can’t imagine a version of events where that situation could have baffled both Draco and Hermione for so long.

Still: “Wait,” Harry says, laughter already bubbling up in his voice again, “have you gone looking before?”

“I’m going to get an ice cream!” Draco says, a little too loud, cheeks pinking as he hurries off towards a cart in the distance. Which means: yes. And, also, that this is the best day of Harry’s life.

Harry laughs to himself as Draco stalks off, delighted by this entire ridiculous turn of events, and sees a tent and some people a little ways away. Curious, he walks over and finds a pet adoption fair, dogs and cats in cages, a couple of volunteers chatting to the people milling around. Harry smiles vaguely at a little girl playing with a small, enthusiastic puppy, and then finds himself drawn to a cage down at the end of the group, with no people nearby. Inside is a blue pit bull, maybe six months old and too skinny, with one eye missing, an angry, fresh-looking scar stretched across the place where it would have gone.

He growls at Harry from the corner of his cage, the sounding harsh from the back of his throat.

“Huh,” Harry says, tilting his head. After a second he crouches in front of the cage, drops his eyes to the ground, and says, voice low, “I’m not pitying you, if that’s what you think. I bet whatever happened wasn’t even your fault, and I’m sure you did the best you could. I’ve got a couple of scars, too—see?” He holds out his right hand, where the words I must not tell lies will be written every day for the rest of his damn life, and watches the dog from underneath his lashes.

Warily, growl abandoned, the creature creeps forward a few steps in the cage and sniffs at Harry’s hand for a moment before, hastily, he retreats again. Harry bites down on a smile. “That’s okay. I get it. Constant vigilance, am I right?”

The dog cocks his head at him. Harry cocks his head back, and is rewarded with a second’s worth of a tongue-lolling grin before someone says, “Wow! He really likes you!”

Harry looks up to see a teenaged volunteer beaming at him. He gives the dog a betrayed look, ashamed to have been caught out talking to him like a person; the dog seems unperturbed.

“Er,” Harry says, with an awkward little shrug, and wonders if he’s supposed to stand up from his crouch or not. “I don’t know about all that. I’m sure he’s just…bored, or something.”

“No, I really mean it,” the volunteer gushes. “He’s been out at three of these events now, and he always scares people. He’s a great dog, really,” she adds quickly, looking horrified with herself. “I mean, I’ve worked with him at the shelter, I shouldn’t have said—he’s wonderful, he really deserves to get adopted. He just doesn’t like being in a cage.”

“Who does?” Harry says, shooting the dog amiserating look.

Draco returns as she walks away, and Harry does get up from his crouch. It’s too late, though, because Draco raises his eyebrows and says, “Potter, oh my god. Absolutely not.”

“Did you actually not get me an ice cream?” Harry says, staring at the lone cone in Draco’s hand, and Draco smirks, momentarily distracted.

“You didn’t say you wanted one,” he says, all feigned innocence, widening his eyes and blinking quickly. “And of course I’d share, but—Potter!” This last he squawks, probably because Harry has just stuck his finger into the side of his ice cream and scooped out a little section for himself.

Harry licks about half of it clean, returning Draco’s feigned-innocent look and enjoying the way Draco’s gaze keeps flicking down to Harry’s mouth, as if he’s fighting the urge to openly stare. Then Harry crouches down, ignoring Draco’s despairing groan, and sticks his finger into the cage with the pit bull.

Again, the dog approaches warily, but this time when he sniffs Harry’s hand his tail starts to wag, and he licks the ice cream off at once.

“I can’t believe I left you alone for five minutes and this is what happened,” Draco says, clearly more to himself than to Harry. “I can’t believe you stuck your finger in my ice cream. I’d honestly be better off traveling with a toddler!”

“He’s always like this,” Harry tells the dog, who is watching Draco with interest now, possibly because he’s the one holding the rest of the ice cream. “It’s not you.”

“Harry, you are not adopting this dog,” Draco says urgently. “You are barely capable of keeping yourself alive, let alone another living being. I urge you, I implore you, stop speaking to him like a person—in fact,e away at once. You are clearly already dangerously attached, and in another thirty seconds even I won’t be able to keep you from doing something reckless and rash.”

“Bye, buddy,” Harry says to the dog, as Draco grabs his arm to pull him up. He’s a little regretful, but Draco’s probably right—he is, after all, unemployed with absolutely no idea as to what his future work schedule will look like, in a city across an ocean from his own. It’s probably not a responsible time to be a pet owner.

And that would be the end of it, except that as they’re walking away, this totally random white guy in a Rush t-shirt nods to Draco and says, “Making the right call there, my friend.”

“Pardon me,” says Draco, lip curling a little, “but I don’t believe we’ve met. So tell me: I care about your opinion because why, now?”

The guy shrugs, not seeming at all bothered by Draco’s knee-jerk hostility. “Maybe you don’t. I was just saying, it’s the right call, not taking that one home. They’re dangerous, pit bulls. It’s down to the breeding. Not a one of 'em that doesn’t go bad in the end.”

“Is that right,” Draco drawls. His voice is like ice, and the guy must pick up on it this time, because he hurries off pretty sharpish. Draco stares after him for a second, and then looks back at the cage where the dog’s still looking up at them, and then snaps, “Oh,e on,” and starts walking away again, clearly expecting Harry to follow.

Harry does follow. After a few steps, Draco says, sharp and interrogatory, “What would you even do with a dog?”

“I don’t know, really,” Harry admits. “I’ve never had one before. I always kind of wanted one as a kid, but obviously that never happened. Well, unless you count Sirius’s Animagus form,” Harry smiles a little to think of Padfoot, ache in his chest be damned, “but I don’t, really. It wasn’t quite the same, I don’t think.” He considers Draco’s question for a moment. “I’d take him on long walks, I suppose. Runs, too. Teach him tricks and things. You know. Dog stuff.”

Draco groans, a heartfelt noise from the back of his throat.

“What?” Harry says, a little stung. He did not, after all, say, Make him be my best friend and listen to me and go on adventures and bite my cousin on the bum, which is why he’d wanted one when he was nine. “That’s what you do with dogs!”

“No, I was just thinking,” Draco says, and there’s a slight pause before he finishes: “that we should probably settle in, is all. I’m famished. You go find us a restaurant, I’ll track down lodgings, and we’ll meet back here in, oh, twenty minutes?”

“Sure,” Harry says, bemused, as Draco walks off, as to how he could be famished whilst currently eating an ice cream cone.

He’s a lot less bemused when, twenty minutes later, he returns to the spot they agreed upon only to see a sheepish Draco, leash in hand, standing next to the one-eyed dog.

“Really great job keeping me from doing anything rash or reckless there, Draco,” Harry says, looking back and forth between them with wide eyes.

Draco scowls. “Your stupid Gryffindor rot is contagious,” he mutters, thrusting the leash at Harry. “And this is your fault, so he’s your dog.”

Harry could argue, but he doesn’t really want to, so he takes the leash instead. The dog looks up at him with a curious eye; as promised, he seems infinitely happier outside of his cage. “You’ll need a name,” Harry tells him seriously, and he whuffs out a cheerful-sounding breath, wags his tail.

“I am consumed by immediate regret,” Draco says, looking despairingly between the both of them, “how do you Gryffindors live like this,” but he moves up their Portkey home to the end of the afternoon, so Harry doesn’t think he means it all that much.

The name thing turns out to be a point of contention, because even though Draco insists that it’s Harry’s dog to do with what he likes, he demands to have a say. Harry wants Cyclops, for obvious reasons; Draco rejects this out of hand, and suggests Bartholomew, which Harry hates.

“What about Alastor?” he says, still on the one-eyed thing.

“Absolutely not,” Draco gasps, putting a hand to his heart and pulling a face of deep betrayal. “I know he’s your great shining hero of never relaxing a minute in your life, but that man turned me into a ferret, Potter. A ferret! And bounced me around on the stone floors! It took me days to physically recover and psychologically I still haven’t; I flatly refuse to name an animal after him.”

“That wasn’t even Mad-Eye, though,” Harry says, even though he knows it’s a losing battle. “Mad-Eye was locked in a trunk for Polyjuice ingredients when that happened, your issue is with a different man. Who,” he adds, delighted to realize it, “actually might as well have been named Bartholomew. So.”

“I hate you,” Draco says, and then looks at the dog and adds, “and also you. Both of you. Obviously him,” he gestures at Harry, “a little more, but you are a terror in your own right, and I wouldn’t doubt for a second that you used some kind of canine trickery to secure your adoption in the first place.”

The dog cocks his head at Draco, and then looks at Harry, who shrugs. “Don’t look at me, mate. I warned you. He gets like this.”

“Don’t talk to him like he’s a person,” Draco insists, for the hundredth time already, either not noticing or not deigning to care that he’s just done the same thing himself.

For a fraught week the dog has no name and wreaks havoc while Harry’s learning up on how to train him, peeing everywhere and knocking things down; he e

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