I do not, this interrogation tactic is as idiotic as it is pointless.”

Harry glances over at the woman to see if this remark has fazed her at all, but she just laughs. “So you keep saying, Mr. Malfoy. You’ll excuse me if I don’t find myself convinced.” She turns to whisper something to the slightest of the men, who ducks his head to hear her, nods slowly as she talks.

When Harry looks back at Malfoy, Malfoy is looking right at him.

Harry jumps, and then scowls at Malfoy, even though he doubts Malfoy can actually see the detail of his face. He’s probably just an lumens—there are a couple of them in the department and the cloak never works on them either. Once, three years ago, Harry’d been tracking a suspect who turned out to be trained in lumency and he’d very nearly bled out in an alley because of it; it’s not unheard of, people being able to sense him even when he’s wearing the cloak. It’s just bloody annoying, and especially bloody annoying because it’s Malfoy who’s doing it.

Malfoy’s eyes flick pointedly from Harry’s face to his right. After a second, they roll briefly heavenward and then resume their previous action, flicking from Harry’s face to his right, from Harry’s face to his right…

…where a set of clearly old, quite probably enchanted metal chains are hanging for display on the wall next to the intruders.

Harry grins slightly and offers Malfoy a nod of understanding that, in all likelihood, goes totally unseen. What he should really do is wait to confer with the backup that is bound to be along any second now, but what he does is walk in careful silence across the floor to stand just beneath the chains, reach up and wrap a hand around the end of one. It shivers down and around his arm until his grip on it is perfect, carefully and silently enough that Harry wonders if its magic isn’t a little bit sentient.

He wants to act so badly that it’s all he can do not to rip it from the wall right now, but there are four of them and one of him and children in the room, so he stands there, nearly vibrating in impatience, until he hears the slightly mangled attempt at birdcall that he and Ron set up as a signal for situations like these years before.

The chain sings as it whips through the air, striking the first of the grunts exactly in time with the sound of the front door banging fully open. The man turns in his direction and shrieks blue murder—probably at the way it looks like he’s being wrapped up in a chain attached to and controlled by exactly nothing—and Harry casts an Impediment Jinx and then a Body-Bind at the other grunt, who’s already started to advance menacingly towards Malfoy and the rest of the hostages. There are footfalls on the stairs and the woman jumps from the table, all lazy amusement otten, looking at the slight man in what Harry can see is panic even through the glamour.

“Go,” she yells, and Harry throws a curse after them but misses, has to watch in horror as they both run and jump through the nearest windows just as Rones crashing through the door.

“Cor, Harry,” he says approvingly, surveying the scene, “bloody cool is what that is, you being all invisible with a chain of death and everything.”

“Windows,” Harry gasps. The chain is heavy, whipping his arm back and forth ufortably as the man caught within it thrashes. As if it heard this thought, it slithers its way off his arm to bind itself entirely around its captive, followed shortly by two members of their back-up team; two more are dealing with man in the Body-Bind on the floor. Harry pulls off his cloak and dashes over to the broken glass to meet Ron, noting grimly that the lawn is upied with several additional Aurors, but not the dead or damaged bodies of any fleeing robbers. “Looks like mid-air Apparition. Bugger.”

“Yeah,” Ron mutters, and meets Harry’s eyes. “So: professionals, you reckon?”

“Of one sort or another,” says Harry, who’s been doing this job long enough to know that the only people well trained enough to make that sort of jump are law enforcement, hit wizards, or the kind of criminals nobody wants to encounter. “Definitely more than your standard snatch-and-grab, that’s for sure.”

“Do you mind?” drawls a hideously familiar voice. Harry turns, heart sinking, to regard Draco Malfoy, who raises one eyebrow and, despite being tied up and sporting what will probably soon be a wicked black eye, manages to look unimpressed. “Not that everyone isn’t enjoying the show, Potter, but there are children tied up over here.”

Guiltily, and annoyed that Malfoy even needed to point that out, Harry turns at once and crosses the room, Ron at his heels. He decides to let Ron, who actually has a child and thus presumably knows better than Harry what to do with them, start with the kids, and waves his own wand to undo Malfoy’s bonds first.

“I have told you already I will not play into this sick delusion, Potter,” Malfoy says, loudly and nonsensically, as he stands. Strangely, several of the children seem to be giggling. “It is not healthy and I will enable you no longer! You cannot continue to pretend to rescue people who are in no danger—my god, man, you’ve stooped to frightening children! Innocent babes!”

Harry stares at him, incredulous. “Malfoy,” he says slowly, “what in the bloody—”

“So maybe,” Malfoy hisses, dropping his voice so only Harry can hear it and turning his face away from the kids, “one of the children said ‘Will Harry Pottere and save us, Mr. Malfoy?’ And maybe it was a bit of a stressful moment and all that popped into my head was this impression I used to do of you in school, so I did it for them and they found it quite funny.” He smiles, as if gratified by this, and then, in a sterner tone, continues: “And of course that useless wretch of a teacher they sent this time was just sitting there crying like a sad lump,pletely unhelpful, so, you know. I told them that it was all a bit of a game designed to appease your terrible ego, and the intruders weren’t going to hurt us really, and soon you would burst through the door and declare ‘I am Harry Potter and injustice bows before me!’ and they’d all fall right over in an effort to preserve the fragile balance of your mind.” He fixes Harry with an using look, as though irritated with him for having the gall to rescue him from violent criminals intent on torturing information out of him. “It never urred to me that you might actually show up. But since you did, what say you reach down deep into that special sappy Gryffindor place in your heart and play along? We might spare some of the younger ones, at least, having nightmares tonight.”

Harry stares at Malfoy, aghast. There’s nothing on his face except—well, disdain and fury and cool grey-eyed superiority and all that other stuff that’s driven Harry quietly mad every time they’ve interacted since they were eleven, but. On top of all that, there’s something that Harry would be hard-pressed to call anything but sincerity. And, yeah, it’s pretty weird that Malfoy seems to care about sparing a couple of children some nightmares —that really doesn’t line up with Harry’s mental picture of the man at all—but, well. It’s also pretty weird that Harry seems to have sold him this house, and that he seems to have turned it into a museum, which seems to have just been robbed.

Also: like hell is Harry going to tell Draco Malfoy he can’t put aside his own pride for the sake of some traumatized kids.

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, you’repletely mental and I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Harry whispers furiously, but then closes his eyes briefly, sighs, and says, loud enough to carry this time, “Er, you’re—right, Malfoy. This is very— dangerous and selfish behavior. How…dare I.”

Ron turns, wide-eyed, to give Harry a questioning look. Harry gives him a helpless little shrug in return, which Ron seems to take as answer enough. He goes back to spelling the children free; several of them appear to be hugging him.

Several others, Harry notes with mild horror, are staring in rapt attention at him and Malfoy. They do, as Malfoy said, seem to be the youngest of the group; the older ones are obviously more shaken and not buying their little show in the slightest.

“How dare you indeed!” Malfoy declares at the top of his voice, and then, in an undertone, “Is that really your best acting? Good god, Potter, how have you survived undercover work all these years?”

Ignoring this—for the children —Harry says, full volume, “I am, er, deeply ashamed. Of my actions. Which were…deeply shameful. You’ve all, er, shown me the error of my ways. Never again will I,” Harry catches Ron’s eye, sees that he is only barely seeding at stifling his laughter, and closes his own eyes again to force out through gritted teeth: “manufacture a rescue operation for my own selfish ends.”

“See that you don’t,” Malfoy says sternly, and the group of younger children, all of whose hands have now been freed by Ron, burst into a round of spontaneous applause. Harry wishes briefly and fervently for death. Ron looks like he wishes he had a recording of this for posterity.

Malfoy mostly looks surprised, though his face clears of all expression the minute Harry’s eyes meet his. He moves quickly to begin herding the children and their teacher towards the stairwell, talking a mile a minute about Flooing their parents and rescheduling their tour and how surely—he fixes Harry and Ron with a dark look as he says this part— the Aurors can be convinced toe take their statements at home, if they need them. Harry glances at Ron and then nods his assent at Malfoy, who looks briefly pleased and then briefly irritated and then carefully blank all over again, and who vanishes down the stairs behind his little group without another word.

“Best. Bust. In. Years,” Ron says with feeling, and goes to check on the two intruders they caught.

They decide that Ron will go back to headquarters to interrogate the prisoners and Harry will stay

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