think I’m having a stroke,” Ge says, and stumbles away before anyone can reply.

“I had no idea you were going to be here tonight,” Neville continues. He doesn’t seem to notice the way Draco flushes and darts a glance at Harry before looking hastily away, but Harry sure does.

“Yes, well,” Draco says, sounding well and truly caught. “Potter invited me.”

The gatecrashing little git. Harry grins at him, delighted by this turn of events, and is rewarded with Draco’s filthiest scowl.

“I did,” Harry tells Neville, for the sole purpose of winding Draco up. “I said ‘Oh, please, Malfoy, we need you at the Gryffindor pub night, everyone there has such fond memories of you, whatever will I do if you don’te—’”

“And I said, ‘Play a sad song on the violin from your dark little corner of solitude like the tragic headcase you are,’” Draco says, smiling wide and mean at Harry. “Then he threw himself on the floor and pounded his fists and begged, it was really quite shaming. What was I to do? Honestly, I had no choice.”

Harry laughs and makes a rude gesture; Draco smiles placidly and kicks him again under the table.

A little mistily, Neville says, “This is so nice. Do you ever think about what it would have been like if we were all friends at school?”

Sounding disgusted, Draco says, “Oh, what, certainly not,” in the same moment Harry, equally horrified, says, “Seriously, mate? C’mon.”

They grin at each other. Neville sighs.

“Fools,” he says, but cheerfully enough. “No sentimentality in your souls, even on this happiest night!”

Harry eyes the drink in Neville’s hand speculatively, wondering just how many he’s had to put away to get to that sentence toe out of his mouth.

Draco says, “Oh? I don’t think I’ve heard the happy news. Enlighten me.”

“You didn’t tell him? Harry,” Neville chides. “It’s only that Hermione’s pregnant!”

“Well, that is exciting,” Draco says, voice neutral, pleasant. “Please pass along my best wishes to the happy couple.”

“You can pass 'em yourself, they’re around here somewhere.” Neville raises the drinks in his hands as if in explanation and adds, “I have to go, Gin’s probably thinking her booze and I were abducted.e find me later! We can talk about the spot in my garden I have picked out for Vicky; she’ll get much better sun there than she does in your attic.”

“When pigs fly!” Draco calls at his retreating back. “That man, honestly.”

Harry doesn’t say anything. His bleak mood, which had mysteriously vanished without his really noticing, returned the moment Neville brought up the baby. Which is so stupid, it’s not fair of him and it’s stupid, and he should just suck it the hell up and get over it.

He throws back the rest of his Firewhiskey, slams the glass down on the table. It hits the wood with a satisfying thunk and Harry looks pointedly from it to Draco to the flask in Draco’s hand.

Draco pauses, but then, slowly, he nods. He pours some Firewhiskey—less than last time, but still a generous measure—into the glass, and then sits back against the booth again to regard Harry, a considering look in his eyes.

“Potter…” he starts, but is drawn up short when Ron and Hermione themselves are suddenly standing next to the table.

“I TOLD YOU,” Ron crows at the top of his voice. Hermione, who is of course sober, leans away from him a little, wincing at the direct shot of volume and booze-breath to her face. “I told you it was Malfoy, Hermione! I told you it was!”

“Yes,” Hermione says, all loving exasperation, “you did. And I said, yes, Ron, it looks like it is, how interesting, perhaps we should leave them alone, but,” she gives Harry and Draco an apologetic little shrug, “here we are. Hello, Draco.”

“Granger,” Draco says. His tone is warm on her name, but retreats into the vague, pleasant one Harry thinks of as his public voice when he adds, “Weasley. I hear congratulations are in order?”

“They are, thanks,” Hermione says, grinning. “For you too, right? I’ve been hearing great things about the new layout of the museum, and actually I’ve been meaning to Floo you. I must’ve had two dozen calls this month from parents who saw the article in the Prophet and want to sign their children up for the L.E.A.R.N. program.”

“Really? They’re not afraid their little angels are going to be subject to a traumatizing experience that will scar them for the rest of their lives?” Draco says it lightly, like it’s a joke, but Harry can tell that it’s not one.

And apparently Ron can too, because he puts his hands flat on the table, stares down at Draco with an intensity that Draco clearly finds unnerving at best and, at worst, outright alarming. “Look, mate—can I call you mate?”

“I find myself somehow incapable of drawing up an adequate response,” Draco says faintly.

Ron seems to take it as permission enough, because he says, “Mate. I know it’s—slow going, y’know, some cases are just slow. That’s how it is. And I mean, I’ve always thought you were a bit of, well, a git and all, but. Mate. The Aurors have your back, d’you know that?”

“Uh,” says Draco, clearly gobsmacked. Even through the dark cloud of Harry’s mood, it’s pretty funny.

“It’s true!” Ron says. “'Course it’s true, 'cause see, I’m like, the boss now—a boss—you know. And so the Aurors’ve got—the backs that I say they’ve got. And like I said, you’re not my cuppa an’ all, but I’ve got Harry’s back forever, you know?” He grabs the top of Harry’s head and wiggles it a little without looking away from Draco; Hermione chokes on a laugh, and even Harry feels the corners of his mouth twitch with a smile. “Forever. And that means I gotta have yours, too, right, because Harry is, like, so obviously, totally—”

“Oh my god, Ron, it’s—uh—the Chudley Cannons!” Hermione says, eyes wide.

“What, all of them?” Ron demands, releasing Harry’s head, and takes off in the direction she’s pointing at once.

“Sorry,” Hermione says to Harry and Draco, already following him. “Catch up with you two later?”

She goes without waiting for a reply, vanishing into the crowd after Ron, which is— pretty fitting, Harry thinks, things being what they are.

When he looks back at Draco, Draco is still looking at him, the same considering, assessing gaze as before. Harry shifts a little under it; he’s not sure he wants Draco to see whatever it is he’s picked up on, the petty, stupid ugliness of Harry’s train of thought tonight.

“Potter,” Draco says eventually. “You want to get out of here?”

Harry does.

Draco, still relatively sober, leads them outside, sneers when Harry reaches for his wand, and insists on Apparating both of them himself. Harry expects them to land in the warmly lit halls of Grimmauld Place; instead he blinks to see a familiar Muggle street near Diagon Alley, about three blocks from his apartment.

“Oh,” Harry says, his heart sinking. Draco’s just taking him home, maybe thought he could use a nice—constitutional, or something, first. Walkies, Harry thinks bitterly, and pulls his coat a little tighter around himself. He thought…well, it doesn’t matter what he thought. Obviously Draco has no interest in entertaining Harry in this state, and it’s not like Harry blames him.

He wants to go home, to be alone with his thoughts, less than he’s ever wanted to do anything. He would rather have stayed at the damn bar. He supposes there’s nothing for it now, though, and starts walking.

He only makes it a few feet before Draco says, “Potter?”

Harry turns. Draco is still standing in the exact spot they landed, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. “Where, exactly, are you going?”

“Er,” Harry says, “home?”

Draco looks at him blankly for a second, and then realization seems to dawn. “Oh, yes —your place would be around here, I suppose. No, of course we’re not going there, you idiot. It’s horrible there.”

“Oh,” Harry says again, mollified in spite of the insults to his apartment and his intelligence, respectively. He looks around as he walks back over to Draco; this street is mostly weekend-empty office buildings, a couple of closed little Muggle shops. “What are we doing here, then?”

Draco fixes him with a steely look. “Look away, Potter.”

“What?” says Harry. “Why?”

“Don’t ask questions,” Draco says, and groans. “It’s such a simple request—‘Look away, Potter,’—a Kneazle could do it! Are you really going to force me to consider you less intelligent than a Kneazle?”

“Kneazles are very smart animals,” Harry says, and crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn’t break eye contact with Draco.

“Oh—you—fine,” Draco says, flushing bright red, “but I swear to god if you tell anyone I’ll ruin you.”

Then he…he….

Harry really doesn’t know how to explain it, even to himself. Draco just kind of—it’s not a shimmy, exactly, sort of more of a—wave, Harry thinks, except with his whole body. It reminds him a little of people cheering at the Quidditch World Cup, the motion of jumping out of their seats and throwing their arms in the air, except that Draco started it already standing so he just kind of—rocks his hips forward and back, and then his torso, as he lifts his arms over his head, pulls them as far back as they’ll go.

There’s not even time for Harry to process, yet alone laugh at, the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen in his life, because the air around them starts to shimmer and ripple. Then, with the distant sound of a bell chiming, it almost—rips—and a little doorway-sized gap appears between the two buildings closest.

“What,” Harry says, staring.

“You’ll see,” Draco says, and tilts his head at the gap. When Harry doesn’t move, Draco grabs him by the jacket sleeve, rolls his eyes. “You’d think you’d never seen magic done before, Potter.e on.”

He draws Harry through the portal.

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