Malfoy is leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, one hand resting against his stomach, looking strangely but inarguably like a contented house cat.

“Hey, Malfoy?”

“Hmm?”

“How’d you know where I live?” Harry says.

“What? Oh,” Malfoy says, eyes blinking open, “Blaise.”

“Zabini?” Harry demands. “How does he know where I live?”

Malfoy smirks at him. “Blaise is an Unspeakable, Potter. He knows where everyone lives, and probably also whether or not they enjoy living there, and almost certainly where on the property they’ve buried any bodies.”

Harry absorbs that piece of information slowly. It pulls at something in the back of his mind—a hazy memory—

“Potter?” Malfoy says, sounding vaguely alarmed. “You’re not going to off on one about—I don’t know, personal privacy or something, are you? Because, honestly, I think it’s a bit late for all that. You had plenty of opportunities to kick me out.”

“No, it’s not that,” Harry says slowly. He’s almost got it. “I think…I think maybe I ran into Zabini last night.”

Malfoy’s body language changes in an instant. He snaps upright in his chair, abandoning his indolent pose as if it never was at all, and demands, “What, at the Gryffindor piss-up?”

“Okay, seriously, how did you know it was the Gryffindor piss-up?” Harry says. “If you’re stalking me you’re very bad at it; you’ve really tipped your hand.”

“Oh, everyone knows about the Gryffindor piss-up,” Malfoy says, waving a hand, though Harry thinks his cheeks might be very faintly pinked. “Once a month at the Bawdy Bowtruckle, everyone’s invited except former loathed enemies—Potter! Focus! You saw Blaise there?”

“I think maybe—just outside,” Harry says. It’sing back to him; not any of the details, those are probably lost forever, but certainly the vague shape of the thing. “He made me sit on a bench. I was, er. Pretty far gone, to be honest.”

“I never would have guessed,” Malfoy says, sarcasm thick. “You looked fresh as a daisy when I got here.”

“Oh, shut up,” Harry mutters. “Anyway, he said something about—channels, I think? And I’m pretty sure he called you a name.”

“So you talked about me,” says Malfoy. His tone is very calm, which, for some reason, Harry finds a little frightening.

“Maybe?” he hedges. “But honestly, all I really remember is that he kept trying to like…flatter me, or something. Butter me up. It was really weird.”

“That’s how Blaise gets information, it’s—actually, never mind, I don’t have time to do this with you right now,” Malfoy says. He drops his napkin on his plate, sighs, and stands up; his eyes, Harry notices, have gone a bit wild again. “I have a previous engagement that I was unaware of until this very moment; I must be off.”

“I think he must have gotten me home, too,” Harry says, realizing he doesn’t actually recall at all how he got back here last night. Then he processes what Malfoy’s said. “Oh! Oh. Okay. You’re not going to, er, burn out his entrails or anything, are you? Just because, you know. It’d be my duty to stop you.”

“No harm wille to Blaise that Blaise doesn’t entirely deserve,” Malfoy says, which Harry notes is not exactly a no.

“You’re going to go kick on his door too, aren’t you,” Harry says. Malfoy glares at him and Harry raises his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m just stating the facts as I see them. You’re the one whoes 'round to other people’s places and kicks on their doors and then tells them houses have feelings, or something.”

“That’s,” Malfoy says, appalled. “That’s just—it’s so wrong I can’t even begin to—I, just, look. I’m leaving, I am, but we’re circling back to this another day, all right? Please pencil it in somewhere amongst the several insipid and burdensome visits I assume I will shortly be receiving from you and your staff.”

And the thing is that it’s—mean, what he’s saying. It should be cutting. It should bother Harry like overhearing more or less the same thing the other day did, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not.

But Malfoy’s smiling very slightly as he says it, so small and quick you could miss it, and when he gets to the door he stops, turns. Looks Harry in the eye, and then looks very quickly away. Says, quietly, to some spot on the far wall: “Potter. Thanks for breakfast.”

If Harry grins at the door for half a minute after he’s gone—well. He’s still a little drunk.

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