e’s probably—early, or something. This churning feeling in his gut is probably nothing. “Draco? Are you down here?”

“Kitchen,” Draco calls, in a horribly strangled voice. Harry drops his towel and runs.

Draco is standing in the middle of the room, his back to the stove. Harry’s briefly so relieved to see him standing there, perfectly fine, not at wand point or bleeding again from the now thin and silvery scar under his right eye, that he doesn’t notice what he’s looking at. Then he sees that Draco’s hands are clenching and releasing at his sides, and, already dreading it, follows his eyeline.

Beetles—hundreds and hundreds of beetles—are spelling out the words “GET OUT” in two foot letters across the window above the kitchen sink.

“What the fuck,” Harry says, staring at them. He’s never had much of a problem with bugs, but this is disgusting, and in his kitchen—in Draco’s kitchen, Harry hastily corrects himself, but still. There’s also the disturbing little message to consider, and he grimaces at the whole mess of it, furious, but also…confused. “Who even takes the time to do something like this? It’s like something out of a bad Muggle horror movie—what purpose does it serve? It’s not even that intimidating, really, just weird. Well, unless you’re afraid of bugs, I suppose. Ron’d probably hate it.”

He casts a sidelong look at Draco, expecting him to roll his eyes and say something in that dry, exasperated voice he gets when he’s in the mood to feel superior to Harry, which is most of the time. What he’s not expecting is for Draco’s face to be white as a sheet—which is stupid, Harry realizes, because Draco’s a museum owner, a private citizen, and not an Auror. Those school breaks he spent sharing houseroom with Voldemort aside, he’s probably never, just for example, seen an expletive scrawled out across a corpse in blood, or played a rousing game of ‘Worst Murder’ over a few drinks at the pub. He’s a regular person, for a given definition of the words. He must be terrified.

Harry turns quickly, steps in between him and the window. “Whoa, Draco, hold on,” he says, and he puts a hand on Draco’s shoulder because—because they did this once before, didn’t they? The night of the attack, when Draco curled into him and gasped for breath; Harry trusted his instincts, and they were right. And that’s all he’s doing now, it’s the same thing, he knows what that look on Draco’s face means and he wants to help, but—but Draco must not want his help.

It’s strange, though, because just for a second he leans in, the full weight of him pressing against Harry’s hand, their faces close, and Harry draws in a deep breath and—

Draco rips himself away from Harry’s touch like it’s burned him, his eyes snapping from distant and fearful to furious, hard. Disgusted, Harry registers, feeling the hit like a physical blow.

“Don’t touch me,” Draco spits, and then, sneering, adds, “Fucking hell, Potter, you really can’t help yourself, can you? The second you have an opportunity to be the big hero you juste charging on in, regardless of whether or not anyone actually wants you to.”

“I,” Harry says, startled and stung, reeling. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“Oh, just shut up,” Draco yells. “Or—or—don’t just stand there! Don’t try to be kind to me, you fucking pillock, can’t you understand it’s not fair to—” He cuts himself off abruptly, standing pale and rigid in the center of the kitchen, and looks at Harry with wide, unreadable eyes.

Harry’s heart’s beating too loud again; distantly, he wonders if Draco can hear it. “It’s not fair to what?”

“Nothing,” Draco snaps. All the anger’s gone from his voice now; he just sounds flat. Cold. “If you’ll excuse me; I’ll just be a moment.”

He turns on his heel and stalks off towards the stairs and Harry—Harry stands at the kitchen, his back to the beetles, and stares at the spot where Draco just was.

It’s not that Harry hasn’t thought about what Hermione and Ron said last week: that it isn’t one-sided, this thing between Draco and him. He’s thought about it a lot, in fact. He’s lost hours to thinking about it, to watching Draco out of the corner of his eye and wondering: what if? There have even been moments he let himself think that maybe his friends were right, and that Draco might—well. Like him, or something, a little. Harry’s never let himself think for even a moment that Draco might love him; he’s not an idiot, and he knows too well the power of love, how it’s strong beyond measure and burned into your very bones and never quite there when you want it to be, somehow. But he thought, just maybe…he thought…

Well. It doesn’t matter what he thought. Draco doesn’t so much as want Harry to touch him, thinks it’s unfair that Harry would even try. That’s…that’s pretty clear. Even Harry can figure that out.

He takes slow, shallow breaths, and looks down at the swimming pattern of the tiles on the floor, and thinks that love’s never been worth it, not for a second, because the pain that ites with is too wretched. Because it’s unbearable. Because it hurts too fucking much.

Dracoes back downstairs a few minutes later. He’s calm in that way he doesn’t get naturally, like there’s a thin glaze between him and the rest of the world; he’s taken Draught of Peace, and Harry almost asks him for some. He doesn’t, though. He doesn't want to ask Draco for anything, just now.

“I apologize,” Draco says. The worst thing about it is how easily it falls out of his mouth; wrestling an apology out of Draco is typically a Herculean task, involving days of coordinated effort and amitted wearing-down campaign. Getting one unprompted like this doesn’t just feel cheap—it stings. “I was overwrought. No one enjoys being systematically driven from their own home.”

“Sure,” Harry says to the floor. If Ron and Hermione are right, he’s been making a hideous, embarrassing ass of himself for weeks, mooning after Draco so obviously that it can be seen from space, so he’s sure as hell not going to show Draco his face right now. “Makes sense.”

Draco makes a little sound, this huffing breath of some emotion that Harry could probably identify if he’d just look up, but he doesn’t. He can’t, and after a second Draco shoves past him, hard, knocking their shoulders together as he steps up to the sink.

Harry risks turning to look at the line of his back. It’s as bitter and harsh as the taste in Harry’s mouth, but he stays quiet, carefully a step away, while Draco pulls a little jar out of his pocket and knocks one of the beetles inside with the tip of his wand.

Draco turns around, and his face is cold with fury, even through the glaze of the potion. Without looking at Harry, he says, tightly, “I think it’s about time we called in some bloody reinforcements.”

Blaise shows up first; he takes one look at the beetles, glances at Draco’s face, and then Banishes them, which is what Harry should have done. Ron and Hermione arrive next, both in work clothes after being drawn away from a weekend home improvement project—each of them gives Harry a weighted look, but he looks away, doesn’t respond. Finally Pansyes through the door, wearing sweatpants and a face of what looks like last night’s makeup. Sheplains bitterly about having been drawn away from her business on a Saturday morning, but she settles in with the rest of them anyway, sprawling out next to Draco’s chair on the sitting room floor.

It’s a long day. Strangely enough, Ron and Hermione and Pansy and Blaise get on all right, to the extent that Harry’s really paying them any attention; the intersection of their assorted disciplines, and their shared investment in the matter at hand, seems to outweigh any lingering animosity from school. There are a couple of delicate moments, but by and large they all work together well, passing case notes and ideas and large tomes from Draco and Hermione’s libraries back and forth.

All of them except Harry and Draco, that is. It’s—Harry knows it’s his fault, that Draco’s being cold and shuttered because Harry is, that what Draco needs right now is for Harry to just swallow all of his stupid unproductive bullshit and be there for him, help him work the fucking problem. Harry even catches Draco throwing him little openings, once or twice, moments that have to be costing him with all his stupid pride, and Harry wants to take them, he does. It kills him, that look on Draco’s face when Harry won't rise to his bait, refuses to fall back into their easy rhythm even though it would be the simplest thing in the world. He wants to let go of his—of this—of whatever it is, this blockage that’s settled under his skin like cement, walling him off from himself.

But he can’t. He can’t stop seeing it: the disgust on Draco’s face this morning, the way he tore himself away from Harry’s hand like Harry’s touch was poisonous. It shouldn’t be important, Harry shouldn’t let it get to him, it should matter so much less than what they’re trying to do here, but—it doesn’t. Harry lied to Ron and Hermione, and he lied to himself; he’s not sure anything has ever mattered to him like this thing with Draco does, and he can’t stand it another minute, to sit here and let himself fall back into their familiar give-and-take when he knows how Draco really feels. When he doesn’t have even a distantly flickering beacon of hope to keep him going.

It’s selfish. It’s horrible. It’s too hard to do anything else.

“Well, here’s something,” Hermione says, after a few hours. Harry is grateful to her—to all of them, really, even Pansy—for staying here and working with them, even over the cavernous echo of his and Draco’s icy silence. “Here, Ron, give me that initial report—Draco. You said that first day that they kept asking you for the source, right?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry sees Draco stiffen very slightly, though his voice is perfectly even when he says, “That sounds right, yes.”

Hermione makes a triumphant little noise. “Well, what about the actual core of the house? It says here—and I

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