Harry wants this guy to bleed, wants it so badly that his fists and his chest and his teeth hurt, but—he wants him to bleed for Draco, and that’s not what Draco wants.

“I’m not,” Harry forces out, through gritted teeth, “going to hurt him. I’m going to take him in.”

“Very good,” says Draco, and lets go.

Slowly, Harry lowers his wand from the guy’s throat—not far, just far enough to cast another Body Bind, make sure the little fuck can’t go running off. The man coughs for a minute, and then he smiles at Draco over Harry’s shoulder, says, “Why, thank you, Mr. Malfoy. What an unexpectedly merciful spirit you’ve got.”

There’s a ringing pause, and then:

“Do you know what,” says Draco, voice flat and unyieldingly cold, “one punch couldn’t hurt.”

Harry hits the man so hard his own hand hurts, so hard he can’t quite control his follow through, scrapes his knuckles raw on the edge of the window frame just next to his face. It’s worth it; for the sound he makes, for the blood he spits out of his mouth, but for the satisfied little sigh from Draco, most of all.

“Tell me what the fuck you’ve been doing here,” Harry growls, low. “Right now.”

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” says the man, and there it is again—Harry knows he’s never heard this voice before, but he can’t shake the sense that he’s talked to the person underneath the shimmer of the glamour, knows him somehow. “You’re really not very good at this, are you? I know you don’t have backuping, and you’ve already played the rest of your hand—poor child, it’s not your fault. All you ever knew was brute force and dogged persistence, wasn’t it? You weren’t supposed to be an Auror. You weren’t supposed to live long enough.”

Harry doesn’t really care about any of this, could give a shit about some criminal spitting up painful truths that Harry himself epted long ago, but Draco snaps, “You shut the fuck up right now or I’ll let him murder you. There’s a lovely spot in the back garden where we could bury your body; no one would ever know.”

“Oh, this is interesting,” their captive breathes, looking to Draco and then back at Harry, a speculative expression on his false features. “Harry, you’re not even wearing shoes —what, did you Apparate straight from your bed to answer the Call? And Mr. Malfoy, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were more concerned with Harry Potter’s feelings than you are with exacting revenge. It’s hardly very Slytherin, is it? Most damning, boys, most damning, no matter which way you slice it.”

“How’s this for Slytherin,” Draco says, voice raised a little, the edge of hysteria in it, “shut up and answer his fucking questions or I’ll kill you myself!”

“You know,” says the man, “I don’t think I will.”

“Oh, you will,” Harry says. “Or, if you don’t, your friend in the hall with the crushed windpipe will—well, it’ll probably be a while before he can talk. Maybe he can write it all down on a piece of paper for us or something. Because when I take you in—”

“You won’t be taking either one of us in,” says the man, very calm.

“That,” says Harry, “is so very wrong,” but before he can say anything further the man yells, “It’s now, Em!” and headbutts Harry hard in the forehead.

Harry takes the hit with all the grace his training’s taught him, falling back only the barest half-step—but that half-step’s enough. The man vanishes, smiling, into thin air, nothing left of him but the telltale whoosh of a recently departed Portkey. Harry swears, runs out into the hall, and finds hispatriot is gone too, probably by the same mechanism; a Portkey worn close to the skin, the strategy favored by highly-trained wizarding assassins who want a back door exit if they get picked up on the scene of a hit.

“God fucking damn it,” Harry yells, loud enough that his voice reverberates down the halls.

He should have seen it. He should have anticipated it, the Portkey, but he didn’t because he’s not smart enough, not good enough, they’re gone again and it’s Harry’s fault. Draco’s not safe here, Harry had the chance to keep him safe and he missed it, he fucked it up, he fucked it up and let the bastards go and he should have killed him, killed them both, it would have been worth whatever the fuck it cost him and—

Harry wheels around to punch a wall and—stops. Remembers, all at once, that it’s not the wall’s fau< that he’d be hurting the house, which helped him, which he’s only ever done wrong by, before; that he would be hurting Draco. It takes everything in him, but he unclenches his fist, places his palm flat against the wall instead, tries to imagine he can feel the current of the house’s magic pulsing underneath the whorls of his fingertips. He takes deep, steadying breaths and waits for Draco to say—whatever he’s going to say. Something pithy about how Harry’s clearly deranged, probably, but isn’t it nice that he’s developed a rudimentary grasp of basic self control.

Nothinges.

Harry looks up and realizes that Draco—isn’t next to him. That Draco is still in the bedroom. That there are fric-sounding little crashesing from the bedroom. That Harry still doesn’t know what caused the massive crash he heard outside. That Harry is being selfish.

He shakes himself, drops his hand, and goes in after Draco.

The answer to what caused the crash he heard outside is apparent immediately; Harry doesn’t know how the hell he didn’t notice it before. The far wall of the room has been blown clean through; all that remains is debris, a few determinedly clinging wooden panels, and a gaping hole leading into what must be the master bathroom.

Harry can’t believe that a month ago he was talking about someone doing this like it wouldn’t matter, like it would be fine. The hole is more than just hole, visibly and palpably, and he feels dizzy for a second to look at it; sick. He thinks that maybe he wasn’t imagining it a minute ago, that feeling of magic pulsing under his fingertips—maybe the house is bleeding, the only way it knows how. Certainly Harry feels, standing here in this room, the pervasive, creeping sense of dread he associates with hospital and battlefields, busts gone very wrong. This is a wound, and a grievous one. Harry’s chest hurts just looking at it.

Of course, then he lays eyes on Draco, and thinks that first bout of chest pain was nothing.

Harry thought—he got swept up in the moment, Draco’s hand on his shoulder, the way he said “Harry. This isn’t you,” in that calm, collected voice. He got swept up in Draco’s whole—thing. He seems so in control most of the time, like he’s got everything figured out, or at least like he’s got so much more figured out than Harry that it might as well be everything, and whatever he doesn’t have quite managed is just a wash. Harry knows, has always known, that it’s maybe a bit of a facade; Draco’s not quite as good at it as he thinks he is, and Harry sees the cracks sometimes, notes them. In some ways he’s been looking for them since he was eleven, so. It’s not like the fact that they’re there is really a surprise.

He ot, is all. He ot—or maybe never truly let himself recognize—that the reason Draco puts it up in the first place is that what’s underneath is the same deep well that fuels his endless talking, his endless research, the way he went and stood on a sidewalk in Muggle London and wriggled like a fish for two days out of sheer determination to find something everyone else abandoned long ago. Draco is intense and incessant, full stop, and Harry knows that, has known it for weeks now, but it hadn’t urred to him to push that thought to its logical conclusion, to think about what it must be like sometimes inside of that forever babbling brain.

It’s urring to him now, though. He can’t seem to make it stop.

Draco is shaking. Visibly; badly. The ropes are still trailing from his ankles and wrists. He is flitting from drawer to cab to dresser to nightstand, opening doors and pulling things out at random, tossing them aside, moving to another spot and starting again. He’s looking for something; he’s gasping for breath. He’s heavily favoring his left side.

“Malfoy,” Harry says.

“Oh!” Draco says. He turns, and his eyes are wild; bright. Narrowing dangerously. He always does try to hurt when he’s hurting. “Oh, are you done now? I’m sorry I couldn’t attend to your little breakdown, I’m a bit busy in here, it turns out it’s very difficult to find things by hand and seeing as they took my wand—”

“What are you looking for?” Harry says.

“I don’t need your help,” Draco cries, and it’s such an obvious lie, so utterly transparent, that it’s all Harry can do not to go over to him and call him on it. The only thing that holds him back is knowing how desperately Draco wants to believe that it’s true; Harry can’t bear, after all of this, to be the one to force him to admit that it’s not. “I need the potion—I need my wand—”

“Here,” Harry says, and holds out his own.

Draco stares at the wand; stares at Harry. Stalks over and rips the thing out of his hand. Snaps,“io Draught of Peace,” and then, louder, “io Draught of Peace,” and then, in a voice so thready and badly concealing desperation that Harry nearly snatches the wand back rather than see it disappoint him, “io Draught of Peace.”

Nothing happens. Draco makes a horrible, high pitched keening noise, drops the wand, backs up until he hits the wall opposite the hole, and slides to the floor.

“They took it again,” he says. His voice has a quality to it that Harry’s never heard before—he talks fast, sometimes, often, but not like this. Right now Draco sounds like he’s taking in too much air and not enough, the words tumbling out from between his lips breathy and too close together, each one of them an obvious choking hazard. “They took it again, Potter, what the fuck kind of thieves are these? Who does this to someone, why would you go out of your way to—are they just—sadists! Is that all ites down to! Or is this personal, do they just hate me that much, I can’t breathe, I—”

He stops,

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