d him inside like a sheepdog; instead the treacherous bastard starts hauling him forcibly down the lawn.

“I can walk, Malfoy, god,” Harry mutters, halfway to the gate, because there’s no escaping doom now; he might as well face it with some dignity.

“Far be it from me to assume you have any of the basic personhood skills down,” Malfoy snaps, not letting go. “Walking, eating, breathing—it’s all a crapshoot with you, isn’t it, Potter? Now shut up, and let me do the talking.”

“When are you ever not doing the talking?”

“Shut up,” Malfoy hisses again, and, at last, drops Harry’s robes.

They face the assembled crew. This close up, Harry can see that they are all quite a bit soggier than they appeared from a distance. Also, several of them seem to be teenagers, perhaps on Hogwarts break, and one of the adults has what looks to be a live grey squirrel perched on one of his shoulders.

Harry blinks, but the squirrel’s still there when he opens his eyes. He stares. It chitters at him.

“Hello there,” Malfoy says pleasantly, apparently impervious to all squirrel-related shock. “My name is Draco Malfoy, and I am the proprietor of this establishment. Were you hoping to see the museum, perhaps? Unfortunately we’re closed for repairs right now, but we’re planning to reopen week after next; you would be more than wee toe back then.”

There’s a pause, and then one of them—the guy with the purple hat, Harry realizes, who’d shown up first—holds up his camera and waves it a little in the air. Like he thinks Malfoy is an idiot, he says, “Uh, no? We’re the press? Obviously?”

Harry can’t help it; he has to bite back a grin of sheer anticipation. He knows too well what happens to people who antagonize Malfoy, and it’s bound to be more entertaining when it’s happening to someone else.

“How shocking,” Malfoy says, still in that smooth, pleasant voice. “You could just knock me down with a feather. Dare I say: lawks. What fine publications are you here representing today?”

The eight who aren’t obviously teenagers rattle off their bylines quickly; two for the Prophet, three for Witch Weekly, a couple of freelancers working on spec, and one for the Quibbler. That last is the guy with the squirrel, who Malfoy gives a long, furrow-browed look before he says, “Quite.”

Then he turns to the teens, who are snickering and elbowing each other, and says, “And what about you lot?”

“We’re with, uh,” says the boy who has received the most elbows, and is clearly the leader of their little gang, “Farts International.”

No, mouths one of his friends, a girl with large, light eyes, who reminds Harry a little of Luna. I’m sorry.

“Farts International,” Malfoy repeats, raising one eyebrow. His voice is the picture of cool, posh indifference, but Harry thinks he can detect a little thread of amusement there, just beneath the surface. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar. Well respected publication, is it?”

“Oh, yeah,” says—well, Harry’s just gonna go ahead and think of him as Farts International, actually. “They say our writing is…explosive.”

He and all his friends burst into ill-concealed snickering again, except for the girl Harry noticed before. She rolls her eyes, gives Harry and Malfoy a pleading look, and mouths I’m sorry, and then, He’s crazy, with a little spiraling hand gesture to go with it.

The corner of Malfoy’s mouth twitches. Harry grins at her outright, and then hastily stops when she looks like maybe she’s going to fall over.

“Well, I am certainly—” Malfoy pauses, rolls the next word over his tongue with such a hideously posh ent and inflection that Harry almost chokes, “honored—to have such a wide sampling of the press corps here at my little museum. But I’m afraid you may have wasted your time; unfortunately, I gave all the details I could to the gentleman who wrote the story that ran in the Prophet on Sunday. I’d love to give you more information, but the rest is classified. Isn’t that right, Auror Potter?”

Out of the corner of his mouth, so quietly that it’s barely even audible, that no one but Harry could possibly hear it, Malfoy says, “Nod, Potter.” Then he elbows Harry hard in the side, quickly and subtly enough that no one seems to notice.

Harry despairs a little to think that they might have something inmon with Farts International and his friends, but he nods all the same.

“Well,” one of the women from the Prophet says, hedging.

“We’re here for him, actually,” says the bloke from the Quibbler, who Harry decides to think of as Squirrel Guy. He blinks owlishly at Harry, seemingly unperturbed by the awkwardness of being so blunt. “It’s the best gig in town, you see—it doesn’t matter what we ask him, because our papers will print it, whatever he says. People’ll read anything if it’s got Harry Potter’s name on it.”

Harry wonders if the papers will print that he feels a bit sick. He wants to go back to his spot against the wall where at least he didn’t have to deal with this, but before he can even move Malfoy shoots him a quelling glare, like he’s can tell what Harry’s thinking and doesn’t like it.

Harry scowls back at him, but he stays put.

“Oh, dear,” Malfoy says. His pleasant tone has taken on an air of heavy sympathy— Harry can tell it’s mocking, but he’s not sure the assembled can. “That is just heartbreaking, because as you can see, Auror Potter is on duty, aren’t you, Auror Potter?”

He elbows Harry again, and Harry nods automatically, and then realizes Malfoy’s controlling him like a fucking marite and elbows him back, hard.

Malfoy just smirks at him, the git.

“Please,” says Purple Hat, rolling his eyes. He’s one of the ones here on spec, not with any specific publication. “I mean, sure, okay, duty, whatever, but he’s not really doing anything, is he? So I’m sure he has time to answer a few questions—”

“Would that it were a matter of time!” Malfoy says mournfully. “But, alas, I’m afraid it’s a bit illegal to harass an Auror while they’re on duty. Seems a terribly oppressive policy to me, but what can you do? These law and order types take their jobs very seriously; I just can’t imagine why. I myself would prefer to let it slide, but Potter here is known far and wide as being a real stickler for the rules.” Here Harry makes a small, involuntary choking noise, which Malfoy ignores. “There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to find a story somewhere else.”

“It is not illegal to—” Purple Hat starts hotly.

Malfoy cuts him off, voice abruptly and utterly cold. “A solicitor now, are we? Good for you. It’lle in handy when you’re hauled up in front of the Wizengamot on charges of Violation 311C, Salamander Class, Impediment or Obstruction of Auror Activity in the Second Degree. I’ve been before the Wizengamot, you know; it’s not fun. Very ufortable seating, and you don’t truly know humiliation until you’ve been administered Veritaserum in public.” He leans forward a little, and even with the thick iron bars of the gate between them, Purple Hat steps back. “What do you think mighte out of your mouth, hmm? Are you ready to find out?”

Purple Hat looks like the only thing he’s ready to find out is whether he’s about to piss or shit himself. It probably shouldn’t be so funny.

“So, there you have it,” Malfoy says, voice pleasant once again, stepping back. “You can head off to wherever you like, unmolested, or you can stay here and file your reports from jail. What’ll it be?”

Everyone takes off so quickly—some Apparating, some legging it off down the street— that Harry almost expects to see a cloud of dust clearing when they’ve gone.

Instead he sees…Squirrel Guy, who shrugs at Malfoy’s raised eyebrow as, expressionlessly, he feeds his squirrel a peanut. “I think being administered Veritaserum in public would be an eye-opening experience that might allow me to transcend the suffocating coils of the social contract and understand the nature of truth,” he says, in the tones of a man explaining his choice of sandwich.

“I,” Malfoy says. He opens his mouth, shuts it again, shakes his head, and says, “You know what? Fair enough. Muffialato.”

“That,” Harry says with feeling, so impressed that he can’t be bothered to engage his verbal filter, “was brilliant.”

Malfoy flushes, looking briefly pleased before he crossed his arms over his chest and scowls. “Oh, spare me your adulation, Potter; it’s gauche.”

He starts walking back to the house, and Harry hurries to keep pace with him. “Seriously—is there even a Salamander Class C11 Impediment law, or whatever you said?”

Malfoy throws him a scathing look. “You’re an Auror, for god’s sake. Shouldn’t you know?”

“I know that wasn’t a yes or a no,” Harry says.

Malfoy sighs, but Harry can see the sliver of a smile that’s creeping onto his his face. “Well,” he says, sounding pleased with himself, “there very well may be, yes. I would be quite shocked, though, to discover it said what I said it did.”

Harry laughs. Malfoy stops a few feet from the stoop to look back at him in surprise, but then he’s laughing too, his shoulders shaking under his cloak. The sound is warm against the chill of the day, the steady beat of the rain against his skull, and Harry can’t believe how much the act changes Malfoy’s face, leaves him looking somehow both younger and nothing like the version of him Harry used to know.

Thought he knew, at least. He’s not so sure anymore.

“What are you even doing here, anyway?” Malfoy says, when they’ve both stopped laughing. He walks the last few feet to the stoop, climbs the stairs, and leans against the doorframe. “I mean, guarding the place against further dastardly attack, I assume, but I rather thought you had underlings for that.”

Harry follows him, stopping one stair from the top. “Er, well. I sort of—asked the Weasleys about magical houses the other day,” he admits sheepishly. “And it turns out that, er. Maybe you were right, and I was…erm. A bit of a shit homeowner.”

“I encourage you strongly to omit the word ‘homeowner’ in future uses of that sentence,” Malfoy say

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