et near a mad old plant who’ll throw spiked seedpods at you as soon as look at you. I should just let you take her, really,” he says, directing this last at Neville as he steps down off the last stair.

“I wish you would,” Neville says, and grins at him.

Malfoy sighs, but it’s clearly affected, part of some in-joke, which is just—really weird, Harry thinks, to see between Neville and Malfoy. “Perhaps next time; I just can’t seem to find the energy to draw up the paperwork right now.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” Neville says easily, and steps down onto the ground behind him.

“So you two…work together, then,” Harry says, looking back and forth between them and still not quite believing it. He lets his eyes settle on Neville. “Malfoy. Is a client. Of yours?”

“I see you still have all the subtlety of a hex to the face,” Malfoy says, turning an irritated look on him. “Yes, Potter, you might as welle out and say it: we did indeed have quite a fractious relationship as children, thank you so much for bringing that up. But then I had a dying magical plant and Longbottom here was touted far and wide as the best in the business, so.” He shrugs, a louche little one-shouldered move. “We got over it.”

“He was a bullying git and the source of half my childhood nightmares,” Neville corrects, grinning, “but I charged him four times my normal price when we started and it more or less evened out in the end.”

“Four times,” Malfoy splutters, rounding on Neville at once. “But—that can’t be—you dropped it down from double last year!”

“I dropped it down to double last year,” Neville says. “But don’t worry. I promise if you ever really can’t afford it, I’ll discount you down to you my standard rate.”

“What a greatfort,” Malfoy mutters. “Such a warm notion in this time of stress.”

“I live to serve,” Neville says cheerfully. He throws his gloves into the carpet bag slung over his shoulder, which is printed with a pattern of radishes and trowels.

Ginny left him for a man carrying a radish and trowel carpet bag, Harry thinks, and almost laughs. It’s not that he doesn’t think Neville is a great guy, deserving of all he’s got; it’s just funny, how life never quite seems to shake out the way Harry thinks it’s going to.

“Well, I’m off,” Neville says. He claps Malfoy on the shoulder and says, “Chin up, Draco,” which, for some reason, makes Malfoy look sharply at Harry before he makes another spluttering noise that is, now that Harry thinks on it, really more of an outraged squawk. Neville ignores this and looks at Harry, hitching his bag up on his shoulder awkwardly. “It was, uh, good to see you, Harry.”

“You too,” Harry says, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. “Say, er. Say hi to Gin for me.”

“I…will,” Neville says, voice slow with surprise. Then he nods to both of them, takes his coat from a waiting Kreacher, and walks quickly out the door, leaving Harry and Malfoy alone in the foyer.

Harry waits, all but holding his breath, for Malfoy to say something cutting about what he—and the rest of the Wizarding world, ording to Harry’s friends—read in the gossip columns a few years back. Harry hasn’t taken the Prophet in years, but the Potter-Weasley- Longbottom love triangle had apparently gotten a lot of traction, produced months of speculation after it broke. Harry could never understand that; it was really a very simple story. Ginny loved Neville more than she loved Harry, fit better with Neville than she fit with Harry, wanted Neville more than she wanted Harry. Nothingplicated about it at all.

Malfoy’s eyes, fixed on Harry, glitter with malice, and Harry’s so braced for somement about cuckolds or ginger abandonment or whatever else that he almost doesn’t process it when Malfoy says, in tones of deep delight, “Potter, what in the name of heaven is that?”

Harry blinks, and then follows Malfoy’s gaze down to the center of his own chest. To his absolute horror, one of their inter-office memos has affixed itself there, its neon green paper glowing faintly in the morning light. It must have attached itself to him while he was going through Malfoy’s ounts; Harry has no idea how he didn’t notice.

Malfoy leans over and plucks it from Harry’s shirt before Harry can even react. “‘Dear Harry,’” he reads, “‘please—’ oh, this part is all in capitals ‘—DO NOT FORGET AGAIN to have Malfoy take you through the crime. It is—’ capitals again ‘—THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR JOB, and I know it’s distracting that he’s Malfoy, but still. Don’t et! Hermione says paperwork is 9/10ths of the law. Love, Ron.’” Malfoy closes his eyes and lets out a satisfied little sound before he opens them again, like he’s just downed a glass of lemonade on a hot day. “Potter, I must be straightforward with you: I may frame this. It is beautiful and it deserves a place on the walls of Wizarding history. Who knew Weasley had such poetry inside of him?”

“Oh, give me that,” Harry snaps, snatching for it. It vanishes up Malfoy’s sleeve before he can get his hands on it, and he crosses his arms and gives Malfoy his sternest scowl. “You will not put that in the museum.”

Malfoy just laughs, eyes bright. Harry’s not sure he’s ever seen him laugh before—or, well. Of course Harry’s sure he has, he must have laughed plenty at school, in mockery and lording himself over everyone else and generally being a tiny blonde whirlwind of unpleasant evil-adjacent chaos, but. He’s never seen this, Malfoy’s wide smile and the lithe lines of his throat as his head tips slightly back. It’s still at Harry’s expense, but the amusement is less…cold, somehow, than anything Harry can remember from him.

It’s a nice laugh, low and rich, crinkling his eyes at the corners. Harry’s surprised by it.

“Terrifying though that little display of authority was,” Malfoy says after a moment, calming himself, “why don’t we get on to THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR JOB?” He pitches his voice in obvious reference to Ron’s capitalization, and just smirks when Harry scowls. e on; most of the rooms down here won’t be sorted out for ages. Being in them depresses me.”

He says it like it’s a joke, but the smile still playing at the edges of his mouth goes sour, so Harry is pretty sure there’s hard truth behind the words. He follows Malfoy silently up the stairs, jumping the one with the “I bite” sign, and into a room at the far end of the hall. When Harry lived here, he just thought of it as a spare room, empty space with no purpose, nothing in it but a few ancient and vaguely ominous armoires. Under Malfoy it’s a beautifully appointed little sitting room, all done in warm woods and soft leather,plete with a well-stocked wet bar in the far corner.

Harry walks over and runs his hands across the polished wooden surface of the bar, and then blinks when it materializes a glass right in front of him, a bottle of Firewhiskey and a perfectly round sphere of ice hovering a question over the rim.

“Er, no thank you, it’s half-eleven,” Harry tells the bar, which, managing somehow to seem a little put out about it, vanishes its offering as quickly as it appeared. To Malfoy, he says, “Did thise with the house? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, but it certainly seems to be hooked into the magic.”

Malfoy makes a pleased little noise. “After a fashion, yes. I saw it in a painting of this room from my great-grandfather Pollux’s time, and I tracked it down and bought it back. The woman who had it was terribly fond of it, but, well.” Malfoy shrugs, waves a hand. “It’s hard to argue that it isn’t where it belongs.”

Harry agrees, and thinks, a little bitterly, that if there’d been a magic bar pouring him drinks when he lived here he might never have sold the old pile in the first place. He doesn’t think it’d be very wise to say so, though.

Malfoy moves to the center of the room and sits on one of the leather armchairs, so Harry takes the one across from him, mirroring their postures from the day before. From this angle there’s no ignoring the black eye sprawled across practically half of Malfoy’s face, and Harry frowns at it, annoyed. “D’you want me to get someone to look at that eye for you? Or I can probably just heal it; someone from our team should have seen to it before we left.”

“You will do no such thing,” Malfoy says, sounding scandalized. He prods at the bruised flesh, hissing a little at the pain but then grinning, as if well-pleased by this moment of agony. “It’s quite good, isn’t it? No, no one is touching this until after my appointment with the Prophet. I want to look as battered and tragic as possible when the articlees out.”

“You…want…what?” Harry says, feelings his lip curl in distaste. Not that the Prophet doesn’t deserve to get a little of the manipulation it so often gives, but the very idea of what Malfoy’s suggesting turns Harry’s stomach.

Malfoy’s lip curls right back at him. “Well, Potter, not everyone was beaten about the head with the attention stick when they were doling out lots in life. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure the story gets out, and that people are on the lookout for the perpetrators. Speaking of whom,” he leans forward in his chair, fixes Harry with a sharp look, “did you manage learn anything worthwhile from the two you nabbed yesterday? Not that I suppose you could have gotten much, since you focused all your efforts on catching the wrong criminals.”

Discussing the details of an active case with a civilian victim is expressly forbidden without clearance from your supervising officer, Harry thinks. Then Harry looks at the mocking smirk on Malfoy’s mouth, so smug Harry wants to scream, and thinks that expressly forbidden is a matter of opinion, anyway.

“Actually,” Harry snaps, “we got quite a bit of helpful information from Pensley and Jocler. They did turn out to be hired muscle—”

“Obviously.”

“—but,” Harry continues triumphantly, ignoring him, “they were hired on by this same outfit for several jobs before this, and they were able to give us some deta

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