had crushed him. He could accept a limited amount of responsibility and no more than that.

            Right now, his responsibility was in holding the opponents’ attention, so that they wouldn’t have time to attack Malfoy even if they saw him flying up to the roof. Harry grinned hard enough to make his teeth cut his lip and began to chant one of his more eye-catching spells. Kingsley couldn’t have much to object to with this one, since it was mostly illusion.

*

            Draco soared and banked, grimacing as he flapped his wings hard to get around the corner of the school. Whilst many things about Animagus forms were controlled by the wizards’ perceptions of the animals involved, once the transformation was achieved, the wizard was at the mercy of that body’s physical limitations. And albatrosses required a lot of effort both to take off and to fly in direct wind instead of gliding. He’d solved the first problem by changing as he leaped into the air. For the second, there was no answer except flapping, and aiming upwards, and striving, and more flapping.

            His wings whipped the air, eleven feet from tip to tip and very noticeable. But no one cast a curse at him as he looped around the school and headed for the roof. He could hear shouts from the side of the school that faced the street and from the back, and when he got high enough he could look down and see two groups of wizards and witches ranging back and forth in the alley before and the yard behind the Magical Menagerie.

            Shall I take it as a compliment? he thought, as he caught a draft and was briefly able to glide in a circle that aimed him back towards the grassy space on the roof like a wind aiming an ordinary albatross back at the waves. Or shall I decide that they sent that many only because they feared Potter?

            Abruptly, the entire school was consumed in flames. An enormous blue-white fireball bloomed through the windows and tossed the glass onto the streets with a roar. The attackers backed away, screaming in shock and panic.

            Draco nearly froze in surprise, but his body had more of an instinct than that, luckily. In fact, it kept him not only aimed in the right direction but headed downwards. Draco realized after a moment that whilst his eyes could see the flames and his ears hear the sounds he would expect of an inferno, he couldn’t feel heat at all.

            Illusion, he realized as he dropped through the covering of flames and found himself in a stretch of unscarred grass. Such a good one that they probably won’t be able to convince themselves to go forwards even if they notice there’s no heat, and it buys Potter time to do something else.

            Draco came down towards the roof and cheated by changing back to human form when he was still several feet above the grass, to obviate the necessity for a landing. He dropped to all fours with a loud gasp and a jolt, but he’d done this before and rolled over twice to recover his breath and his balance.

            Then he stood up and flicked his wand at what looked like an ordinary boulder in the middle of the grass. Dozens of his students had rested there, in the forms of owls or seabirds or doves—for some reason, that was a popular Animagus form since the war, perhaps because of the association of doves with peace—and never realized that the stone their claws or webbed feet clasped was actually a solidified ward.

            The boulder split down the middle with a soft popping sound like a pupa being torn. A gray light spilled out and grew spider legs, running rapidly over the roof of the Magical Menagerie and then down the sides. Draco gave a hard smile as he watched it cover the windows and seep over the doors and then reach the foundations and lock in place like a sheet of rock. Where it ran, Potter’s illusory flames disappeared and the curses the attackers had been trying to hurl through the windows and doors stopped sparking. That ward vanished magic without collapsing in on itself through draining its own magic. It was an innovation that defense experts had been trying to achieve for years, and of course when it was achieved it was hideously expensive and only available to the rich. Draco had made sure to buy it. Vengeance at the hands of someone who resented his family was always possible, and his school meant too much for him to allow it to suffer.

            The attackers may not have known what they were facing, but they knew not to linger too long when they’d been defeated. One by one, they stepped back and Apparated out. Draco had taken the chance to study their faces, though, and had already recognized the narrow face and oddly pale hair of the woman he had known as Athena Wellward. Another tall wizard was unfamiliar, but wearing a white robe with a grasping black hand on the back, which Draco would wager was the symbol of Medea Shrivelfig.

            When they were gone, Draco leaped into the air and changed back into an albatross again. The Animagus transformation was an exception to the rules of the ward that forbade magic, as it was an exception to so many things. He glided down, whipping briefly to the side on a particularly hard current, and landed as a human on his knees in front of the door into the alley.

            Potter was waiting for him. He studied Draco with no expression on his face for long moments, which made Draco wonder if Potter was thinking of some law Draco hadn’t known existed but which forbade the existence of the ward. Then he smiled, slowly, and held out his hand. Draco clasped it and let himself be drawn to his feet.

            “Impressive,” Potter murmured. “Were you able to see them?”

            Draco nodded. “One was definitely Wellward. The other wore a white robe—“

            “With a black hand on it,” Potter completed. “Yes. Medea has become confident enough to choose her own symbol, the way Voldemort was.” He closed his eyes and stood in silent thought for long moments. “Well, keeping your association with me secret is no longer possible,” he said. “But I might save you trouble with the Ministry if I can’t save you trouble with Shrivelfig’s people. If you have a loud argument with me in public, say, and claim that you know the Minister told me to stay away from this case and—“

            “Fuck that,” said Draco, his senses set on fire by the flight and the remembrance of Potter’s illusion spell and the smile Potter had given him. “What will happen if I go in and show your Minister my memory of the attack? Shouldn’t that change his mind and demonstrate there’s actually a case here?”

            Potter exhaled slowly through parted lips. Then he said, “It might. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt, and there are other people it might convince if Kingsley won’t listen.” He extended the hand that still held Draco’s further, his fingers tracing the bones and veins of Draco’s wrist. Draco watched his eyes instead of his hand, though, because there was a triumph in the back of them he did not understand.

            “Thank you,” Potter said.

            “For supporting you in this?” Draco raised an eyebrow. “It’s a small enough thing to do, given that they would have killed me and destroyed my school if I hadn’t fought back.”

            “For supporting me,” Potter said, in a way that made it more than a confirmation. “It’s been a long time since someone’s done that.”

            His hand extended further for a moment, fingers curling down Draco’s forearm, and then retracted. “We’ll go tomorrow,” he added over his shoulder. “Kingsley will have gone home by now. In the meantime, do you want something to eat?”

*

            Harry leaned against the chair and exhaled a satisfied sigh. It had been a while since he’d eaten at his pub, as opposed to drinking there, but the food was as good as he’d remembered. He idly scrubbed a bit of bread through a wet ring on the table, making Malfoy snort. “You have no idea whether that’s beer or sweat, Potter.”

            “I’ll take my chances,” Harry responded, and popped the bread in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. The taste was dark and heavy, like the walls around them, the lowering rafters, the small crowded tables. The client was mixed Muggle and wizarding, but secretive enough that there was no need for Obliviators; subtly flicked wands under tables could accomplish as much as the flashier sort of magic. Another thing Harry liked about it was the serious business of drinking. Few wizards and witches—although women tended to stay away from this pub—had the time to stare at him when they were urgently seeking the bliss of oblivion.

            Harry took another pull of his beer and looked at Malfoy. “So how’d you get into it, anyway?” His voice had acquired a faint blur along the edges from the drink, but he knew he wasn’t actually drunk. That would mean forgetting his own name and his own disappointment with the Ministry and how his life had turned out differently than he thought it would.

            “You’ll have to be more specific.” Malfoy still had the same drink he’d started out with, and he kept staring around the pub with the fascination of a visitor to a foreign country. “There are many things I could enter.” He laid such a rich emphasis on the word, as if it were the sophisticated alternative to “get into,” that Harry had to laugh.

            “I meant the business of running an Animagus school, of course.” Harry took another drink and sighed deeply. He was finally relaxing, in a way he couldn’t when thoughts of Kingsley pulling him off the Ferguson case were whirling through his mind. “It seems an odd career choice. Just because you’re an Animagus yourself—“

            “It had nothing to do with that, actually,” Malfoy said quietly. He set his drink on the table and regarded the mug as if it held the secret of life, lacing his fingers together. “I became fascinated with the theory behind the magic first. Then I trained, and was lucky enough to have the power and perception to recognize and embrace my form.” He looked up then, blinking, though he hadn’t seemed to have any problems with the dim light before now. “I reckon you know why I’d like to be able to see people’s souls, to know more about them.”

            Harry met and held his gaze. Malfoy had a tight line at the corner of his mouth, as if he would explode if Harry mentioned the war. So Harry only gave a delicate nod and sipped again. His mind was filled with memories of a younger Malfoy, staring at him in terror as Death Eaters stood around them and pushed him to identify Harry, clinging to him as they raced through devouring flames.

            Strange how powerfully the presence of a man he hadn’t seen in thirteen years, and who had changed greatly since then, could bring it all back. Harry rarely thought about the war any more. What the Ministry had become since the war concerned him far more. He licked a bit of foam off his lip and said, “And so you feel that you know enough about people from being able to guess their Animagus form?”

            “I’m almost always right,” Malfoy said, a hint of boasting to his voice. Harry smiled. Of course. He wouldn’t be Malfoy if he didn’t boast. “I knew Athena Wellward was a swan before she did, I told you that. And seventy-five percent of my students are understandable the first time I meet them, either because they have a pronounced affinity to a certain common or symbolic animal or because I can see that they’ll never achieve the transformation.” He squinted at Harry and pointed at him with his smallest finger. “You, on the other hand—you belong to that confusing twenty-five percent. And even given that, I haven’t had as much trouble in years as I’m having with you.”

            “Really?” Harry asked, not sure if he should be surprised, flattered, or annoyed. “I’ve never tried to become an Animagus, so I can’t give you clues. If I could choose my form, I suppose I’d want to be—“ His mind blurred for a moment, and he ended up shaking his head. It had been so long since he’d thought about himself in terms of anything but his relations with the Ministry and with his friends. Trying to imagine himself as an animal was a frivolous exercise in comparison, and somewhere along the way he’d lost the ability to be good at frivolity.

            Malfoy was staring at him intently, apparently waiting for an answer. Harry covered his confusion with another sip. “Well. You said it doesn’t work like that, in any case. The form chooses the wizard.”

            “It’s not like wands, Potter.” Malfoy passed a hand over his eyes.

            “If you’re tired and don’t want to talk about this—“ Harry began.

            “Shut up,” Malfoy said, without venom. “I’m gathering my thoughts.” He tapped his fingers on the table, then nodded and leaned forwards. “Think of it like this,” he said. “We exist in the center of a maze of connections that binds us to everything around us, in more ways than most of us can comprehend.”

            “But you can, can’t you?” Harry traced his finger through another wet ring on the table. His fascination was growing, but so was the conviction that he wouldn’t be able to understand what Malfoy said. He’d never understood Hermione when she started going on about the connections to be found in law, or Arithmancy, or Ancient Runes.

            “Did I tell you to shut up or didn’t I?” Malfoy drew in a breath and then exhaled hard enough to make the foam on Harry’s mug stir. “That connection affects our minds as well as our bodies. All of us have perceptions that we don’t realize we have. Information unconsciously absorbed and never used until it’s needed, or perhaps never used at all. Stereotypes that we don’t acknowledge until we meet someone who fits them, and then they only seem to be common sense. Relationships that we find disgusting and prefer to avoid spending thoughts on, like that with the bacteria which inhabit our intestines.” He grinned when Harry stuck out his tongue, but his eyes were absent, staring past Harry’s head into an immense distance. “All those things are influencing our beliefs and our perceptions of animals, and then there are individual troubles and prejudices. I would have been opposed to becoming a ferret Animagus, whilst someone else might not have, because of my unique—experiences.” He was definitely seeing Harry now.

            Harry looked back calmly. He didn’t intend to blow up or defend Moody, who hadn’t, after all, been Moody. It was Malfoy’s choice if he wanted to get angry about that long-ago incident and accuse Harry of playing some part in it.

            Apparently, Malfoy didn’t want to. He relaxed and turned to watch a tall, dark-haired man eating alone at a table, definitely the best-looking bloke in the room. His voice was a murmur now, so Harry had to lean forwards and concentrate to hear him. “Perceptions of animals interact with experiences with those animals and experiences with and perceptions of the self, along with the delusions that everyone has about him- or herself.” He laughed shortly. “Long association is sometimes enough to make the difference, like the student I had who was a horse Animagus largely because her father bred them.”

            “And that—any chance encounter can change someone’s Animagus form?” Harry asked.

            “You misunderstand me still, Potter.” Malfoy rubbed his ear. “No. It was more that horses were the first animal to enter her awareness. Even before she was properly conscious of herself as a human being, she knew about them, and she compared all other animals to them. She knew as much about them as you know about flying, and in the same instinctive manner. So there was really no choice for her but to become one. They were her most powerfully symbolic animal. On the other hand, if her father had bred them but she’d been raised in a city, she would have had no particular predisposition to becoming a horse.”

            Harry stared at Malfoy’s profile. The man was looking past him again, his face set in a faint frown, as if the process he was describing sounded as bewildering to him as it was to Harry.

            “That’s insanely complicated,” Harry said at last. “I can’t imagine how you manage to contain that much information in your head.”

            Malfoy gave him a faint, pleased glance. “I think that’s the first time you’ve admitted I could do something you couldn’t.”

            “The first time I admitted it, but not the first time I’ve thought it.” Harry took another pull of his beer and gave in to his curiosity. Malfoy had said it was hard to peg Harry’s Animagus form, but not impossible. “What do you think I would be? Something with wings, since I love flying?”

            Malfoy sighed as if he were put upon, but Harry saw the brilliant shine to his eyes, and suspected there was little he would like better than being asked for his expertise. “I’ve had so many thoughts about you that I can’t remember them all. Wolf and leopard and lion, snake and, yes, a bird. But you aren’t defined by any particular set of interests, Potter. You might as well say that you’ll become a dog because of your protective instincts as an Auror.”

            Harry flinched, then told himself it was only because bad memories always became more pressing when he was drunk. “I wouldn’t like to be a dog, I think,” he said, memories of a large black dog running joyously through King’s Cross Station following him.

            Malfoy glanced at him curiously, but didn’t ask why, in favor of taking on a lecturing tone. “I told you, you can’t choose your Animagus form,” he said. “If you were a dog, then you would simply have to accept that you were a dog and live with it.”

            “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have any plans to study and become an Animagus, then.” Harry finished his beer and started to rise. He should go to bed soon. He’d been up since early this morning and worrying over the Ferguson case before that, so he hadn’t slept well.

            “Oh, no, Potter.” Malfoy caught his hand when Harry started to drop some Galleons on the table for the pub owner. He had bright, lively eyes that made Harry shudder. He should have known there would be bad consequences from Malfoy’s not drinking. “We’ve talked about me and how I came to be where I was. What about you?”

            “What is there to talk about?” Harry shot a narrow glance around the room, and found too many eyes focused on him for his liking, though not all of them belonged to wizards. Some were simply interested Muggles watching the man who had been stopped by another man. Still, he didn’t like them watching him. He sat back down. “You know the two most important things about me, that I’m an Auror and that I prefer men to women.”

            Malfoy snorted and released Harry’s hand. “Are you this rude with anyone who tries to learn about you?”

            Harry hesitated. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down and spoken about himself with anyone. Ron was still a good friend, but he’d grown more distant as he rose up the ranks of the Aurors and started a family with Hermione. Hermione shared even less of Harry’s daily life, since she was involved in the study of magical law and the internal politics of both the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Weasley family. They knew everything important about him, too, and they hadn’t thought to ask him the reason behind things like his and Kingsley’s growing estrangement.

            Be fair, he thought, and lifted a hand to signal for another beer. You didn’t exactly try to tell them, either. You made up excuses about how they were too busy and you didn’t really need to talk to them because it didn’t matter.

            But here was someone who wanted to know, if only to pass the time.

            “I’ve learned that I’m no good at living in a normal world,” Harry said. He waited for Malfoy to laugh or say something like Who is? but he remained silent and attentive, moving the mug around with one finger, so Harry had to fill the silence with more words. “I have to have someone to rescue and someone to conquer, or at least a daring deed to perform. There’s too much—there’s so much I want to do, and it’s never done.” He shook his head. “At one point I wanted a family and a life outside the Ministry, but I can’t bear with either of those.”

            “So there’s no boyfriend?” Malfoy kept his voice low, probably because he didn’t want to attract more attention himself but perhaps out of consideration for Harry’s privacy. Harry knew which one he preferred to imagine. And unlike the people he met on most jobs, Malfoy wasn’t a victim or an enemy, so it shouldn’t matter if Harry had a mistaken perception of him.

            “No,” Harry said. “And no prospect of one, either.” He had to pause a moment and think about it, because unlike some people, he didn’t keep obsessive count of how many days had passed since he’d last got fucked. He was somewhat startled to realize how long it had been. “Not for three years.”

            Malfoy stared at him. “I would say that your Animagus form is a turtle,” he said at last, “considering how infrequently they mate, but somehow you don’t strike me as the kind to sink into your shell.”

            Harry laughed and shook his head. “I have all the mistress and boyfriend I could ever wish for in my job,” he said. His drink arrived, and he nodded to the woman who’d carried it and handed her a few Galleons. She took in the expression on his face and retreated with commendable speed. “It screws me over regularly.”

            “But something must have happened to make you that way,” Malfoy insisted. “I mean, I always knew you were a hero and not good for much of anything else—“

            Harry smiled. It felt almost natural to have Malfoy insulting him again, which meant he didn’t mind it as much as he would from anyone else.

            “—but an obsession with saving people and doing nothing else doesn’t happen on its own. When did you give up other dreams?”

            “When I realized nothing else mattered as much to me,” said Harry simply. He wondered if Malfoy had made a go as a storyteller before he started running an Animagus school. He was certainly anxious to attribute motives and reasons to Harry where there weren’t necessarily any motives or any reasons. “Look, it’s not some tragic decline. I decided I’d rather be good as an Auror than be social. And even when you’re a hero, if you turn down enough invitations, sooner or later people stop inviting you.”

            “It’s not that I think a hero has to be social,” Malfoy snapped. He sounded as if Harry had personally offended him. Of course, if understanding people mattered to him and he was running into a mental wall concerning Harry, that was probably enough to annoy him. “It’s that you admitted your job fucks you over, and yet you still serve the Ministry. Why not find something else to do if you’re prevented from accomplishing what most matters to you?”

            Harry took a deep breath and drank again. But that didn’t help much, because no convenient answers came to him, and Malfoy still sat there, staring at him and waiting.

            “Because leaving the Ministry at this point would mean making a new place and name for myself,” Harry said, “outside a hierarchy that I understand even if I hate it, and I’m afraid.”

            Malfoy happened to be taking a drink as Harry said that, and he choked. Harry eyed him, wondering if he should rise to his feet and pound the other man on the back, but Malfoy shook his head and set his mug down hard.

            “I don’t believe that,” he said.

            “I don’t have any other truth to offer you,” said Harry, irritated for the first time since they’d come to the pub.

            “Oh, yes, I can see you believe it,” said Malfoy. “I just don’t believe that’s the real truth. I told you, I deal in perceptions. I’ve had students who see themselves as cowardly or weak when that’s not true at all. They’re harder to persuade than the ones who think they’re brave when they aren’t. For some reason, success is harder for some people to see than failure.” He leaned in until his cheek nearly touched Harry’s. Harry shifted uneasily in his seat, but the closeness of their faces didn’t seem to matter to Malfoy, not next to the chance to persuade Harry. His voice was a whispering hiss. “Leave the Ministry. Do something else. Find a boyfriend who’s interested in giving you regular sex. Take a month’s holiday and celebrate with the Weasels. Open a private investigator’s office and find out if people will still pay you for saving them.” He grinned suddenly. “Become an Animagus.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I have no interest in doing so.”

            “Why?”

            “There’s every chance that it wouldn’t be useful in my job,” said Harry, “and you said the training can take years. I don’t have the time to spare from—“

            “From your job, yes.” Malfoy sat back in his seat with a martyred expression on his face. “You have good intuition, Potter. What you lack is common sense. And intuition can be a help in its own right when you’re trying to change forms. You’ll do something because it feels right and then find a way to explain it later.”

            Harry hesitated. That did sound awfully like his process when he was solving cases.

            But he still didn’t have the desire, time, or money to spare to become an Animagus. He finished his drink and stood up decisively. “I have to get some sleep,” he said, “and you need to go home. Will you need protection?”



            Malfoy stood, too. “No. That magic-sapping ward I showed you isn’t the only one on my school, and it’ll hold everything safe until I remove it, in any case. My students and I can still transform, but no one can practice any other magic in the school.”

            “Malfoy.” Harry waited until Malfoy met his gaze. “Councilor Ferguson should have been safe, too, and he wasn’t.”

            Malfoy made an impatient little gesture. “I know that, Potter, but I don’t plan to spend the night anywhere a scorpion can reach me.”

            He paused, waiting. Harry had no idea what he wanted. For Harry to walk in front of him? For Harry to say farewell?

            Then Malfoy murmured, “Of course it would be too much to ask you for a kiss in public, when you’ve gone to such great lengths to preserve the silence about who you like to date.”

            Harry smiled. “It’s too much to ask for a kiss right now,” he said. “In public has nothing to do with it. Good night, Malfoy.” He nodded companionably to Malfoy and walked out the door of the pub, leaving him blinking. Apparently, in his world, a shared drink and conversation and a bit of tension were enough to share a bed.

            Not me, Harry thought, his mind already returning to the evidence they’d collected and might be able to use to persuade Kingsley and Kingsley’s advisers. I’ll need a little more persuasion and courting than that.

            Of course, he wouldn’t find time for it, because the moment this case ended he’d begin another. But it was a pleasant fantasy to accompany him home and into the loo.

*

            Draco stood with his hands behind his back and his posture absolutely straight in the room he’d been shown to when he appeared in the Ministry, a room with a broad table where the Minister and his most important advisers sat. One by one they were looking into the Pensieve that contained his memories of the attack on the Magical Menagerie. For the most part, they made no sound, though sometimes one of them would grunt as they pulled their heads out and began to write on the parchments sprawled in front of them. Draco watched their faces instead. They were pale and grim, and sometimes they exchanged glances that spoke of deeper and more hidden meanings, though Draco couldn’t read those.

            The funniest part was when one of them turned around, glaring, and tried to intimidate him. Animagus training, if completed, was good for many things, and one of them was absolute poise and self-control over the body. Draco had done far harder things when learning to be an albatross, especially when learning to fly, than endure a few glares from people who wanted to make him less important than he was. He looked back, unimpressed, and one by one they turned away.

            Potter leaned against the far wall in almost the same posture as Draco, with his face as stiff and neutral, though his arms hung down at his sides instead of being clasped behind his back. Draco considered altering his own stance for a moment, wondering if he looked defensive in comparison to Potter, and then discarded the idea. He liked this position because it arranged his arms in the shape of folded wings, and his own appreciation for that outweighed an untrue perception in the minds of his enemies.

            Besides, it was untrue. Draco was quietly confident in the value of his memories as evidence. He’d distinctly seen the black hand on the back of the white robe.

            Finally the large wizard drowning in hair to the right of the Minister pushed the Pensieve away from him, indicating that he’d viewed the memories and was done. Minister Shacklebolt cleared his throat. Draco noted in interest that that sound brought more tension to Potter’s stance, rather than less.

            “Well, Mr. Malfoy,” said Shacklebolt, “what you bring to us is remarkable.”

            “But,” Draco said helpfully, keeping his outrage so far beneath the surface that it didn’t affect his tone.

            “Pardon?” Shacklebolt frowned at him.

            “You were about to add a ‘but’ to the end of that sentence, telling me why my memories are remarkable but not enough,” Draco said. “I was providing it for you, so that you didn’t need to exhaust yourself talking.”

            He thought he caught a darting smile from Potter before his face froze again. Though the smile had a touch of bitterness in it, it was interesting nonetheless. Draco spared a moment to frown at Potter. Life would be so much easier if he could only tell what the Auror’s Animagus form was. Overnight he had considered the forms of owl, hare, crow, and dolphin in turn, and had to reject each of them for different reasons.

            “Quite.” Shacklebolt’s dry tone drew Draco’s eyes back to him. “They are not enough to arrest anyone.”

            “I don’t see why not,” said Draco. “If nothing else, Athena Wellward, or the woman who calls herself that, is clearly attacking my school. With her is one wizard wearing the emblem of Medea Shrivelfig.”

            “We’ll look for this Athena Wellward,” said Shacklebolt. “But it’s likely that that’s not her real name. And we can’t arrest her until we find her. As for the other, those wearing Shrivelfig’s emblem have so far caused mostly harmless trouble. This would be an exception. And we have no idea who the wizard is, either. We can’t inquire after those who might have been wearing that emblem in Diagon Alley of a Tuesday afternoon and arrest them on principle.”

            “Would you have made the same qualification about someone who wore Death Earth robes and mask during the war?” Draco asked, simply because he was curious.

            “The followers of You-Know-Who were known troublemakers,” said the hairy wizard. He shifted ostentatiously, and Draco caught a glimpse of the heavy bone ornament hanging around his neck. He was a member of the Wizengamot, then, given the crossed wands on the ornament. “The followers of Medea Shrivelfig are not present in such numbers yet, and they are capable of pranks and high spirits.”

            “Then don’t arrest all of them,” said Draco. “Just arrest the one who attacked my school.”

            “It’s not clear that he threw any curses,” said the Councilor.

            “Yes, it is,” said Draco, wondering whose memories he had watched. “He was the one who hurled the spell that shook my school like an earthquake and began to crack the foundations. I appreciate that you may be thinking of the trouble and panic such an arrest would cause, Councilor, but it would be far more trouble if the Magical Menagerie burned down, or if the criminals found the letters and documents that I assume they attacked the school in order to take.”

            “Nevertheless,” said the Councilor, and then didn’t bother saying what part of Draco’s speech he’d appended the “nevertheless” to. He stroked his beard and looked at Minister Shacklebolt, who took the hint and seized and turned the conversation.

            “We thank you for your help, Mr. Malfoy. We will contact you if we learn anything.”

            “Do you need information from me on this attack’s connection to the Ferguson case?” Draco asked quietly.

            The Minister winced. The hairy Councilor leaned towards him, as if he wanted to see the Minister’s face as much as Draco did in that moment. Shacklebolt foiled both of them by putting a hand over his eyes and shaking his head. “I know only one source that you could have got that information about a connection between the cases from,” he said, and dropped his hand to stare towards Potter. “I told you that you were off the case, Harry.”

            “I know that.” Potter didn’t appear at all startled, as Draco was, that an attack on his information had been turned into an attack on Potter. He stood up straighter, but that was the only change he made to his posture as he faced his superior. His face was perfectly blank and calm still, and his voice no more than mildly polite. “But it seemed only right to visit Mr. Malfoy when he told me that he suspected Gully of more than simply using his school for Animagus training. And there is more, sir. He mentioned the letters that he discovered, containing information about Medea Shrivelfig and Gully’s and Wellward’s association with her. Those should be read over for clues—“

            “And they will be,” said Shacklebolt, “if it turns out that we can uncover the existence of Wellward in the first place. But there is no need to rush this case and accuse innocent people.” He had half-risen to his feet and was staring over the table at Potter, his gaze heavy with import that Draco couldn’t read any more than he could read the glances the advisers had exchanged earlier. Maybe that was why he couldn’t grasp Potter’s Animagus form from mere observation, he thought in irritation. There was simply too much he didn’t know about him, especially his work environment over the past few years. “Don’t you agree, Harry?”

            “No,” Potter said.

            He didn’t lay any particular emphasis on the word, but this time Draco could make some guess at the meaning of the charged silence that filled the air between the two men. Potter was defying a direct order, and he did it without a trace of guilt or dissembling. The Minister might just have lost control over one of his most potent weapons, and everyone in the room knew it.

            Draco found his nostrils flaring and his gaze raking down Potter’s body with new appreciation. If Potter had merely become cynical and jaded over the years, then Draco could have discarded him as a source of interest. But he had his old ability to set the world on end. That now he was using it on those who were supposedly his friends and allies only made Draco want him the more.

            “Your Minister has told you there is not enough of a connection between these two cases to warrant investigation,” said the hairy Councilor suddenly. Potter’s gaze shifted towards him, and Draco didn’t think he was the only one who noticed the flicker in Potter’s eyes, though he might have been the only one who realized its true importance. Left alone, the Minister might have managed Potter, who still had a trace of respect for him. But Potter disliked this Councilor and would resent his attempt at interference. Shacklebolt had lost the opportunity to talk Potter back into serfdom. “I think that if his word is good enough for the Wizengamot, it ought to be good enough for you.”

            “You would think that,” said Potter.

            Only those words, but they made both the hairy Councilor and Shacklebolt flush. “You make mistakes when you go too fast, Harry,” said Shacklebolt, his voice holding so much warning that Draco nearly winced. That wasn’t the right way to handle Potter either, right now. He would lock his legs if someone tried to drive him. He needed to be lured.

            There, Draco thought suddenly, feeling, despite the situation, the brilliant flash that often accompanied a particularly important insight. There, right there, is a glimpse of Potter’s soul. He needs to be worked with or coaxed or tempted into doing something by himself, and that means he’s an animal who will share the same quality.

            I wonder, did the Minister ever know that about Potter and then forget the lesson, or did he manage to handle Potter by luck alone all these years?

            “You need to give me your word that you won’t pursue either the Ferguson case or the attack on Malfoy’s shop,” said the Minister. His voice was low but shaking with tension. “I need that much from you, Harry.”

            “You’re using my name too much,” said Potter.

            “I need it.”

            “Too bad.” Potter spoke coolly, unmoved by the desperation Draco could hear working beneath the surface of the Minister’s voice. “You can’t have it.”

            “Then you are suspended without pay for a week,” said the Minister, and banged his hand down in the middle of the table, so that the Pensieve holding Draco’s memories wavered and nearly fell over. Draco quietly Summoned the Pensieve. No one appeared to notice, too focused on what was unfolding between Potter and Shacklebolt. “At the end of that time, you and I are going to talk to each other and figure out what kinds of cases you can be trusted with in the future, since you disobeyed me this time.”

            Potter bowed, inflexible, stubborn, and moved out of the room without looking back. Draco joined him swiftly. It was a bad idea to claim Potter as an ally in front of the most important people in the British wizarding world, perhaps, but Potter seemed to be the only one willing to investigate the attack that had nearly cost Draco his school.

            Stubborn, Draco thought, as he watched Potter pacing ahead of him. A goat? Maybe. But I don’t know that he fits the other characteristics of goats as shown in the popular imagination…

*

            Harry had anticipated this day for a long time, the day that Kingsley would finally be angry enough to reprimand him sharply in front of other people. He supposed he should be more upset than he was. But his anticipation had lessened that pain, and so had the fact that many small ruptures had occurred between him and Kingsley before this, loosening the chains that bound them.

            He was not what he had been fifteen years ago. Kingsley was not what he had been. The Order of the Phoenix was long ago enough that both of them considered themselves defined by other things now. Harry only had to show the Minister what those other things were for him and wait for Kingsley to decide if he wanted to accept them or not.

            He will, once I solve the Ferguson case. Harry paused near the fireplace that would take him home and studied one of the paintings that hung in the Ministry Atrium, depicting what was supposedly the battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore in his fifth year. The painting was little more than a chaotic series of streaks, white and blue and yellow, making it look as if the dim figures in the center stood in a maelstrom of lightning. I’m still a warrior, though not as mighty as they were. I want to show Kingsley that there’s still room for a warrior in the world.

            First step was to get the documents from Malfoy and decide on the angle to pursue. There were certain spells Harry had researched and studied in his spare time, or dreamed up during those long evenings at the pub when he didn’t have anything else to think about, that should let him start tracking down Athena Wellward, or the woman who bore that name. And then—well, he would see what he would see.

            He turned to Malfoy and nodded to him. “Where’s the nearest open Floo to your school?” he asked. “Or should we Apparate instead?”

            “Are you in a particular hurry?” Malfoy wore the same intense introspective expression he had during their conversation in the pub last night. Harry wondered what the reason for it was this time. He had done nothing more than pick up a pinch of Floo powder and hold it between finger and thumb, ready to use.

            “Well, I wanted to retrieve the letters you spoke of from you, as well as any other evidence you have of Gully’s possible illegal activities,” said Harry, surprised Malfoy wouldn’t realize that. “But since you said that ward prevents magical access to your school as long as it exists, I thought a Floo wouldn’t work.”

            Malfoy raised his eyebrows slightly. “What makes you think that I’d surrender the documents to you?”

            “Because then you have someone to blame when the Ministry comes looking for you.” Harry studied Malfoy more closely. Maybe he’d said something offensive to Malfoy when he was defying Kingsley. It wouldn’t be the first time Harry had done that. He tended to pay attention to his tirades when his anger was roused, not the exact shape of his words or the bad memories they might bring up for other people. “I mean, since your involvement in this case is ended—“

            “I want vengeance,” said Malfoy. He laid a hand on Harry’s arm, not seeming to think the gesture strange at all, which only made it stranger to Harry. “I’m going to join you in the investigation.”

            Harry snorted. “You’re not an Auror. What makes you think you’ll have anything to add? And don’t say your Animagus form,” he added, when Malfoy opened his mouth. “My enemies know about it, so it’s not useful for spying or sneaking up on them.”

            “I was going to say,” Malfoy said, his fingers tightening on Harry’s arm until they were squeezing a ridge of flesh and cloth, “that I’m extremely observant, used to figuring out what Animagus form someone would take from a few clues about the state of their soul and their inclinations and history.”

            “Which animal am I, then?”

            “You’re the hardest person to divine that for I’ve ever met,” said Malfoy, and his face twitched and convulsed, as if he suspected Harry was being hard to guess on purpose. “But that doesn’t mean I’m as in the dark about everyone. And I can at least predict Wellward’s and Gully’s movements. There might be other former students of mine among Shrivelfig’s minions. She seems to have had an idea of using my school as a recruiting ground.”

            “And you don’t like that,” said Harry, hearing the ice spread along the surface of Malfoy’s last words.

            “Oh, Potter.” The pinching fingers eased their hold a little, smoothing down the cloth and soothing the flesh. “I hate that.”

            Harry thought about it for a moment. He supposed that he could use an ally, especially someone who knew to get out of the way when the dangerous magic started and allow Harry to handle himself, the way Malfoy had when he’d flown to the roof of the Magical Menagerie to trigger that ward. Besides, half the Aurors he’d worked with hadn’t had Malfoy’s power—he must be magically powerful to master the Animagus form—or observational skills, or intelligence, though Harry was basing his estimate of the bloke’s intelligence solely on their conversation in the pub last night. And considering the tactics their enemies had used so far, he could use someone who understood Animagi.

            “All right, Malfoy,” he said, and when a wide grin spread across Malfoy’s face, added, “But you’ll do what I tell you to when I tell you to do it, and get out of the way immediately if someone tosses a curse at you.”

            “I’m not stupid, and I have no desire to be cursed.” Malfoy patted Harry’s arm once before he withdrew his hand. “I know to leave Dark magic up to the experts.”

            There was a time, Harry thought, when he would have been unable to imagine Malfoy saying that unironically, but after seeing what Malfoy had made of his life, and knowing what he’d made of his own, he had to admit he’d probably spent more time in proximity to Dark magic than Malfoy in the last decade.

            And I’m about to spend more, he thought as he and Malfoy strode out of the Atrium, preparing to Apparate. Not that I think I’ll tell Kingsley that. Or even Malfoy, at least not until I see how he reacts to the Seeking spells.

*

            Potter looked through the letters quickly, Draco noted, his eyes studying them so fast that Draco might have thought he was skimming them if he didn’t know better. Potter put them down and fired a series of rapid questions at him that tested Draco’s own knowledge of the letters and his students.

            “Why would Gully leave these here, when he must have realized that they would be revealing to anyone who looked?”

            “He didn’t expect anyone to look,” said Draco. He resisted the temptation to add an “of course”; obviously, Potter didn’t find this as obvious as he did. “I keep many effects that my students leave here, sometimes because they go traveling after they’ve mastered their Animagus transformations or because their families don’t approve of their dedicating so much time and effort to the study in the first place. I guarantee my students’ privacy. When Gully realized that you’d visited me, he must have said something that spurred the attack. I would guess the attack was partially to retrieve the documents, after all.”

            Potter nodded, stirring through the letters with one hand like someone stirring the faded ashes of a fire with a poker. “And this ‘love affair’ Wellward mentions in the third letter. What do you think that refers to? Were they actually sleeping together?”

            Draco gave a grim little smile. “Someone actually dangerous and perceptive, and someone as nasty and short-tempered as Wellward? I doubt it.”

            “Stranger things have happened.” Potter gave him an annoyed glance, as if Draco’s pronouncement about his two students was a denial of all strange things happening in the world ever.

            “Yes, they have,” said Draco, and controlled his temper with a stern effort. “But I trust my perceptions of those two. They’re mismatched. The love affair refers to something else, and based on what she says in the seventh letter, I’d wager it’s to do with their service to Shrivelfig.”

            He expected Potter to hunt through the letters to track down his allusion, but Potter opened his mouth and hissed deeply instead, as though Draco had insulted him. His eyes were glowing, though, and Draco doubted animation in Potter was a bad thing. When he was feeling insulted, as he had with Shacklebolt, he retreated into stubborn taciturnity.

            And that’s another thing about him, Draco thought suddenly, another clue to his animal form. He can be loud when he’s provoked, but he’s often silent the rest of the time. What animal do I know that is stubborn and silent most of the time?

            A giraffe? Maybe, but Draco had never actually trained any giraffe Animagi, so he didn’t know for certain.

            “Yes,” said Potter. “‘The love greater than any man knows,’ Wellward calls it. And one of the slogans that Shrivelfig and her lot throw around is the love of a lady for her people. They’re drawing on legends of Morgana le Fay and Nimue and the like, witches who defeated wizards. They want to convince those who will listen that a Dark Lady could succeed where a Dark Lord failed.”

            Draco snorted. “That’s ridiculous. Who listens to these kinds of things?”

            “Evidently, people like Septimus Gully.” Potter turned a burning gaze on him. “Do you know why he might have wanted to follow Shrivelfig? What was the point of it all? Why would someone like you describe him want to do that, rather than use his obvious intelligence and magical power to achieve something grander?”

            Draco leaned back and thought seriously about the question for a moment. The first thing he had been inclined to believe when Potter brought him word of the Ferguson murder was that he had misjudged Gully, or that Shrivelfig and Wellward had corrupted him. But it wasn’t that long ago that Draco had trained Gully, and his memories of his scorpion student were still sharp. Besides, the letters were proof that he had entered the school in the first place at the behest of the witch he followed. If there was any corruption, it had existed before he entered the Magical Menagerie.

            He’d just been bragging to Potter what a keen observer he was, and how he could understand the hidden motives of people around him. Could he solve this puzzle?

            He closed his eyes and recalled Septimus Gully. An inquisitive student, who had asked questions that others hadn’t thought of about the Animagus training method and pushed Draco to tell him why and how the magic worked, rather than simply accepting that it did. The transformation had not been a source of wonder to him, Draco thought, but something more like science to Muggles. He had known he could perform it once he received the proper training, and he had been confident he could understand it.

            Draco did not have that attitude himself. Even after ten years, the ability to grow wings was still a source of pride and pleasure. And that made it harder for him to understand Gully.

            But if he could see good qualities in Potter and want to know more about him, then he could certainly do the same thing with Gully. He tapped a store of observations he’d never had use for before now, and thought of everything from the way Gully ate his meals to the way he frequently looked guilty when caught writing letters to Wellward instead of working on the exercises Draco put him through.

            “I think,” said Draco slowly at last, aware of the intensely listening silence from Potter as he spoke, “that he was looking for something he could believe in. He had one of those minds that pull all the mystery from the world, and he couldn’t be contented with the world of problems that remained. He wanted something odd, wondrous—something, if you’ll excuse the obvious pun, magical. He didn’t find that in my training or in his Hogwarts education, that’s certain. For some reason, he found it when he listened to the doctrine Medea Shrivelfig and her kind preached.” He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you why he chose that doctrine out of all the ones he met to follow, but he obviously did.”

            Potter nodded and closed his eyes, tilting his head back. Draco admired the line of his throat in abstracted silence for a moment.

            “The answer might lie in his childhood, or in the approach that Shrivelfig first made to him, or any number of things.” Potter sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “Well, damn. We have the information I was looking for, the connection between Gully and Shrivelfig, but I doubt even this will convince Shacklebolt.”

            “Do you have to convince him?” Draco returned to something that had been bothering him since he watched Potter in the Minister’s office. “Follow Gully and catch him doing something dastardly. Then you can arrest him and present this case to your Minister as a done deal.”

*

            Harry smiled in spite of himself. The solution Malfoy spoke of was one he had actually envisioned at one point, and a younger Harry Potter would have tried it and been scorned for his pains. But he had those bad experiences to make him wiser now.

            “It does matter,” he answered. “If I’m acting outside the Minister’s purview, I can’t be trusted to obey the code of the Aurors and the laws themselves. I’ll find Gully, yes, and catch him with evidence that the Minister can’t ignore, but I’ll wait to present him with that evidence. The Minister has to be the one who makes the arrest.”

            “I don’t understand why.” Malfoy folded his arms and gave Harry a pointed look, as if he wanted to remind him that these were the people who had attacked his shop.

            Harry had no intention of forgetting that. Malfoy had proven a more trustworthy ally than any he’d had in the past several years. “Because I want to protect people, but I also want to go on protecting them,” he explained. “I challenged Kingsley today only because I thought there was a chance he might back down and keep me on the case, let me do the job. But I’ve pushed him too far this time. If I want to go back on the job and help other people as an Auror, then I need to wait until he calms down.”

            “And in the meantime, investigate and try to find the evidence that you think you need to convict Gully.”

            “That’s right.” Harry cocked his head inquisitively. There was the heaviness of disbelief in Malfoy’s voice, as if he didn’t understand why Harry would want to find Gully, and had in fact given up his desire for vengeance.

            “When you could make more money, and have more prestige, and probably save more people, if you were working outside the Ministry structure.” Malfoy leaned forwards. “You’re stubborn, yes, but the Minister is more so, and he has the power. You ought to see that you’ll get along better if you make your way outside the Ministry.”

            “I won’t become a vigilante,” said Harry sharply. He could feel a worm of guilt stirring at the base of his spine. There had been a time, drunk and bitter, when he’d made the same suggestion to Hermione that Malfoy was making to him. She had destroyed him with swift, precise arguments about how Harry Potter and the Ministry at odds would lead to a weakened Minister at best, a civil war at worst. There were still fanatic champions of Harry Potter who would do frightening things if they thought he’d been insulted.

            “I was talking about a private investigator, Potter, not a vigilante.” Malfoy took a step towards him. “Do you think the existence of my Animagus school challenges Hogwarts? Of course not, but I do exist outside that structure. There are certain rules I have to obey, but they’re not the rules of Hogwarts’s Headmistress.”

            “But you still have to obey some rules,” Harry parroted back at him. He could feel his heart beating, the beat racing through his ears and his blood, and he didn’t know why he felt so frantic.

            “Of course I do,” said Malfoy. “But I was offered a position as the Transfiguration professor when I became fully trained. It seems that McGonagall has never found herself a satisfactory one since she had to abandon the job to become Headmistress. I refused, because I knew I could never obey all the rules in Hogwarts and still be myself.” He reached out and poked Harry in the chest with one finger, a gesture that Harry tried to feel insulted about. He failed. “You could do the same thing.”

            Harry licked his lips and glanced away. For the first time in a long time, the apathetic shell that he’d wrapped himself in, the shell of cynicism that said of course the Ministry would screw him over and he would just have to put up with it, cracked and a shaft of light flooded in. But he couldn’t actually be certain that it would ever happen, so he shrugged stiffly and said, “With the Ministry’s authority behind me, at least I can make arrests. If I was an investigator, then I might be able to prove the crimes to my satisfaction, but I couldn’t be sure the criminals were actually punished.”

            “There are ways around that as well,” Malfoy said calmly.

            Harry glared at him. “Now you are talking about being a vigilante.”

            “So what if I am?” Malfoy grinned suddenly, and the dash of the brilliant smile across his face was shocking. “You’d be better-suited to it than you are to work as an Auror. You’re stubborn and short-tempered and have to work hard to control yourself. You have to be coaxed instead of prodded or driven.”

            “You’ve been collecting observations about me.” Harry shook his head, a bit of amusement mixing with his indignation. “You’re still not going to learn what you need about me to determine what my Animagus form would be.”

            “How do you know?”

            “Because I don’t want to become an Animagus, so I think my desire will affect your perception,” Harry said. “You did mention that something like that might happen.”

            “Everyone has a potential animal form, even if they don’t want the training.” Malfoy had his arms folded now, as if he thought that Harry was mad not to want the specialized training that he provided.

            “But some find it hard to see,” said Harry. “I prefer to be blind to mine.” He drew his wand and spoke quickly, because otherwise Malfoy might try to continue the argument, and Harry didn’t want to do that. He’d already confessed more of his personal anxieties to Malfoy in the past few days than he had to anyone in the past few years, and he still didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he trusted the git. “Now, I do have a chance to find Septimus Gully since I’ve touched one of his letters. A better chance than I did this morning, at least.”

            “Why?” Malfoy allowed himself to be diverted, though the heavy tone of his voice said he was reluctant to allow it to happen.

            “Because I’ve handled a piece of paper he’s touched more than once,” said Harry, his eyes falling shut. “And I’ve read words addressed to him, by a person who was thinking intensely of him.” The pressure of the magic built and built in the back of his head, making him breathe harshly, making him waver and struggle on his feet. “Those are both good things to carry a trace of his presence, to make him—ah!”

            And he felt the tearing that always happened, centered somewhere around the middle of his chest, as the incantation of the Seeking Spell spilled of its own free will past his lips. He dropped to his knees, the magic beating him like a rug as it flooded out of him. Pain made dizzy rings circle his vision when he opened his eyes, but Harry could bear that; it was the most minor of the physical sensations that were likely to assail him after the Seeking Spell. He knelt where he’d fallen, breathing quietly, eyes tracking the white flitting shape that streaked away from him towards the east.

            “What the fuck was that?”

            At least Malfoy sounded sufficiently impressed. Harry grinned tiredly and reached out for a moment, intending to clasp the leg of the table on which Gully’s letters lay spread and let that help him up. Instead, he caught Malfoy’s hand. Malfoy pulled him effortlessly to his feet and stood staring at him, not releasing Harry’s wrist. Harry raised an eyebrow, but let the strangeness pass unremarked for now.

            “That’s called a Seeking Spell,” he said. “Spectacular, wasn’t it?”

            “That was Dark magic,” said Malfoy. His hand tightened as if he would crush the truth out of Harry. “Do you want to tell me exactly why the top Auror in the Ministry is using Dark Arts?”

            “Really?” Harry widened his eyes innocently. “You could tell it was Dark magic? How?”

            “The pain it caused you,” said Malfoy. “And the way it made the skin around my temples tighten when it flew.” His mouth was set into a hard line. “Now, Potter. Tell me, or I’ll simply go to the Minister and render your little rebellion worthless.”

            “I thought you wanted vengeance?” Harry knew he was pushing, and perhaps as unwisely as he’d pushed against Kingsley’s edict, but he really didn’t understand Malfoy. One moment he was suggesting that Harry defy the Ministry, and the next moment he appeared to believe that the Ministry was the only thing that could control Harry. “You won’t get it if the Minister locks me up now.”

            “I think you matter more than to become a sacrifice to this case,” said Malfoy bluntly. His hand moved from Harry’s wrist to his shoulder and squeezed painfully. “You can’t use Dark Arts simply to find a criminal. What’s next? Will you use the Unforgivables because someone annoys you?”

            “I did that during the war,” said Harry, but it was surprisingly hard to meet Malfoy’s gaze. He shifted his feet and sighed noisily. “Listen, Malfoy, this spell works. It keeps me from having to charge headlong into dangerous situations, and it locates people who might have so many contacts or plans that they can easily hide whilst they inflict more torment and pain on their victims. The only one it hurts is me.”

            “Still not acceptable,” said Malfoy, and the hold of his hand on Harry’s shoulder tightened until he was sure his face was white. Combined with the haze that still swam around his vision, it made Harry feel nauseated. But he composed his expression into stubborn lines and glared back at Malfoy. “What does it do?”

            “It turns part of my soul into a Seeker,” said Harry reluctantly. “That part of my soul flies after the person I want to find and briefly embeds itself into him. Then it brings me back a sense of where he is, including a picture of his location.”

            Malfoy hissed, and his hands ground down until Harry cried out, softly. Malfoy immediately stopped pressing down, but his arms remained looped around Harry’s shoulders as he moved closer, his voice low and passionate. “And the piece of your torn soul reunites with you after a certain period of time?”

            Harry nodded. His eyes were watering with tears, but he blinked them away. He wouldn’t lift a hand to wipe them off his face. That would be like admitting weakness to Malfoy. “It always comes back. I don’t cause myself permanent harm—“

            “No, you’re only splitting your soul because you’re an idiot.” Malfoy’s voice was shaking now. He looked away and shut his eyes, his lashes standing out in pale lines against his even paler skin. “How long have you done this?”

            “For years, but not often,” said Harry, thinking that Malfoy had asked the question with the most inconvenient phrasing he could possibly have chosen. “A few of my harder arrests—“

            “Should never have happened at all.” Malfoy stepped away from him, his breath racing, and Harry was certain he had changed his mind about helping Harry after all, that the Dark Arts would be a bargain-breaker. But instead he opened his eyes and glared at Harry. “I want your word that you’ll never use that spell again.”

            “Or what?” Harry frowned. “You’ll tell the Ministry? How are you going to know that I’m using it after this case?”

            “Or I’ll cast a spell I know, which is perfectly legal, and constrain and bind your magic,” Malfoy said. His wand was in his hand; Harry hadn’t even seen it move. “It’ll make you incapable of ever using a spell that powerful and Dark again. Of course, it’ll also keep you from some of the more powerful magic that you might use to arrest criminals and save their victims, but that’s the consequences.”

            Harry felt his face flush. Ordinarily, he would have been able to outface Malfoy’s threat, but he was magically and physically weaker with a piece of his soul gone from him. And he found it hard to look Malfoy in the eye. If Malfoy had been angry about the taint of the Dark Arts being performed in his shop, then Harry could have understood, but this—this was different. This was concern about Harry himself, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

            You have friends, he told himself. You should.

            But concern from Ron and Hermione if they ever found out he was using Dark Arts would only have been proper and expected, which was one reason Harry had been careful to hide his use of that magic from them. Concern from Malfoy changed his perception of the man intolerably and made him think that there might be lasting consequences, after all, from their conversation in the pub the other night.

            He bowed his head and murmured, in response to that concern far more than to the threat, “I promise.”

            “Say what you’re promising.” Neither Malfoy’s gaze nor his wand had wavered when Harry glanced up at him. “You’ll never use that particular spell again.”

            “It’s called the Seeker Spell.”

            “Then call it by its proper name.”

            Harry licked his lips. Technically, there was nothing binding on him. Malfoy wasn’t forcing him to make an Unbreakable Vow. Harry could make the promise and snap it later without consequences. How likely was it that Malfoy would ever know?

            But precisely because it had to be his choice to let this promise bind him in the future, it had become more sacred and solemn to Harry than an Unbreakable Vow could possibly be.

            “I’ll never use the Seeker Spell again,” he said. “I promise. No matter what the temptation, no matter how many people I might save because of it.” He waited to see if his choice of words would cause Malfoy to look at all sorry—would he like possibly being the cause of innocent people’s deaths?—but there was a flash in Malfoy’s eyes before he slowly nodded.

            “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I needed to hear. You started using it in the first place to save people, didn’t you? Because you think anything is permissible if you do it to save other people’s lives. Dark magic, or conflict with the Minister, or being miserable in your job.”

            Harry blinked. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “Will you please decide which side you’re on and stop changing your mind, and my perception of you, constantly?”

            “I’m on your side, as long as you don’t do anything stupid,” said Malfoy. “And my own side, always.” He lowered his wand and looked up as a shuriken-shaped point of white light traveled through the wall and back towards Harry. He held out his hands, and the torn, flying piece of soul slammed into his chest and rocked him back on his feet.

            He closed his eyes, and an image of a small stone house unfolded in his mind’s eye. In one corner was a large hearth covered with gray ashes that might have been the remnants of burned documents. The major piece of furniture in it was a large table draped with maps. More maps hung on the walls. They were maps of the wizarding sections of the British Isles, Harry saw at once. Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, several small wizarding villages in Ireland, and Diagon Alley were the areas he recognized at a glance.

            A tall woman with straggling red hair bent over the table and tapped one of the maps with a long fingernail painted black, speaking loud words in a strangled voice that sounded like a duck choking. The man next to her was small and hunched in his chair, but Harry recognized him anyway from his photograph: Septimus Gully. And next to her was the woman who might be Athena Wellward, with an unpleasantness about her eyes and mouth that Harry could imagine issuing in a swan’s hiss.

            The image pulled back from the cottage and showed him a line unfolding across a map of his own, across the streams and flatlands and meadows and mountains that stood in his way. It was too long a distance to Apparate there from London in one jump, so here and there places that would provide safe Apparition coordinates shone with clear light. Harry nodded and opened his eyes, knowing a grim smile was playing around his mouth.

            “You know where we’re going?” Malfoy asked. He had moved up beside Harry, his breath oddly warm on Harry’s neck and ear. Harry shivered absently and stretched out an arm to claim his. It seemed that Malfoy was still intent on going into battle with Harry after he’d found out that Harry used Dark magic.

            “I do,” Harry said. “A wizarding village north of here. I don’t know the name, but I’m certain Medea Shrivelfig is there, with Gully and someone who’s probably Wellward. The cottage has no extraordinary wards.”

            Malfoy nodded, once. At least he was wise enough not to demand that Harry wait until they could find someone else to back them up, Harry thought. There would be no backup coming from the Ministry even if he Apparated straight to Kingsley’s flat now and presented his evidence. There would be some reason to delay it, danger or the chance of disrupting a business owned by the Wizengamot Councilors, and in the meantime Shrivelfig and her followers would slip away.

            Still, Harry found that he was glad to have company. He gathered himself to Apparate, and then suddenly paused.

            “What?” Malfoy stirred next to him, and his breath brushed Harry’s hair back from his forehead. He automatically pushed it forwards to hide the scar again.

            “I just realized that I shouldn’t be able to perform magic in your shop, if that ward that prevents any magic but Animagus transformations is still in place,” Harry said.

            Malfoy chuckled smugly. “I raised it when we came back. The illusion of it is still in place, though, to prevent my enemies from thinking they have a free chance to attack us.”

            Harry nodded. “You raised it because you didn’t want to go without the convenience of performing magic for yourself?”

            “No, actually.” Malfoy leaned even closer to him. “Because I noticed your reluctance to have me come with you, and thought it quite probable I would need to perform a spell to save your life before we even started.”

            Harry couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he focused his mind on the first set of coordinates the Seeker spell had given him and Apparated.

*

            Draco opened his eyes to darkness and immense pain. He lay still for long moments, letting his senses search the area around him for clues as to where he might be. He could smell staleness combined with fresh air, and that let him know there had to be a draft somewhere. Good. He would hate to be trapped in an airless cell.

            He rolled slowly to the side, and clenched his teeth down as the pain suddenly centered in one place. His left arm was broken. He lay still and swore between his teeth, then heaved himself to one knee. At least now he knew he was in a room with a stone floor, he thought. Nothing else hurt that much on knees but stone.

            A few paces revealed the length and width of the room; tapping with his fingers revealed that the walls were stone, too, though he encountered a few gaps that made him think there were holes and cracks aplenty in them. He lifted his head towards the clean air and sniffed hungrily, and wondered for a moment if he should call out for Potter, or if such an action would be unwise, because it would reveal that he was awake to his enemies.

            What did happen?

            Draco closed his eyes and managed to recall Apparating from darkness into darkness, alive suddenly with scuttling sounds and flapping wings and crying voices. He had recognized the voices of crows without thinking about it, but he had not known what the crows were doing there; he was too busy trying to defend his face against the diving beaks and claws. He had started to transform, thinking an albatross would at least be able to rise above the other birds and catch a clear glimpse of the area in which they stood.

            And then darkness had overwhelmed him. He remembered thinking that it was made of dropped crow feathers, and ought to clear up shortly.

            But he didn’t remember his arm being broken.

            A grating sound came from behind him. Draco turned at once and put his back to the wall, and then realized how much like a scuttling insect he must look. He put up his chin and waited patiently, hands linked together behind his back. Of course, he couldn’t move the fingers of his left hand and shifting the arm at all sent tingling jolts of pain up to his shoulder, but he didn’t see why he should reveal that to the woman who stood in the open doorway, a flood of light breaking around her, staring at him.

            This must be Medea Shrivelfig, Draco thought, though she had worn a different face when she visited his school in the guise of Gully’s “Aunt Medea.” He remembered her height, though, which was rather above average, and her method of moving, as if she were turning her head from side to side to catch glimpses of all sorts of lovely things hidden from an ordinary observer. Her hair sprang around her ears like a bundle of red straw jammed into her skull, and crackled in the same way as she brushed a hand through it. Her nails were painted black, and tapped on her hipbones as she surveyed him. She wore a white robe that Draco thought would have a black hand on the back.

            “Rather surprising to see you here, Mr. Malfoy,” she said at last. “I thought you would have the sense to stay out of politics when my children failed to persuade you.”

            Draco sighed at her. “You should really let us go, you know. Holding one of the Ministry’s top Aurors and a teacher with many students who owe him favors isn’t going to endear you to anyone.”

            “It might not, if anyone knew where you were,” said Shrivelfig, and her teeth showed, patched with brown and yellow. “But my Arabella was watching and listening very carefully, and I don’t think anyone will come after you when you so bravely chose to strike out on your own.”

            Draco froze. Arabella—“Arabella Emerson?” he said.

            “Yes.” Shrivelfig lowered her eyes as though she were facing some observer who would judge her on whether or not she had a demure manner. “At first we were disappointed when dear Arabella turned out to be a fly Animagus. It did seem that she would be less than useful. Not even a sting, the way she might have had if she were a wasp. But no one makes a better spy.”

            Draco closed his eyes and silently cursed himself. He hadn’t thought to scan for strange Animagi in the school, and he hadn’t even considered that some of his former students were small enough to avoid notice. Of course, he’d never noticed anything that linked Emerson to Shrivelfig, but he should have.

            “Don’t worry, Mr. Malfoy,” said Shrivelfig. “A few concessions, and you can go. Our main business is with Mr. Potter.”

            “You have him, too?” Draco opened his eyes and tried not to look so worried. Of course, he’d probably revealed that he was with that question. He should have asked about his own fate first, he scolded himself.

            It was the damn weight of emotions he’d experienced about Potter in the last few days: curiosity and irritation as he tried to determine the man’s elusive Animagus form, anger and shock when he realized Potter was using Dark Arts, exasperation because Potter didn’t belong in the ranks of the Aurors but refused to do something else more productive with his life. They made him careless and more invested in someone else than he’d been in a long time. His quick perceptions of people and the endless parade of his students made him more inclined to care about the present than the past, and at any time he had numerous claims on his attention. Potter was the only person in years who had managed to make Draco think exclusively about him.

            “Of course,” said Shrivelfig. “We captured you both when you arrived at a point we suspected you’d use, with the help of another of your students, the redoubtable Henry.”

            Draco felt sick. Henry, who refused to give his last name, was another student he’d trained years ago, into a crow Animagus. Like some of the more powerful Animagi, he had a natural ability to commune with the animals whose form he took, and even to command them.

            “How long have you been using my school for your benefit?” he asked quietly.

            “Oh, almost since it opened.” Shrivelfig waved off the question. “It was far too convenient, having a place to train my children into Animagi where they didn’t have to provide the credentials and undergo the observation that they would have at Hogwarts.” She knelt down suddenly in front of him, and Draco winced at the sour rake of her breath, scented like rotting apples. “And now I want you to promise that you’ll work with us freely and openly, and accept students from among my children.”

            Draco kept his face neutral and his breathing slow. He did push his left arm with his right hand so that it swayed a bit and sent a flash of sickening pain up to his shoulder that almost made him pass out. He needed to remember the costs of disobeying a woman like this; he needed to remember who he was dealing with.

            “I can’t believe in your doctrine,” he said. “Potter explained a bit of it to me, and it sounded absolutely ridiculous.”

            “Absolute belief is not required,” Shrivelfig said, and sighed, her voice traveling in a delicate quiver over his face. “Only a bit of it. Allow me a grain of corn in the cracks of your mind. Promise me that you will consider my claims as neutrally as the claims of any other witch or wizard you might deal with. Promise to listen. And then I will release you, and you can go back to your school and leave Potter to his fate.”

            If they had a vampire with them, Draco thought, or an Animagus with exceptionally keen hearing, he might hear Draco’s heart speed up now. But Draco managed to look calm and interested, he knew, as he nodded. He had had endless practice in looking that way when he was listening to students tell him passionately that they were unicorns, or dragons, or phoenixes—anything but the ordinary animals that actually represented their souls.

            Shrivelfig smiled, looking pleased, and leaned closer still.

            “Once,” she said softly, “there was only an unformed world of magic. The mountains and the streams were hardly solid; they danced and wavered back and forth like a heat haze.”

            Draco thought of pointing out that streams weren’t solid even now, unless Shrivelfig was referring to their stillness when frozen in winter, but it didn’t seem like the best move at the moment.

            “There was magic in blood and breath, magic in names and in plants and animals. Some of those disciplines were solidified in time. The magic of plants and animals became appreciated in Care of Magical Creatures and Potions, for example. But the magic of the human body was forbidden, looked down on as Dark Arts when it concerned skin and blood, or at best tightly regulated, like the Polyjuice Potion.

            “That forbade power to those very people who needed it most, the poor and downtrodden. They could not afford to purchase expensive magical training, or the ingredients needed to create precise potions that might save their lives. As time went on, some of them forgot about magic altogether and bred it out of their systems and turned their backs on it when they encountered it in real life. They became the Muggles, willing to use the machines that answered to any hand to achieve power for themselves, because the pure-blood witches and wizards wouldn’t let them have it in any other way.

            “And there were other divisions happening. Many of the most powerful and famous wizards were men—Merlin, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Taliesin, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Oh, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff receive equal credit for founding Hogwarts, but who tells their stories as much as the story of Gryffindor and Slytherin’s famous falling-out? No one. And the stories of witches go ignored, too, and memory and history assign more magic and power to men.

            “No one noticed when a woman like myself began to recover power, low magic, the magic of the body.” Shrivelfig’s voice soared to a croon. Draco tried not to wince away from the smell of her breath, but it was hard. “I was ignored by the stories, and I was practicing an art that generations of wizards had learned was no good, filthy and weak. I learned to appreciate the arts of the body. That is one reason I sent my students to become Animagi. They need magic that doesn’t flow through a wand and can’t be counteracted by pretty little wards like the one you put on your school.”

            Draco kept his muscles from tensing, but only just. Shrivelfig had a gloating expression as she spoke of that ward, and Draco would wager his albatross form that she’d used it on this place, whatever it was. It would explain why they’d broken his arm. He might be able to transform, but with a broken wing, he couldn’t fly.

            “We are a new power, a new group. We’ll heal the rifts between wizards and Muggles by reintroducing magic into their lives and teaching them how to control it. We’ll breathe life back into ancient traditions that will seem new because they’ve been forgotten. We will teach the corrupt Ministry the meaning of fear under a Dark Lady instead of a Dark Lord.” Shrivelfig’s eyes were rapt, and though she appeared to be staring directly at him, Draco had the feeling that she wasn’t really seeing his face. “Will you allow yourself to believe that? Will you let yourself participate, as you already have in part, in the renaissance of the body?”

            Draco drew breath to answer, and a shriek cut through the walls and the silence, stealing his breath away. It was Potter’s voice, and from the sound of it, someone had either planted a heavy boot on him or snapped his wand.

            Shrivelfig turned her head in that direction and sniffed once. “He must have refused the chance to listen,” she said, and looked at Draco. “That doesn’t change your answer. Will you accept what I have been saying?”

            Draco clenched his back teeth together, though he didn’t let them make a sound, and nodded. He was filled with a hatred small and still and silent. Not only had Shrivelfig manipulated him for years, making him train people who would use their gifts to hurt him and others, but he had invested some emotional effort in Potter and it might all come to nothing. This was no time for Gryffindor bravery, of course. That would only get him killed. For the present, he would pretend to agree, and then he would make Shrivelfig pay later, when she might have let down her guard.

            “Good.” Shrivelfig rose to her feet and stood looking down at him with something like pride. Draco found it hard to judge her age. It was fanaticism that had carved her face, and not time. “I am always eager to see someone new become one of my children, and become convinced of the truth that will change the world.” She reached out and swept her fingers down the side of his face. Manfully, Draco didn’t flinch away. “I will have someone come to you in a few hours and heal your arm. I apologize for the delay, but we are in the middle of a planning session, and you need the time to think and be sure that you won’t change your mind.” She gave him a faint smile and turned away, stepping out of the door. It shut behind her, and Draco’s eyes were left in stinging darkness.

            He didn’t waste time. Potter’s cry had sounded fairly close, especially since the thick stone walls wouldn’t be optimal for conducting sound from rooms on the other side of a castle. Draco slid on his knees over to the wall next to the door, from which, as far as he could judge, Potter’s scream had come. He focused his will, hoping it could help him somehow even under the influence of a ward that damped all magic, and began to whisper.

            “Potter, can you hear me? You’ll need to get us out of here, and there’s only one way to do it…”

*

            Harry panted, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Now and then he uttered a whimper of pain, making it sound as if his lungs were being crushed by an immense weight. In fact, those whimpers were mostly for the benefit of any of Shrivelfig’s people who had lingered to listen at the door. He was less hurt than he had pretended to be when they were beating on him.

            Of course, that didn’t mean he was in perfect condition. They had slammed him in the ribs and the chest with fists and boots, and punched him more than once in the face. One eye was swollen almost shut, and he’d already spat out a loose tooth that he’d have to get replaced later, once they were back in a place with civilized magic.

            But he was in much less pain than he’d convinced them he was when he curled up with the first soft cries, and he’d protected the more fragile of his inner organs with his trained dodging and rolling. Nor did he have a concussion or a head wound, which would make all the difference to his speed if he had to move fast.

            He did have a bad case of rage, especially since they’d taken his wand, but he could work with that.

            And then he heard the whispers.

            Harry turned his head, his eyes narrowing. For long moments, he lay still, trying to determine if this was another trick. They were fanatics, after all. It made sense that they would try to persuade him to their side, if they could. Shrivelfig had a positive mania for corrupting and converting people instead of killing them.

            But the voice was Malfoy’s, and there was a tight edge to it that made Harry think it was genuine. Of course, he had no proof of that.

            But he had his intuition, as usual. His captors had used no magic on him, though certain simple spells would have ensured he suffered even greater pain than he had and then remained unconscious afterwards. That suggested they feared his power enough to use a ward similar to the one Malfoy had used on his shop—and that meant a glamour to imitate Malfoy’s voice was out. And whilst Malfoy might cooperate with them to avoid a beating like the one Harry’d got, Harry didn’t think Malfoy would betray him to his death. Nor after the promise he’d made Harry swear about the Dark Arts.

            Painfully, Harry dragged himself towards the part of the wall that the whispers seemed to be coming from. He slapped his hand twice, rapidly, on the floor in acknowledgment. He didn’t dare speak yet, in case someone still listened.

            At once Malfoy’s voice altered, becoming filled with a savage eagerness. “Good. They’ve got a ward against magic up on this place.”

            Harry slapped twice in acknowledgment again, half his attention on the door of the cell. He could see a faint line of light under it. At the first sign of its widening, he would have to roll back into the middle of the room and pull his weakling act again.

            “There’s only one magic I know that will work here,” Malfoy said grimly. “Animagus transformations.”

            Harry slapped once, in confusion. Why didn’t Malfoy transform and try to escape, then? Perhaps they would take him somewhere that was open to the sky and solve the problem.

            “They’ve broken my arm,” Malfoy said. “I can’t fly even if I transform, and walking albatrosses are clumsy compared to albatrosses in flight. But they’re convinced that you can’t master the Animagus transformation, so they don’t have anything to worry about with you. You’ll have to master it, though, and get us out of here.”

            That plan was so mad Harry had to speak aloud and take the risk of the guards hearing him. “You don’t know I can, first of all,” he said. “And then it’s just as likely that I’ll turn into something that can’t help us.”

            “I think not,” said Malfoy, and his voice was so smug that Harry wished there wasn’t a stone wall between them, so that he might slap the bastard. “I may not know exactly what you are, but I know that you’re strong and stubborn and don’t give up no matter what happens. That may make you—“

            “A rat,” said Harry, thinking of the way that Wormtail had refused to give himself up and go quietly, no matter what happened. “A termite.”

            “No,” said Malfoy flatly. “I refuse to believe that.”

            “Because it would leave you without hope right now?” Harry rolled his eyes at the invisible ceiling.

            “There are worse reasons to believe something,” said Malfoy. “Our charming hostess has given me a whole list of them. Now. I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on clearing your mind.”

            “I’m terrible at that,” said Harry, even as he closed his eyes. “Snape tried to teach me Occlumency in my fifth year and it didn’t work.”

            “Of course it didn’t,” said Malfoy. “You can’t get rid of emotions or thoughts. Not you.” There was an emotion in his voice that Harry might have mistaken for affection if he didn’t know better.



            “Then what does clearing your mind mean?” Harry tried to calm himself down, but his bruises ached and the thought of Malfoy’s broken arm twined through his mind like smoke. God, the bastard didn’t even allow the sound of pain to creep into his voice. Yes, he was braver than Harry had given him credit for. “If not getting rid of all the things that normally clutter it?”

            “Make your mind transparent,” said Malfoy. “Focused, like a glass lens. Imagine animals. Think only of them.”

            “What kind of animals?”

            “It doesn’t matter, Potter.” Malfoy could still sound irate with him, then. Good. Harry would have suspected his spirit was broken otherwise, and that he really didn’t believe this plan could work. “But it should be a changing group of them, racing around each other, in constant motion. Some of my students picture a flock of birds, some a school of fish, if they think they have winged or aquatic forms. But you shouldn’t limit yourself that way, because we really don’t know what your form is, and we need to find out.”

            “Imagine me as a fish, flopping around on the floor of my cell,” Harry said darkly. “I might drown before I managed to turn human again. A fat lot of help that would be.”

            “You’re not a fish.”

            “You said you weren’t certain—“

            “Picture a group of animals right now, Potter.”

            Half-grinning despite himself, Harry filled his mind with a gamboling, racing crowd of animals, and imagined dust puffing up around them, because why not? There were lions in his head, and leopards, and a pack of wolves, and a stampede of foxes, and then birds filled the air above them, and a rat and a dog and a stag ran by before he could stop himself, and a glittering stream poured across the dusty ground—because he thought that the animals might need water—and fish surfaced from it, opening their mouths in confusion at the air.

            Harry didn’t let his thoughts latch onto a single animal, even though he could see some at once that he wanted to be and others that he would prefer to avoid being trapped in the form of. He kept his mind whirling and racing, above a herd of horses and a flock of chickens and the bright fire of a phoenix.

            “Good.” Malfoy’s voice came to him from very far away. “I can feel the force of your concentration. You’re doing well, Potter. Now imagine a spiral diving into the middle of the animals, separating them.”

            “I thought you told me…” The crowd of animals wavered and nearly broke apart into a cloud of colored sparks in Harry’s mind as he started to worry about doing something wrong. With an effort, he held onto them and imagined a golden spiral diving into the middle of the crowd. A winged horse reared and danced back from it, and a hive of bees shifted to the side so that they could buzz angrily at the spiral from a distance.

            “Not separating out a single animal from the rest,” snapped Malfoy. “Just creating a clear place where none of them can go.”

            Harry created that easily enough. In fact, he was somewhat startled at the intensity of the image that formed in his mind, as if he were standing in front of the animals himself. He could smell the dust and the sweat and, yes, the manure. He wrinkled his nose.

            “Think of yourself now,” said Malfoy. “Think of the animals, and listen to my voice. You are stubborn. I saw that from the first moment you came into my school. You wouldn’t let go of the trail of Septimus Gully, even if the Minister himself ordered you off the case. I could barely move you during school. When you stuck out your lip the way I remember seeing you do before a Quidditch game, I knew I would have a time of it beating you to the Snitch.”

            Harry felt very strange. He barely seemed to be breathing. His mind was wheeling and tilting, staring down at the animals from an immense distance. Was he a hawk, with wings? But no, the feeling started to leave him when he imagined a specific animal, so he settled back into his acceptance of a transparent body and a fiercely circling mind.

            “So stubborn,” Malfoy crooned. “And you need to be coaxed. I thought I could coax you into bed when I discovered that you were gay. But no, I can’t, can I? I bet that you barely let your dates buy you drinks or presents. You don’t want to be bribed. You want to meet someone on the level, strength to strength. You’re strong, Potter, though sometimes it’s not a traditional kind of strength.”

            Harry smiled, or the creature in his mind that wore his face did. The circling grew faster.

            “And hot-tempered.” Malfoy’s voice faltered a little, as if he weren’t sure about this characteristic, but Harry made a loud grunt that was meant to encourage him. Malfoy’s voice firmed and went on. “Yes, you still are. You grow so outraged over the things that Dark wizards do to your victims that you stay in a job you aren’t suited for and let others command you—even though you hate that—because you want to punish them. You risk using Dark Arts where nothing else could ever persuade you to do that.” His voice lowered. “Despite the promise I forced you to make, I was more worried about you being hurt than I was about your being corrupted. I can’t see you using Dark Arts for your own benefit.”

            Harry’s vision was blurring. The crowd of animals in front of him had become a series of colored splotches.

            “And loud, in the end,” Malfoy went on, his voice gaining strength and confidence. “You’ll speak up when something angers you. You don’t know how to keep quiet, it’s easier for you to imagine yourself in service than in silence—“

            Harry smashed into a barrier. He didn’t know what it was, but suddenly the wings he’d been imagining wouldn’t flap, and he struggled uselessly. He hissed, not a loud sound, but Malfoy seemed to hear it anyway.

            “This is the most urgent part.” Malfoy’s voice rose until Harry suffered from a flash of a thought that their guards might hear him, but he pushed away the thought, because it made his vision waver, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. “You must force your way through this barrier, do you hear me, Potter? It’s hard, it’s going to wear on your soul, but you must—“

            Harry pushed. A wind blowing from behind him was plastering him flat against the barrier, his wings spread out and his feathers ruffled. He grunted and heaved, leaning forwards until he could feel the push in the muscles of his calves. He had legs again, a face that hurt from the push, heavy hands that shook and then curled up into fists and pounded on the glass, trying to shatter it.

            Heavy hands. Hard hands. And long ears, and a loud voice that tore itself out of his throat, and…

            His head bowed. His body elongated and lifted at the shoulders. His face warped and his voice rose in a cry of triumph he couldn’t help giving.

            He knew he was different now, but he also knew he was in a body that could cause a great deal of trouble for his captors, and he asked nothing better.

*

            Draco had taken a risk using this method of visualization and control of the Animagus transformation with Potter. It was one that even powerful wizards who intensely desired the transformation had trouble with, and Potter’s reluctance just might spell disaster for them. But he couldn’t think of another tactic they could use before the few hours Shrivelfig had given him were up.

            And when he felt the concentration from the cell next to him, pressing against his body like magic itself, he knew he had made the right decision. Potter could do this. He only had to find the will, and with Draco murmuring a litany of his observations into Potter’s ears, he was surrounded and sustained by himself.

            The most frightening moment had come when Potter was plastered against the barrier, his body’s last resistance to changing. Draco had lost several students there; they’d gone mad rather than surrender, but they hadn’t had the power to get through the glass. He knew Potter did, so he had drawn a deep breath and continued to talk about Potter’s temper and his ruthlessness and his intractability as either an enemy or a friend. He might have slipped in a few hopes of his own in that part, about how he hoped Potter wouldn’t be intractable with him forever, but so what? If it helped Potter through the change, then it was good.

            And it had worked. He recognized the cry from the cell next to him, a whinnying that broke and sobbed into a bray, and he threw his head back and laughed aloud.

            Stubborn and loud and hot-tempered. Of course he’s a mule. Of course he is.

            Agitated shouts sounded from the corridor outside their cells, and Draco whispered, “Potter? You must ignore the smells and sounds that might overwhelm you now. You have to hit them—“

            A contemptuous bray interrupted him, and then Draco heard a creak that might be the door of Potter’s cell opening. He heard a voice that he hoped was Septimus Gully’s exclaiming, “Holy shi—“

            And Potter brayed again and lashed out with his hooves, or at least Draco assumed he did from the sound of breaking bone and the squash of a body falling heavily. Someone else tried to raise the alarm, and then shrieked. Draco grinned in triumph; since he couldn’t see what was happening, he’d just picture a broken arm to compensate for his own.

            There came the sound of clamping teeth, angry huffs of breath, another bray, and stamping hooves. Then Draco heard Potter trotting out into the corridor. He could see him there so easily, turning his head back and forth, large nostrils working as he sniffed the air.

            This was also a dangerous time; Draco had had any number of students get confused with the input from their new senses and run off in a panic or a surge of curiosity to explore the world they’d entered on two wings or four legs. He yelled, “Potter! Remember to—“

            And then he had to roll, because a section of the stone wall was coming down.

*

            Harry had rarely had so much fun as when he turned around and kicked Septimus Gully square in the groin with his hind hooves. The man was still folding over when Harry kicked him in the jaw, and, from the sound, broke it.

            Gully had a companion who was backing away from him, mouth open to ruin Harry’s surprise. Harry wasn’t in the mood to allow that. He snaked his neck out and fastened his teeth on the man’s arm, then shook his head violently. More bones broke, flesh tore, and vicious satisfaction erupted in Harry.

            He’d been driven, and shut up, and hit. Only idiots tried that with mules—especially with mules as big as he was, standing easily five feet at the shoulder. Harry laid his ears back and brayed again, starting out “Whinn—“ and breaking into “aw-haw-haw” at the end. He liked the sound. There wasn’t much about being a mule that he didn’t like.

            For example, Malfoy was behind a stone wall and trying to tell him something about not running away. Harry had no intention of doing that. But the stone wall could be a problem.

            He whirled and bowed his head, putting all his power into a good hard kick at the wall.

            It trembled, cracks appeared, and Harry felt a throb of pain travel down his hind legs for the first time. He mingled the pain with the anger and cried out defiantly, kicking harder than before. This time, the wall fell. Harry turned, scraping a hoof on the ground and bobbing his head. He’d like to see Malfoy rescue himself better than that.

*



            Harry did make a magnificent mule, Draco had to admit, as he squinted at Harry against the light from the corridor. He was enormous, for one thing, and his coat was brown-black, with a touch of gray to the muzzle. His laid-back ears were outlined with black, his hooves with white, and he had blazing dark eyes. Or perhaps they were green. Draco wouldn’t have been surprised, given that a ragged line of white on his forehead echoed the lightning bolt scar.

            He started to stand up, and that jarred his broken arm, which he had nearly forgotten about in the intensity of instructing Harry in the Animagus transformation. He tried to catch his breath and stifle his cry, but he didn’t do it quickly enough to disguise his pain from Harry.

            The great mule came a few steps forwards and lowered his nose to snuffle at Draco’s arm. Then he raised his head and tore the air apart with another great bray. Draco worried for a moment that Harry would lose control in his anger and kick him, or run away and simply leave him there, but instead Harry whirled to present his back to Draco and then knelt, legs folded awkwardly beneath him.

            Carefully, supporting the useless weight of his left arm with his right hand as much as possible, Draco climbed onto his back. Harry stood, and Draco had to duck his head so they could pass beneath the doorway into the corridor again. The sconces on the walls, filled with blazing torches, and the tightly fitted stone in the floor reminded Draco of Hogwarts, and he thought it was highly likely that Shrivelfig’s headquarters did lie in some old castle.

            “Go find them,” Draco whispered into one of the donkey-like ears, which twitched back to receive his words. “If we get enough evidence, then we should be able to destroy their operation, and maybe even capture Shrivelfig herself.”

            Harry bared his teeth and stamped the floor in acquiescence, and began to move. Draco kept his eyes strained, peering into the shadows ahead, but as yet he saw no sign of movement. He frowned, not knowing what to make of it. It seemed impossible that no one heard the cries from the two men Harry wounded. Were they laying a trap? Or trying frantically to figure out what had happened? Of course, if the magic-damping ward was still up, they would have no way to learn that without coming and investigating themselves.

            A shadow shifted in the torchlight then. Draco drew his breath to warn Harry, but he’d already broken into a gallop. Draco braced himself as Harry raced to the corner around which one of Shrivelfig’s people was trying to peer cautiously, locked his legs, and then clamped his teeth on the shoulder of a young woman. She spilled to the ground, in too much pain and shock to scream. A kick in the temple from Harry, and she lay still, blood seeping onto the floor from her head wound.

            Draco looked down at her in undisguised loathing. She was Athena Wellward, or at least the woman he had known as Athena Wellward. He almost hoped that Harry had killed her, except for the thought of the consequences Harry would have to face from the Ministry afterwards.

            Beyond Wellward’s body, the corridor was dark. Harry peered cautiously forwards, sniffing. Draco concentrated, and felt the wash of magic in the distance, cramping and twisting and forcing itself inwards.

            “Animagi are coming,” he whispered to Harry.

            Sure enough, a moment later a crow who must be the traitorous Henry swooped out of an alcove at them, his claws extended and his voice repeating harsh unnatural noises over and over again. He’d probably hoped to panic Harry, but mules were more intelligent than horses, and Harry had adapted more quickly to his Animagus form than anyone Draco had ever seen. He reared and moved his front legs in boxing motions, hitting the crow and breaking one of its wings. Henry screamed and fell to the floor, fluttering. He barely managed to get out of the way before Harry descended again, hooves tearing into the stone floor with terrible finality.

            “Don’t kill him,” Draco managed to say through a haze of pain. He had been caught unawares when Harry reared, and had had to clutch at the line of bristly hair on the mule’s neck instead of using his right hand to support his left arm. He bent over, gasping, and concentrated on staying conscious until he could say the rest. “It’ll be counted murder by your enemies in the Ministry. If you’ve damaged him so he can’t fly, his threat should be mostly ended.”

            “What a pity that the same could not be said of you,” said Medea Shrivelfig’s voice from ahead of them.

            Draco looked up, blinking, in time to see Shrivelfig warping and bending, her body coiling inwards. He hadn’t known she was an Animagus herself, but he recognized that contortion of forms.

            And a moment later an anaconda that filled half the corridor was on the floor and writhing busily towards them.

*

            Harry felt his rage rise to new heights as he recognized the snake. He badly wanted to charge forwards and simply trample its flat head, but his human instincts warred with his animal ones. The snake could snatch his ribs and stave them inwards before he could hurt her. In crushing contests, an anaconda would always have the advantage.

            But Harry had one, too, one that hadn’t vanished when Voldemort died.

            Now, he forced himself to clear his mind in the way Draco had shown him, by concentrating on the varied crowd of animals and then imagining a man walking through them, a man with glasses and a lightning bolt scar and a weary face—

            He changed back to human form, and whirled in the middle of it to catch Draco and keep him from dropping straight to the floor. The snake’s shadow had covered them by the time he began to hiss in Parseltongue.

            “Don’t eat us. I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you that I believe in some of what you were saying.”

            The great head swayed back and forth, regarding him. Harry forced himself to remain still and stare calmly into those flat dark eyes. This was still less frightening than confronting Voldemort and Nagini had been. For one thing, he had known all along that Nagini wouldn’t have listened to him, even if he could speak to her; she was intensely loyal to her master.

            But this snake was a proud woman who wanted someone to believe in her cause more than she wanted anything else in the world. And Harry had an advantage on his side that she probably hadn’t anticipated him using, at least not considering that she hated the Ministry and believed everyone else would, too, if they just listened to her.

            “I could eat you,” she hissed, neck flexing restlessly. With his senses sharpened, keeping him in the moment, Harry could admire the green-gold pattern of her scales, the black splotches on them varying in size from a Knut to several Galleons laid side by side. “So long as you remember that.”

            “But why would you want to eat someone who would join you?” Harry laid a hand on his heart. “Someone who is a powerful wizard, someone you could command to destroy your enemies, and who would do so gladly?”

            Shrivelfig considered this, sliding one coil of her body back and forth on the rough stone. Harry waited, aware of Draco’s harsh breathing behind him. He prepared another plan in the back of his head in case Shrivelfig decided to disbelieve him, though he knew it was made of wisps of shadow and smoke.

            “You have always hated me, and you have hunted me for several months now,” she said at last.

            Harry responded instantly. One of the few Ministry experts on Parseltongue, whom Harry had consulted when he was trying to determine how useful his unwanted gift could be in the field, had told him that Parseltongue had a slight hypnotic effect on snakes who heard a human speaking it, but the effect never lasted long. “I finally heard what you stood for—heard it in detail, and really understood it. I’ve come to hate the Ministry, too. They send me on the wrong missions and won’t let me accept the right ones. They forbid me to investigate because there’s the chance I’ll turn up their relatives in the wrong places. I want to do something to show them that I still matter, and that they’re wrong to disregard me like that.”

            Harry was a little disturbed at how much truth emerged in his voice, and how much hatred and bitterness. But he couldn’t have chosen better as a way to persuade Shrivelfig, who swayed eagerly back and forth, hissing. “Yes, yes, yes! There is a better way, and with Harry Potter at my side, I can find it. I will change back now, and instruct you in what you must do to become one of my children.”

            The moment shadows gathered about her and seemed to involve her fully in her transformation, Harry snapped his eyes shut. The crowd of animals, Draco’s remembered voice in his head chanting his attributes, those pieces of his soul that voice had let him find and which were reflected in the mule…

            He became an animal just as Shrivelfig rose to her feet as a human. And she didn’t have time to look startled before Harry kicked her in the breastbone and flung her several feet down the corridor. She did groan once, pitifully, before Harry trotted up to her and leaned one hoof on her chest, holding her eyes as he bore down, letting her know that he could kill her in instants.

            She tensed as though she would try to change again, but Draco said casually from behind Harry, “I can tell him to kill you. No one but us will ever know. And then we’ll go on to kill the other ‘children’ you have here—none of whom have an Animagus form as powerful as Harry, not if I trained them—and your dream will die with them.”

            Shrivelfig shut her eyes, and tears ran from the corners. She relaxed completely. Her voice was thick with the dust of dead ambition as she whispered, “I surrender. I’ll tell my children to surrender. Don’t hurt them.”

            Harry flattened his ears and gave what seemed to be an endless bray of triumph, aware that Draco had limped up beside him and put his good hand on Harry’s neck. His fingers stroked the rough fur gently.

*

            The Minister was impressed.

            Draco could tell that he was trying hard not to be. He spoke to Harry as little as possible. He frowned fiercely as the Aurors dragged Shrivelfig’s followers out of the castle in which they’d made their headquarters, and he asked pointed questions about the wounds some of them had sustained, especially Septimus Gully and the friend who had helped him open Harry’s cell. He made remarks to the air that certain people who were currently unregistered Animagi would have to register as soon as possible.

            But his eyes were wide, and he kept giving little nods, as if he were mentally counting up all the work that Harry had saved the Ministry in tracking down Shrivelfig. Draco smiled wearily as the Healer beside him reset his broken bone with a few quick flicks of her wand. At least Harry’s being appreciated by the people he was determined to stay and serve shouldn’t be something Draco needed to worry about anymore.

            “There.” The Healer reclaimed his attention as she handed Draco a vial of red-brown potion. He took it without pause; he recognized a pain reliever his mother had often used for her headaches the year they’d lived in the Manor beside the Dark Lord. “A few days’ rest, and don’t try to use that arm often, but you’re lucky. It was a clean break.”

            Draco nodded. He knew that was a coincidence; Shrivelfig’s people hadn’t been trying to spare him any pain. They hadn’t been trying to spare anyone pain, really, except themselves.

            He looked back at Harry. He was answering Shacklebolt’s questions with an easy air, as though he were inside the Minister’s office, not under a dusky sky on a set of wild and desolate cliffs, next to a crumbling castle whose door still lay in splinters from one of his kicks in mule form. He had his back to Draco. Draco couldn’t remember one glance from Harry since they’d lifted the ward that prevented magic from happening in the castle and the Aurors had begun to arrive, in fact.

            Maybe that was—as it should be. Draco was not at all sure how he would get on with someone who was a mule Animagus.

            He turned away, suffered the Healer to bind his left arm up in a sling and give him more stern instructions on how not to move it, and then Apparated.

*

            Once again, Harry stood outside Malfoy’s Magical Menagerie and combated his own reluctance to enter. He told himself that Draco Apparating away from the castle and not contacting him any time in the fortnight since didn’t necessarily mean anything. He could have been overwhelmed by how close he’d come to death in Shrivelfig’s clutches. He could have assumed that Harry didn’t need him for anything anymore, now that their enemies were stopped, the danger to his school past, and Harry capable of the Animagus transformation.

            But a promise and a conversation lingered between them still, and so Harry had forced himself away from his office, his flat, and the temptation of another case, to seek out someone who had made him feel emotions he hadn’t experienced in years.

            He opened the door and entered the dark room filled with scented candles. He wondered for a moment, idly, what it would have been like to change into a mule for the first time in this room, and then shook his head, smiling. It never would have happened. I was born to become everything I am, even an Animagus, under abnormal circumstances.

            “Potter.”

            Draco was coming towards him, face artificially neutral, jaw set as if he were grinding his teeth or biting his lip. Harry gazed back at him, and then grinned. Draco’s expression was no more forbidding than Kingsley’s had been, many a time, and still Harry had challenged him and insisted on presenting his own perspective. He was going to do the same thing this time.

            “Draco,” he said, and came forwards, and took the other man’s hand. Draco started and stared at him before he could stop himself. Harry wondered if the name or the gesture was the greater surprise for him. “I wanted to come by to thank you for how you saved my life in Shrivelfig’s dungeon.”

            Already Draco was trying to fold the emotion back into himself and move past his moment of shock, Harry saw. He shook his head a little and said, “It was you who completed the transformation, Potter, and saved my life.”

            “But you were the one who taught me to complete it.” Harry stepped closer, and Draco stood where he was, perhaps simply from pride, which left their faces close. Harry smiled at him. “In ten minutes and through the pain of a broken arm, no less. Even among Animagus teachers, I would reckon that ability’s rare.”

            Draco’s skin flushed a delicate pink, as if he had never imagined that Harry might compliment him. But still he was stubborn; Harry thought he might have made a fine mule himself, if pallor and grace weren’t even larger parts of his personality. Or maybe his identification with his own form went deeper than that; Harry hadn’t asked him what albatrosses represented.

            “Amazing as it might be, it’s in the past, and we really lived because you managed to trick Shrivelfig,” he said. He paused, as if torn between asking his questions or telling Harry to get out of his school, and then added, “What happened to her?”

            “She’s been charged,” said Harry, a brief burst of that vicious satisfaction he’d felt as a mule going off like a firework in his chest. “With murder, among other things, and corrupting the youth, because she had recruiters working inside Hogwarts. Gully’s also up on murder charges, and most of the others will be tried for conspiracy. Some for treason.” He sighed. “But you were right.”

            “Of course I was right about some of my former students being part of her group, though not as many of them as really were,” said Draco, with a flash of bitterness. He seemed unconscious of the fact that his hand was still clasped in Harry’s.

            “Not about that.” Harry took a deep breath. “About how useless it is for me to remain within the Ministry if I want to do some good. Councilor Hidefell is already complaining about me again. It seems that he didn’t want me to investigate Shrivelfig because he knew his niece was fascinated by her group, although she never did anything criminal, and was frightened that I’d sweep her up in my search, not bothering to differentiate between the innocent and the guilty.”

            “And so he’s got you suspended again?” Draco asked. Harry liked to think that the flush in his cheeks this time was anger, and that the anger was for him.

            “Yes.” Harry snorted, thinking of the way Kingsley had explained it to him. “I cause too much trouble. I don’t obey orders. I use my name and my scar when I shouldn’t, and if I used them more, I could cause serious problems for the Ministry. But of course they don’t want me to leave, because when it’s convenient, I can be of good use to them.”

            “Are you content with that?” Draco surveyed him with a cool look.

            “I was,” said Harry. “I thought it was a reasonable trade for me to have the Ministry’s power behind me when I wanted to punish someone. But—“

            He stopped, wondering how he could confess the whole mess of it. His friendship with Kingsley had disintegrated, strained and tarnished by politics. He did hurt innocents when he acted too rashly, but he didn’t know how to stop himself from doing so as long as he had immunity from most consequences. Auror work was not what he had imagined it might be, especially the fruitless investigations and the long hours he had to spend in paperwork. (And yet it seemed childish to complain about that).

            In the end, he went with the simplest truth, the one Draco had helped him understand.

            “I want to do other things than punish people,” he said.

            Draco’s eyes widened slightly. “Really,” he said, and didn’t make it a question.

            Harry nodded. “The Animagus transformation was—amazing. The first thing I’ve done in a long time that made me enthusiastic about magic itself, and not just what magic could enable me to do. Or, at least, the first thing that wasn’t Dark Arts.”

            “Which you won’t use again,” said Draco. His nails cut into Harry’s palm.

            Harry nodded a second time. “I’ve started to wonder what other sorts of joy I’m missing by devoting myself to being only an Auror and nothing more than that. I want to see. So I’m leaving the Ministry, because of that and because I’ll break my promise if I stay there and become frustrated enough. It’s corrupting me, too, even if it’s not the same sort of corruption that flourishes among the Wizengamot Councilors. The Ministry is their home now, and not mine.”

            “What will you do, then?” Draco moved closer. “I know you, Harry. You won’t be content simply to sit around your house and spend the Galleons in your vault.”

            “Oh, no,” Harry said. He called me by my first name. It was strange how good that made him feel. Or maybe not so strange after all; Draco was someone who cared enough about him to want to protect him against Dark Arts, someone who could hold the incredible discipline of Animagus training in his head, someone who could tell the animals in people’s souls from a glance at them most of the time. “I’ll probably become a private investigator in the end. But for now, I want to perfect my Animagus form. I haven’t been able to transform since that night, you know, even though I’ve tried.”

            Draco’s eyes grew hard and brilliant as slate. “There might be several reasons for that.”

            “And I thought,” Harry went on, knowing he faced possible rejection for this as he didn’t by applying to become a student, “that I might see what joys I’ve missed by not being in your company.”

            And he cupped a hand around the back of Draco’s head and kissed him.

            Draco didn’t hesitate, but kissed him fiercely back, until he had pushed Harry onto his heels and their tongues were striving with one another. When he pulled away, it was to lift a finger and tap him on the chin with a force that made Harry think of a peck from a beak.

            “Good,” said Draco. “I was wondering the same thing.”

            Harry smiled. “Why an albatross?” he murmured, as he slung an arm around Draco’s shoulders and they proceeded into the school. “I realized I hadn’t asked. It can’t be just because you have nearly white hair and an enormous—ego.”

            Draco’s elbow caught him in the ribs. “No,” he said. “Albatrosses gaze unblinking across the sea, and they can fly without tiring. All they have to do at sea is lock their wings and glide on the air currents, you know, hardly flapping. But they take an awful lot of effort to get off the ground.” He paused. “And there’s a legend that albatrosses are the souls of sailors, and to kill one is bring on a curse. There was a Muggle who wrote a poem about a mariner who killed an albatross and had the bird hung around his neck as punishment.”

            Harry nodded. “I understand.”

            “No, you don’t.” Draco gave him a slow, fascinating smile. “Not yet. But I look forwards to teaching you.”

            End.
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Albatross Around His Neck