s, but there’s no bite to the words at all. He sounds almost…Harry doesn’t know what he sounds like. “In fact, just ‘I was a shit,’ should more than suffice.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. “The point is I felt a bit guilty about it, and then one of the Junior Aurors called off his shift tonight, and I couldn’t find anyone to replace him. So. You know. I came myself.”

“Hmm,” Malfoy says. He gives Harry a look Harry can’t begin to interpret, his eyes flicking briefly along the line of Harry’s body, his soaking robes and trousers. It’s—assessing. It makes Harry’s mouth go a little dry.

Then Malfoy huffs out another laugh, this one more exhalation than anything else, and opens the front door. He steps inside and catches it as it swings back, holds it half-open, inviting. “And heaven forbid you just knock on the door like a normal person, I suppose. Much better to stand out here being slowly drowned for your riveted audience, wasn't it? I swear, it’s a wonder you manage to so much as dress yourself in the morning.”

And Harry’s opening his mouth to say that, no, he couldn’t have knocked on the door, because the post, the job he’s here to do, is outside, watching for danger. He’s opening his mouth to point out that Trent hadn’t knocked on the door—Christ, hopefully, anyway—and even if he did, Malfoy clearly didn’t let him inside. He’s opening his mouth to argue, like he always argues, just for the sake of the argument…

…and is drawn up short, all at once, by revelation slamming into him.

Malfoy is standing in the doorway of this house that was Harry’s once; he’s lit from behind with the warm, golden glow of a space Harry could never make so much as vaguely inviting. His hair is loose, hanging in damp little chunks over his head, and for all his words are harsh now, like—well, like almost always—his eyes are nearly warm. He’s bizarre and off his nut and Harry wants to go inside with him just to see what he’s going to say next. He wants to go sit in that beautifully done little study and talk to him about…anything. Whatever. It won’t matter, because whatever it is it’ll be insane or infuriating or eye-opening or funny, or all of those things at once, or even just: not boring.

It might be the most unlikely truth he’s ever stumbled across, but: Harry likes Malfoy, this person he’s be. He doesn’t hate him; he likes him.

It’s a rather significant shock.

“Well?” Malfoy drawls, irritation sketched into every line of his body, arms folded and eyebrows up. “Are youing in or not?”

Harry blinks, and then nods, and then, when Malfoy rolls his eyes, smiles. He climbs the last stair, and goes inside.

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