‘A Muggle said it wasn’t true,’ a good barometer for reality? The rat kings are out there and they’reing for our very souls. They’reing for yours first, by the by, because your blasé attitude towards their very existence has offended them.”

Harry laughs, because Draco’s mental, and then gets up, because Draco’s insistent, and then makes dinner, because Draco’s hungry. He doesn’t go back into Sirius’s room, but he’s glad, every time he walks by it, to know it’s back there, behind the door.

Of course, he also only barely resists the urge to throw Draco against the wall and kiss him with furious, desperate passion as they walk down the stairs that night, so. He’s not sure if it’s a good experience or not, overall.

There are rougher things, too. One afternoon Harryes in and finds Pansy and bloody Narcissa Malfoy taking tea in the drawing room, and, in one of the less proud moments of his life, says, “I have to go, there’s been a—murder,” and walks straight back out of the house. Draco laughs himself nearly sick about the whole thing later, and Harry sits in slightly sheepish eptance of this, pretending he doesn’t notice the way Draco’s hands are shaking a little. Pretending he doesn’t know why Draco’s mother is in town for the night, staying over at Malfoy Manor, when Draco’s made it perfectly clear a dozen times that she never sets foot on English soil anymore when she can help it.

Draco’s scared. It wears in his face, the set of his jaw when he thinks Harry’s not looking, the ufortable little half-jokes he keeps making to museum guests about being murdered in his bed. Harry thinks that Draco probably thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it, but he’s really not, and it keeps Harry up some nights, tossing between his fresh, clean-smelling sheets: his helplessness in the face of that, the way there’s only so much he can do. Draco won’t even get close to the topic, anyway, changes the subject abruptly every time Harry brings it up, so Harry doesn’t bring it up. He just—sets Trip Jinxes on all the windows, and Alarm Spells on all the doors, and every night he goes floor to floor and checks that there are no holes in the wards.

“I did all this stuff before, you know,” Draco says every night, but he doesn’t ever insist on taking over, and Harry always thinks he seems a little easier about it all by the time he’s done.

They’re working the case, too—Harry’s given up all pretense of running a professional investigation and showed Draco all their files, because he’s better at research and honestly maybe at Auroring in general than Harry, though Harry tries not to acknowledge that grim possibility most of the time. He lets it slip to Ron that he’s done so by ident at dinner one night and is immediately horrified, but then Hermione says, “Oh, thank god, I’ve done so much research already, when can we all meet and go over it all?”

They all have dinner at Grimmauld Place about two weeks after the night of the attacks. Harry cooks because Draco says he should, and it ends up being a really nice night, though they don’t get all that much done. Hermione and Draco get along well, and Draco and Ron have several perfectly civil conversations, and Harry thinks he keeps his feelings for Draco under wraps pretty well, all things considered. He catches himself when he’s staring and stops. He doesn’t say anything weird. It goes fine.

After dessert they have drinks in the sitting room, go over a little bit of the case work, and agree to meet up again the following week to go over the rest, since they’re all overly full and a little tipsy, except for Hermione. Then Hermione says she and Ron have to go home, and they had a lovely evening, and they’ll just take the Floo, and would Harry minding through for a minute to say hello to Rose?

Harry looks at Draco, who raises one eyebrow, picks up his current book from the coffee table, and drawls, “By all means, Potter, don’t let me stop you,” so Harry shrugs and steps through the fire after them.

He remembers that Rose is at Molly’s, not even here to say hello to, at the same moment Hermione pinches the bridge of her nose and wails, “Harry, oh my god!”

“Sweet Merlin’s saggy trousers, it was horrible,” Ron says, grasping a chair for support. “I feel like I’ve seen inside of you. Both of you. Like. Your insides! That’s how unclean I feel right now.”

“Er,” says Harry says, badly startled. “What are you talking about?”

“What are we talking about?” Hermione repeats, shrill. “What are we talking about? Harry!”

“Look, mate,” Ron says, and grimaces. “If things are—I mean—if you and Malfoy are having—bedroom problems—”

“What,” Harry says, a stricken whisper, and then, at a volume that’s more of a shout: “What?”

As it turns out, Ron and Hermione have basically thought he was having sex with Malfoy this entire time. It’s a pretty horrifying revelation, apparently all around.

“What do you mean you’re not sleeping with him?” Ron demands, crossing his arms over his chest. Then he grimaces. “Oh, ew, hold on, do you mean the thing tonight with the—”

“The corn,” Hermione groans, “oh my god, that was bad enough when I thought it was intentional! Harry! How can you possibly not be sleeping with him? It’s not even sexual tension, it’s—it’s—I mean, the corn thing alone was borderline pornographic!”

Harry tries to think of what they’re even talking about. He does have a glazed, soft- edged memory of Draco eating a piece of corn on the cob, which, yes, fine, did perhaps engender some less-than-wholesome thoughts on Harry’s part, but they were just—thoughts! Ron and Hermione shouldn’t be able to see his thoughts!

When he says as much, Ron gives him a faintly disgusted look.

“Mate, everyone could see your thoughts,” he says, shaking his head. “From space, they could see them; yours and his. How about the thing with the sauce on his face, 'Mione?”

Hermione makes a pained sound and picks up the edge of a blanket. Leaning over into Ron’s space, and in a truly terrible impression of Draco’s voice, she says, “Oh, Potter, you’ve got a little—spot,” as she rubs the blanket in what is clearly supposed to be a sensual manner all over Ron’s cheek.

Harry knows what moment they’re talking about, and they’re obviously both insane. Draco only—kind of dabbed him a little, with the napkin, for a second—and Harry definitely, definitely was not wearing whatever truly appalling expression is on Ron’s face right now.

“Please stop,” says Harry, in a small voice. “You’re scarring me.”

“Well how do you think we feel!” Ron says, throwing his hands in the air. “Look, okay, I genuinely cannot believe I’m saying this, it hurts me to say this, but: Harry. Please. For the sake of decency. For the sake of my eyeballs. Just do the deed, mate. Just have at him. This has gone on long enough.”

“What do you mean?” Harry says, a note of real hysteria in his voice. “How can you guys be—you’re talking like—I only realized I had,” he stops, swallows, spits the next word like it’s a disease, “feelings for him, or whatever, like two weeks ago!”

There is dead silence for a long moment. Then:

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione says, her hand flying to her mouth, “what?”

“But,” Ron says, sounding badly rattled. He throws a panicky look to Hermione, who returns it. “But—we just thought you didn’t want to tell us. And who could blame you, I mean, it’s Malfoy—”

“Harry,” Hermione says, and it’s almost a wail. “I’ve known since sixth year! What do you mean you only figured it out two weeks ago, that’s—”

“Sixth year?” Harry repeats. He maybe yells it a little. “Sixth year?”

“Well!” Hermione wrings her hands, her face a picture of mortified horror. “You were —you were so obsessed! And at first I thought, well, but he’s always been a little obsessed with Malfoy, you know, only then I got to thinking about that and—and it just! It all made a lot more sense! If you had a—a bit of a crush, or,” her voice wavers, probably at the expression on Harry’s face. “Or something.”

“We talked about this!” Ron says, in the tones of someone having found a secret tunnel out of a collapsing mine. “Yes! We did! Weeks and weeks ago! Right at the beginning of this whole thing! We said, Harry, you’ve always been a bit obsessed with Malfoy, and you got all squirrelly about it and said it wasn’t true and we just—we assumed you were trying to avoid the topic, because it so obviously was true, and…” Ron looks at Harry and pales a little. “Merlin. You really did think it wasn’t, didn’t you?”

“Sixth year?” Harry says again, because: that can’t be right. Harry hadn’t had a crush on Draco—on Malfoy, back then—in school. He just…knew where Malfoy was most of the time, and agonized for hours about what he might be up to, and spent many perfectly happy afternoons zoning out in class imagining defeating him in Quidditch, or punching him, or playing some trick on him just to see the look on his face, or…

“Oh my god,” says Harry, horrorstruck, to the floor.

“If it helps, I didn’t figure it out until you sent him that wand,” Ron says, a little faint. “Only then—I mean, six months you talked about it, Harry. ‘Do you think he even got the wand? He probably did and just isn’t answering me; what a stupid git. Don’t you think Malfoy’s a stupid git, Ron?’ It was every day!”

“I,” Harry says. He supposes, now that he considers it, that he had thought about the whole thing with the wand an awful lot, for a while.

“Two weeks ago means you didn’t even know for,” Hermione says, shaking her head at him in disbelief. “I mean—the pub night—the hospital— ”

“Could we all just stop,” Harry says, too loud, “talking about all the stupid ways I didn’t notice that I was bloody in love with him for a second! Please! Just one fucking minute! Of peace!”

There is another ringing silence.

Eventually, quietly, Ron says, “Wow, mate.”

Harry swallows. “Yeah.”

“I’ve…” Hermione says, equally hushed. “I’ve never heard you say that about anybody before. Not even Ginny. That’s—wow.”

“Well hooray,” Harry spits, too freak

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