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Partners Unpartnered	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2565 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter.
“I just want you to tell me exactly what you think of him.”
Harry blinked and folded his arms, and then knew that he had looked defensive and that probably wasn’t the best way to convince Ron that he wasn’t romantically interested in Draco. Even though sometimes he thought he was, and then Draco would smile and kiss his fingertips and pull away. The “waiting” that he wanted to do was torturous to Harry, but it was the only thing he had really asked for, and Harry wanted to oblige him with it.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Ron said dangerously, prowling around the side of Harry’s desk the way Harry had really only seen Draco prowl up to this point. “So I think I’m owed an answer to my question.”
Harry didn’t duck his head and pull nervously at his fringe, but it was a real effort. Instead, he took a deep breath, licked his lips, and said, “Ron…”
“Tell me.”
“Is Weasley bothering you, Potter?” That came from the office doorway behind Harry, and without looking Harry knew he would see Draco standing there if he glanced over his shoulder, flicking his wand idly back and forth at the end of his long fingers, his gaze fastened on Ron’s face and nothing else.
Because he knew what Draco would look like so accurately, Harry didn’t turn around to face him, but instead caught Ron’s arm before he could go after Draco. And he could feel Draco’s gaze narrowing and sharpening on that contact, too, as if he was trying to figure out by looking the exact amount of pressure Harry was putting on Ron with his hold. It was things like that that reassured Harry, now and then, that Draco might actually have some kind of interest in him.
“It’s all right, Draco,” Harry said quietly, deliberately not raising his voice. “We were just having a discussion about you. It’s right that you be included in it.”
“You call him Draco,” Ron said, and tore himself loose, turning his back as he went over to his desk. “That’s all I need to hear.”
Harry stared helplessly at his back. Ron was turning out to be—well, not prejudiced. After all, Harry had always known that he disliked Draco, and he had gone along and helped Draco anyway. But he was turning out to be more stubborn about the idea that Harry and Draco might be friendly than Harry had ever thought he would be.
Between him and Kingsley, it’s like they really would prefer that Nott would have harmed Draco, or Tusker would have harmed me.
“I wouldn’t call it a discussion,” Draco said, in a musing voice, as if it was the kind of thing he said to himself every night before bed. “That term usually requires at least some maturity of mind on behalf of both participants.”
That brought Ron spinning around again, the way that Harry thought it might, and he stood up and got between Draco and Ron. But Ron didn’t have his wand in hand, and Harry relaxed a little.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Ron said starkly, staring at Draco. “Even if Harry doesn’t, I do.”
“If you’re going to accuse him of seducing me or something,” Harry began. That seemed to be the popular thing to do lately, to stir and mutter that Draco was corrupting the Boy-Who-Lived and converting him to his point-of-view. Harry had thought that the people around him trusted him more than that, frankly.
“No,” Ron said. “I’m accusing him of trying to make you his partner.”
Harry blinked, then said, “Partner, boyfriend, lover, what the fuck does it matter what term you use?”
“It does, in fact, matter to me,” Draco said, in the voice of someone almost painfully polite this time. “But I don’t think that’s what the redhead means, Harry.” He stepped up beside Harry, and this time Harry looked at him. Draco had his fingers pressed against his lips, and his gaze on Ron was almost pensive. “I think he means that he conceives of me as wanting us to be partners. Auror partners.”
Harry stared, then laughed. “But that’s ridiculous.”
Draco glanced at him, face and eyes unreflective, shining mirrors. “Do you think so.” No inflection on the voice, no limit to what the words might mean.
“As if you would want to work with me.” Harry gestured with one hand that swung around the room, something reeling and drunken in his head. “It’s all right for you to flirt with me, or for us to help each other, but we would be disasters in the field together. And Ron is my partner, and we’ve worked well together for years. Why would he think that I would let that change?”
Draco stared at him, and there was something raw and cut on his face that Harry didn’t understand. He wanted to stop, say he was sorry, take the words back, but Ron was speaking, and his words were a different kind of cutting.
“He wants you for that, too, mate. Can’t you see? Everyone else can. His eyes are on you all the time, and I know I’m not the only one who’s watched him trying to match you in the practice duels, even when he’s fighting another partner. He wants to take you away from me, the way he did when we were kids. It’s just the terms that have changed.”
Harry turned back to Draco. Honestly, he was tired of making guesses about where they stood, and maybe getting things wrong. He didn’t think Ron was simply right, by any stretch of the word, but he wanted to know.
“Do you want to date me?” he asked, staring into Draco’s eyes.
A muscle jumped in Draco’s throat as he stared at Harry. Then he jerked his head down. Harry caught his breath. The cut look hadn’t altered, as though Draco was a statue that someone had just begun to sculpt and expose to the wind. His bravery in doing this in front of Ron was something Harry knew he would have to struggle to understand.
Harry stepped towards him. “Do you want to—be in bed with me?” He could have used cruder euphemisms, but honestly, fucking wouldn’t matter to him much without feelings behind it.
Draco captured his hand as he’d done several times now. He smoothed his fingers down the back of it as though he was tracing the knuckles the way he once had with his tongue, then turned it over and touched the center of Harry’s palm. Harry had to close his eyes as the tingling invaded his arm, moving up towards his shoulder. It felt so intense. He didn’t know how Draco had kept it to small gestures so far.
He was so involved in sorting out his feelings and sensations that he hardly heard Draco’s strangled answer. “Yes.”
Harry blinked hard, forcing his eyes open, and asked, “Do you want me to be your Auror partner?”
“Yes.”
Harry swallowed. So that meant Ron’s accusation was true, then.
But it didn’t mean that his were.
“Do you think we would be terrible together in the field?” he asked Draco, studying him. “We’re both strong duelists, I know that from the way we can fight each other, and you’re good and quick in battle. But fighting side-by-side, and doing investigations, is different than duels in a sparring room.” Ron’s comment about Draco trying his hardest to match Harry in the practice sessions was a little worrying. If they were partners, they couldn’t be competing with each other all the time.
“Harry!” Ron squawked, but Harry was physically incapable of looking at him.
“I don’t think we’d be terrible together.” Draco’s voice was so steady now that Harry marveled at it. The exposed look on his face was still there, but now, he thought someone who didn’t know it had started out that way wouldn’t notice that. Again, Draco’s fingers stroked Harry’s palm, and then he slid his hand up under Harry’s sleeve, touching the place where he would have had a Dark Mark if he was born in a different world. “We can complement each other. We know we can save each other’s lives. We’d have to practice to learn how to work together instead of apart or in competition, but didn’t you have to do that with every new partner?”
“I’ve only had Ron as a partner.”
“And I only had Theo.” Draco’s voice was sharp, but it softened, probably because he saw how much he’d startled Harry. “It doesn’t mean that we can never change, that we can never be better than we are—”
“It means that you want to take Harry away from me!”
Harry turned and looked at Ron. Ron stared back at him, arms folded, shivering a little as if someone had cast a Winter Wind Curse directly at him.
Harry studied his partner, and it was as if he was seeing all the past five years at once, rushing past them like water. Ron was a great best friend. He made Harry laugh. He had stood by Harry through so many battles that Harry couldn’t remember all their names, or even which scars had come from which ones. When he’d got injured, Harry had almost broken the sparring room over his grief and anger before Draco found him.
But they weren’t the best Auror partners either, he and Ron. They argued about paperwork, and they were late with it often. They could investigate, sure, but all too often, they made breakthroughs on their own and then told the other one about it instead of talking it through. And Ron couldn’t match Harry—or Draco—in a duel or fighting prowess.
But none of those would have weighed as heavily if Harry hadn’t realized at that moment that he did want Draco as his partner, and lover, and other things, and Ron absolutely wouldn’t stand for that.
“Ron,” Harry began.
“You’re going to tell me that you’re going to leave.” Ron’s tone was flat, totally betrayed.
“Is there something you need to tell me about your relationship with Weasley?” Draco muttered into his ear.
Harry glared back at him, then faced Ron. “Ron,” he said. “Are you going to listen to me?”
“I’m listening.” Ron was still in the room, at least, even if his tight shoulders and the way he stared at the far wall meant that Harry couldn’t really be sure that he would pay attention to anything Harry said.
“Auror partners is something we don’t have to be,” Harry said. “You know that they didn’t even test us the way they did the others in our class when it came time to pair up? They just assumed that of course you and I would be compatible, since we were friends.” He took a step away from Draco, despite how hard that was, and turned Ron gently around with a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not saying that I regret the last five years. And I meant it when I said that you’re always going to be my best friend.”
Ron sighed. Thank Merlin, he was less volatile than he used to be when they were teenagers. His eyes glinted, but at least he was there, with Harry, instead of storming off, the way he’d sometimes used to handle disagreements. “You’re saying that you want him as a partner, but you don’t want him as a best friend.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
Ron tapped his fingers on his wand and stared past Harry at Draco. “And you don’t think that he’s seducing and corrupting you?”
Harry had to snort. “He’s doing a piss-poor job of the corruption. The seducing, though…” He looked at Draco from the corner of his eye, and had to smile at the look Draco was giving him. “That might be working.”
Ron sighed again. Then he said, “I didn’t—it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy working with you, Harry.”
Harry nodded encouragingly.
“But it wasn’t—I thought it was irreplaceable, but it wasn’t.” Ron frowned as though he was trying to make sense of that. “It’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, I would watch other partners working together, and I would wonder why we didn’t have the same connection between us. We’d worked together so long, we should have done better on investigations than we did.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the work we did,” Harry said softly. “But there was nothing spectacularly right about it, either.”
Ron nodded slowly. Harry could see the glint in his eyes turning into something else. He was interested in how much better he could do with a partner who might cover his back better in battle, and work as another set of eyes and ears with him. “Yeah, all right. I—don’t think that I’ll be the one to file the paperwork with Kingsley, though.”
Harry had to smile. “Don’t worry. I’m the one who wants to take up with Draco, so I’ll do it. He can’t be much more irritated with me than he already is.”
“Want to wager on that?” Draco murmured, and made Harry shiver.
“If you’re going to start whispering into each other’s ears and all that, then get out of here,” said Ron, and flapped a hand at them, and turned away shaking his head and saying something about Hermione and lunch and home that Harry didn’t have to catch. He was too exhilarated that he had achieved what he wanted with Draco without ruining his oldest friendship.
He turned around and looked up at Draco. “Come with me to Kingsley’s office to file the paperwork?” he asked.
Draco slid his hand back up under Harry’s sleeve and smiled at him. “I don’t think that’s an offer I can refuse. Harry.”
*
“This is highly irregular, Auror Malfoy.”
It was strange, how all of Draco’s fear seemed to have burned to ashes today. He had always stepped warily around the Head Auror, kept his head down, turned in his reports on time, covered for Theo’s mistakes, done what he was told. Even coming to testify against Auror Tusker had been, essentially, doing what he was told. He had thought it was part of the price for being a Slytherin and a former Death Eater in the Aurors, of making people ignore him.
But there was a limit to how much he was willing to ignore and put up with, and he had reached it today.
“You understood when Harry explained it to you, sir. I know you did. We’re going to put in to transfer partners.”
“That leaves Auror Weasley without a partner!”
“I believe that he’ll ask around and find someone compatible with him,” Draco said calmly. Weasley was a solid Auror, not as respected as Harry was, but then again, Harry had been right; he and Weasley hadn’t had a stellar investigation record as a partnership. Harry was respected for his battle skills, Weasley for his dogged persistence and his ability to lighten the tension in a room. There would be someone, maybe a trainee just coming out of the training, who would be thrilled to work with him.
Shacklebolt spent a moment scraping at the desk with his fingernails as if Draco was being exasperating on purpose. Then he said abruptly, “We found out that Auror Nott was Imperiusing some of the prisoners bound for Azkaban and selling them instead.”
Draco stared. “As slaves, sir?”
“Some. Others as Potions ingredients.”
The loathing and rage in the Head Auror’s eyes made Draco wonder for an instant if his request was doomed. Shacklebolt must be thinking right now that he couldn’t trust Slytherins no matter what happened.
But then Shacklebolt glanced to the side, and exhaled slowly. “Maybe I haven’t given you a fair chance. We questioned Nott under Veritaserum. He confirmed that you weren’t working with him or covering for him.”
Draco only nodded, while a silent rebellion took place in his breast.
“But if you had noticed something and come to me…I might have dismissed it as you just wanting to get a fellow Auror in trouble,” Shacklebolt said, heavily, reluctantly. He turned back to Draco and stared at him. “Harry’s taught me a lesson that I know I’ll do well to heed. I can’t afford to have prejudice clouding my judgment when I’m leading the Aurors.” He spent a moment raking his fingers through his hair, and muttered to himself, “Even if it seems to be prejudice for a damnably good reason.”
Draco let Shacklebolt have almost a full minute of staring mournfully at the wall before he prompted, “Then Auror Potter and I can be partners, sir?”
Shacklebolt started. “What? Oh, yes, you can.” He hesitated, then added, “Thank you for—the part you played in my lesson.”
Draco knew better than to smirk where Shacklebolt could see. He nodded back, a small smile on his lips, and then slipped out of the office and towards the Floo. Harry had been dismissed by Shacklebolt earlier, and said that he would go home and get some rest.
But he’d also pressed a piece of paper with his Floo address on it into Draco’s hand, along with a soft kiss against his lips.
Draco had a celebration to attend.
*
It took a long dinner, which Harry cooked because he wanted to, and a long evening of talking about what they were going to do now that they were Auror partners, and a long digression about the disgusting crimes of Theodore Nott, for Harry to be certain what the right move was.
But now Draco was toying with the last of the wine he’d brought with him, and not looking at Harry, but occasionally glancing at the Floo, and Harry remembered that this wasn’t all about what Draco wanted. Some of it was what he wanted, too.
“I should—” Draco began.
“Come over here and kiss me.”
Draco could gawk when he wanted to, Harry thought as he grinned up at Draco from the couch. But he would probably say it was a very refined and pureblood way of gawking.
He could also put down the glass of wine in a place where it probably wouldn’t spill, back from the edge of Harry’s end table, and cross the space between them at a decent speed. He could lock his lips on Harry’s and dart his tongue down his throat, and Harry could wrap his hands around Draco’s shoulders with a shudder and feel the muscles shifting there, and think this was what he hadn’t known he wanted.
They kissed for a long time in front of the fireplace, Draco pressing Harry on the cushions, and then Harry rolling over so he was straddling Draco’s lap. Only when they ended up with Harry pinned, head dangling, over the arm of the couch did Draco draw back. Harry blinked at him, head drunk with warmth, and wondered why he’d stopped.
“Perhaps upstairs,” Draco began.
Harry grinned. “Well, yeah,” he said. “That’s a good reason to stop the kiss.” And he took Draco’s hand and led him up the stairs to the place where he’d slept alone since he broke up with Ginny.
After all, he rather thought it was time.
*
Draco only caught a glimpse of Harry’s bedroom—dark-paneled walls, a mirror on the front of a huge wardrobe, a bed that sprawled massively under thick blue sheets—before Harry was kissing him again, and gasping something about lube in the drawer.
It took Draco a minute to find which drawer it was, given that he had trouble peeling his hands away from Harry’s body. But once he did, and realized there was a generous amount in the tube (and got over feeling smug about that), he was burning hard and ready for things to go quickly this first time. So he waved his wand to cast the charm that would banish their clothes and render them naked as soon as possible.
Except Harry was casting it at the same time, and their clothes struggled in midair and then disintegrated on the floor. Draco watched with as mild a gape as he could manage. At least he thought it was less drop-jawed than his expression downstairs when Harry had told Draco to kiss him.
“See?” Harry muttered. “We are compatible.”
Draco looked up. The remarks he would have made fled his mind and mouth when he caught a glimpse of Harry’s tanned skin, and twining scars, and flexing chest muscles. At least the spells had worked without injuring them, he thought, and urged Harry onto the bed with his mouth alone, and picked up the lube again.
Harry made a great production out of the whole business, thrashing and gripping the bedposts and swearing. Draco finally drew back to slick his own cock, tilting his head at Harry. It was difficult to do that and smooth the lube down his cock with one hand and keep a few fingers inside Harry, but he managed, because he was a Malfoy. “What was all that about?”
“You’re the—the first man I’ve ever had inside me. I think I’m—entitled to some thrashing.”
This time, the smugness felt as if it would drip out of Draco’s mouth like water. He leaned in and kissed Harry until some of it was gone, and then he slid back and slid in.
It took a few minutes for them to coordinate their movements, and for Draco to find the angle that would work the most groans out of Harry, and for Harry to let go of the bedposts and rest his hands where they belonged, on Draco’s hips. But once they got moving…
It felt as if they were racing down a path, towards the same goal. It felt as if they knew and anticipated each other’s movements before they made them.
My God, Draco thought, heart galloping, catching Harry’s eye, is this what it’s going to be like working as partners in the field, too?
Then all thought fled, before the growing ache in his balls and the way Harry’s throat flushed when his head was tossed back and the catch and rise and shift of hips below his, and Draco was coming embarrassingly fast but that was all right, it was their first time, and from the way Harry cried out and spurted below him, he would have no complaints.
Draco either blacked out or lost his memory in a drifting, contented haze for a few minutes. When he woke up, he was draped over Harry’s chest, cuddling his neck with both hands. Harry snorted at him and separated them with a soft squelch.
“All right there, Malfoy?” But his hand was tender and still on Draco’s cheek.
Draco turned his head and kissed the fingers cupping his cheek. “That’s Auror Malfoy to you. Your partner.”
Harry smiled hard enough to make Draco’s own cheek tingle. “Yeah? You never did tell me what term you prefer for the—sex part of it.”
He couldn’t speak any other words about it yet. That was all right. Neither could Draco. “Partner. For all of it.”
“Then it’s Auror Potter to you, too,” Harry retorted, and leaned over to kiss him.
Draco drew him close, holding him, feeling the relaxing twitches in Harry’s muscles and how his cock gave a little surge of weary interest against Draco’s stomach.
“We can—stop being incredibly strong Aurors for one evening, though.”
“Yeah?” Harry repeated. “I’m glad of that.”
And his mouth caught Draco’s, explaining all the words he couldn’t yet say, confirming the reasons they were partners.
The End.
*
SickPuppy: Thank you! I thnk that, in the end, Ron's friendship with Harry is stronger than a whole damn lot of things, including his distrust of Draco. But it took a long time to get there.
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Partners Unpartnered