The Daily Prophet
September 22, 2003

LONDON—A spokeswoman for the Ministry's Departmental Usefulness Commission was able neither to confirm nor deny rumors that the Committee is to be dissolved, and its resources returned to the Auror Bureau.

"The Committee has been invaluable to the wizarding public in the five years since the end of the Second War," said spokeswoman Lisa MacDonegal, reading from a prepared statement. "Because of the Committee, all eighteen of the Death Eaters on the Ministry's Most Wanted list are accounted for, and there has been no reported activity from anyone with suspected Death Eater connections in the past eleven months.

"The Committee was created as a temporary branch of the Auror Bureau whose sole purpose was to track down and bring to justice Death Eaters and their accomplices. Under the leadership of chief Harry Potter, it has quickly and efficiently completed that objective.

"While I cannot yet comment on the DUC's decision as regards the fate of the Committee, the DUC would like to remind the public the Committee was always meant to be a temporary organization, and that its dissolution would only mean good things: that the public is safe from further threats from Death Eaters and those who support them."

MacDonegal was unable to say when the DUC would officially announce its decision.

Committee chief Harry Potter was unavailable for comment at press time, but he has been a vehement opponent of all Ministry plans to reabsorb the Committee into the Auror Bureau since the idea was first proposed two years ago. Potter was able to justify his reluctance at the time with the subsequent capture of Amycus Carrow, wanted for the torture and murder of Penelope Clearwater and for various crimes against humanity. There has been no sign of Death Eater activity since Carrow's capture in November 2001, however, and Minister of Magic Katherine Deschellain has made it clear that, without proof of continued Death Eater activity, the Ministry will no longer maintain its support of the Committee . . .

Harry had been at work for less than thirty seconds before the first memo of the day accosted him. Almost a new record, he thought grumpily. He swatted at it with the hand that wasn't holding his briefcase, which should have been enough to buy him a few moments of peace, but this particular memo was not to be discouraged. The instant Harry turned his back on it, it dive-bombed his head and bit him firmly on the ear.

"Hey!" Harry yelled. The memo backed off and hovered menacingly in the doorway. Harry didn't take his eyes off of it. "Cheeky bastard. See if I ever read you now."

A chuckle came from the general direction of the doorway, and for a moment Harry actually thought that the memo was laughing at him. But then Ron poked his head through the door and grinned. "Talking to the memos again, eh, Harry? Are you really sure St. Mungo's should have released you so soon?"

"Since when do the memos bite?"

"Moody figured out a charm to make them act like owls," Ron said. "He'll have them hooting and shitting again before you can say 'damned nuisance.'"

"I thought the whole point of replacing the owls was to stop the hooting and shitting," Harry said.

"Yeah, well, apparently Moody thought memos were too easy to ignore."

The memo chose that particular moment to dive-bomb Harry again, but he was ready for it this time. He snatched it out of the air and crumpled it viciously. "See what he wants, I guess," he said, unfolding it and smoothing it out on his desk.

Potter and Weasley,

Report to my office as soon as you get this. There's some new intelligence you should see.

"I like how he didn't even bother to sign it," Ron said, peering over Harry's shoulder.

"Not like he needed to," Harry said, rubbing his ear. "Best go find out what he wants before the couriers arrive."

Right on cue, Harry's fireplace sputtered and flared up. "Too late," Ron said.

"Committee Chief Potter, sir?" The Floo courier stuck out his arm. A parchment case was attached to his wrist with a magical blue thread.

"Take whatever it is to my secretary," Harry said, finally remembering to set down his briefcase.

"It's an urgent message for you, sir. It's charmed so I can't leave your office until you take it, sir." The courier didn't look any more pleased with the arrangement than Harry was, which made Harry feel only slightly better about it. He tapped his wand against the thread, and the case released a piece of parchment.

The letter was uncharacteristically short and to the point.

Committee Chief Potter,

There will be a meeting of the Departmental Usefulness Commission tomorrow morning at nine to discuss the reallocation of Committee resources. The meeting will take place in the DUC offices in the New Building.

Sincerely,

Ernest MacMillan
Head, DUC

Ron peered over his shoulder at the letter. "Since when are they shutting down the Committee?"

"You can go now," Harry reminded the courier.

"Thank you, sir." The flames flared up again as he left.

"They might not actually mean it, you know," Ron said, rereading the letter. "Maybe they're just trying to figure out how best to reallocate everything when they shut down the Committee—many, many years from now," he added hastily.

Harry didn't much want to continue the conversation. "Let's see what Moody wants," Harry said.

Moody's office was located, predictably, right next to the emergency stairs. When Harry and Ron walked in, Moody was leaning back in his chair, his peg leg on the desk, smoking a pipe and studying a file in his lap. His magical eye was in a glass of water on the desk; both it and the ordinary eye still in Moody's head fixed on them as they entered the office.

Moody had been pulled out of retirement on a permanent basis by the onslaught of the Second War, and showed no signs of slowing down after the war ended, even though it had cost him his right ear and a hefty chunk out of his left arm. He'd been offered the position of Committee chief first, but had declined it, claiming he wasn't cut out for administration. Harry had days when he wished he'd been that smart. Moody had taken over as head of Intelligence and it was generally accepted that the only way he was going to retire now was in a body bag.

"Take a seat," Moody said by way of greeting. He didn't wait for them to sit before he continued, "What's got your knickers in a knot?"

"Harry just got a letter from the DUC," Ron said. "He's to meet with them tomorrow to discuss reallocation of Committee resources."

"Since when are they shutting down the Committee?" Moody said.

"That's what I said," Ron said.

"Since forever," Harry said.

"He's always pessimistic in the morning," Ron said to Moody.

"Get over yourself, Potter. The DUC isn't going to shut us down, especially considering the intelligence that just came in."

That made Harry sit up straight.

Moody continued, "Thirty-six hours ago, one of our Recording Charms in Kent picked up chatter that was tagged as potentially interesting. The speaker or speakers were using some sort of voice-masking devices, making them virtually impossible to identify, but the content of the conversation the charm recorded was certainly enough to draw our attention."

He tapped his wand against a piece of parchment on his desk, and nonsensical garbling filled the room.

"Finite Incantatem," Moody said. "That's what the Recording Charm heard. The Auror techies cleaned it up somewhat."

He tapped the parchment again.

The conversation was short, no more than thirty seconds and, as Moody had said, contained nothing that could be used to identify the speakers. The speakers talked about the breaching of wards in what seemed to be entirely generic terms; mentioned something about "the first of the month"; spoke of a "contract," which was the known Death Eater word for an assassination, but there was nothing to identify the target until the very end, when the conversation lapsed into French.

"La maison jaune, non?"

"La maison jaune?" Harry repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's French," Moody said, "for 'the yellow house'."

"So we're looking for someone who lives in a yellow house," Harry said. "In France. Great."

"La maison jaune," Ron said with a thoughtful expression on his face. "That sounds really—give me a second." He got up and left the room.

"Okay," Harry said, baffled.

He and Moody sat without talking. Moody wasn't much of one for small talk. He pulled his magical eye out of the glass of water and popped it back into the empty socket.

Harry did his best not to wince audibly.

After a few minutes, Ron came back into the room holding a thick file, which he handed to Harry. "I knew I'd heard something about la maison jaune before," he said. "There was a wizarding mansion in Bedfordshire that sold for a bloody fortune a few years ago. There was an article in the Prophet, even; my mum told me all about it. Place used to be called the Fenwick Estate, but the new owner was renaming it la maison jaune. I remember wondering what kind of poncy git would name his house that."

The phrase poncy git jarred Harry's memory. "Oh God. Please tell me you're joking." He didn't even have to open the file to know that the owner of la maison jaune was Draco Sodding Malfoy.

Since they had no way of knowing which month 'the first of the month' was referring to, and October first was a week and a half away, Harry decided that they'd best contact Malfoy as soon as possible. He figured he'd brief the rest of the Committee on the Malfoy situation after he'd actually talked to Malfoy. He had his secretary, Marie, owl him just before noon. Malfoy's reply came half an hour later:

Committee Chief Potter,

I'll be expecting you at one this afternoon. Apparition coordinates are enclosed.

Draco Malfoy

Harry left the office shortly before one. In addition to Ron, he'd elected to bring along Daphne Greengrass and Terry Boot, in the hopes that their presence might make the meeting go more smoothly. There was really no reason why the meeting shouldn't go smoothly, other than Harry and Malfoy's six years of unbridled enmity at Hogwarts, their volatile coexistence during the war and the fact that they hadn't seen each other once in the past five years.

The four of them Apparated just outside of Malfoy's gated drive at five till one. Harry tapped his wand against the call box to the right of the gate. After the four of them had held their wands against the box and declared their names and business, the gate vanished long enough for them to enter, reappearing behind them as soon as they were on the grounds.

They were standing on the drive, which was made of stone and looked more like the floor of someone's ballroom than a driveway. Both the drive and the walls that surrounded the estate were lined with fruit trees and from the look of the lawn Harry suspected that Malfoy spent more money maintaining it than Harry made in a year.

The house wasn't visible at first, but then the drive curved to the right and it rose ahead of them, imposing and wide and brilliantly yellow. La maison jaune.

Harry marched up the front steps and rang the doorbell, flanked by the other three. The door opened promptly to reveal a tiny house elf.

"Master Malfoy is being expecting you," the elf said. "Please be coming in." It held the door wide for them and took their cloaks. "Master Malfoy is being in the drawing room, if you is following me, please?"

They followed the elf down the foyer, which couldn't have been less than three stories high, past rows and rows of oil paintings. The floor was made of different shades of wood laid in an intricate geometric pattern. Harry found himself stepping carefully, trying to avoid scuffing the floor. He was so busy watching his feet that he only noticed they'd turned down a hallway by the way the pattern on the floor changed. He was being an idiot. This was Malfoy's house; what was he doing trying to keep it nice? He should be purposefully scuffing the floors or something.

They stopped outside a closed door on the left side of the hallway. The house elf knocked twice then opened it. "Master Draco, your guests are being here."

"Thank you, Posie," Malfoy said. "Please, come in."

Harry let Daphne and Terry go in first. He and Ron followed.

And there, sitting in a leather wingback chair with one leg crossed over the other, was Malfoy. He was wearing expensive-looking tan robes and a green jumper, drinking tea, while a fire blazed in the grate.

He looked every bit the country gentleman. And Harry knew he looked presentable, he knew it, and yet he couldn't help feeling completely like a poorly dressed member of the help compared to Malfoy. To his enormous relief, Ron and Terry looked similarly uncomfortable. Daphne, of course, appeared completely at ease, but then she'd known Malfoy better than the rest of them, having been a Slytherin. She was a pureblood, too, and not badly off. She'd probably grown up in a house just like this one.

"Draco," she said warmly.

"Daphne." He turned to the rest of them. "Davies, Weasley." He paused, then nodded. "Potter."

"Malfoy."

"Please, take a seat." He waved at the couches. Harry sat directly opposite Malfoy, the better to stare him down. "Posie!"

The house elf reappeared.

"Bring some tea for our guests, if you would."

"Right away, Master Draco," the elf said, disappearing before Harry had the chance to say that they weren't thirsty.

"So," Malfoy said as the elf reappeared with the beverages, "what can I do for the Committee?"

"Er," Harry said, silently congratulating himself on his excellent grasp of the English language, "it's not so much that as what we need to do for you."

Malfoy put his tea down and leaned forward. "Yes?"

Harry glanced at Ron, who must have seen something in Harry's face, because Ron was the one who continued, "Yesterday we received intelligence suggesting that an assassination attempt was to take place on the first of the month. We were unable to identify the speakers, but their voices fell into known Death Eater speech patterns, and they clearly mentioned breaching of wards." He paused. "They also spoke a single phrase in French. La maison jaune."

"That does seem fairly convincing, doesn't it," Malfoy murmured. He glanced at Ron. "But Weasley? Your French is atrocious."

Ron scowled.

"Oh, shut up, Malfoy," Harry said.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Right. So the four of you came out here this afternoon—interrupting very important business, might I add—just to tell me that my life might be in danger from some unknown person or people at some unknown time?"

Harry couldn't help responding to that, though he did his best to keep his tone level. "Like Ron said, the intelligence we collected contained Death Eater speech patterns." But he found himself forced to add, grudgingly, "But we have no way of proving whether the speakers themselves are planning on carrying out the assassination attempt or whether it is someone else."

"And you don't know which month, exactly, these people are planning on trying to kill me, either."

"'The first of the month' was all they said, Malfoy, so it's really not our fault that we haven't been able to read into it a bit—" Ron was saying angrily, but Malfoy interrupted him by bursting out laughing.

"What's so fucking funny?" Harry said, but Malfoy couldn't even recover enough to speak for a moment.

"Oy, Potter," he said finally, a bit of a wheeze remaining on the word Potter, "my life has actively been in danger since I was sixteen, from Death Eaters and your people and Salazar knows who else. And you came all the way here just to tell me that? You're wasting your time, and, more importantly, mine."

"When you say 'my people,' aren't you forgetting that you're one of them?" Harry snapped.

Malfoy waved a hand in a gesture that communicated his utter boredom with the conversation and with Harry himself. "I'm also a Death Eater, if you want to get technical, Potter, but that isn't the point. Since you seem to have missed it the first time through, the point is that I've done a perfectly good job of preventing myself from dying for the past seven years without any assistance from you lot, and I can certainly continue to manage it without your help. Good day, Potter." He stood and gestured at the door. "Posie will show you out."

The house elf appeared in the doorway. "If you would please be following me?" it said.

"No," Harry said, standing up. "I'm not leaving."

"I'm afraid you misunderstood me, Potter. That wasn't a request."

"Don't misunderstand me, either, Malfoy. I don't care if you think you handle it yourself, your life is in danger, and from Death Eaters, and that makes it my job to protect you from them, whether you like it or not."

"Potter," Malfoy said calmly, "if you don't follow Posie out of the room before I count to three, you will find yourself ejected from my grounds."

"Harry," Ron said in a warning tone, but Harry was not going to back down on this one.

"One," Malfoy said.

Harry met his gaze defiantly.

"Two. Three."

For a moment nothing happened and Harry was certain he'd been bluffing. But then Malfoy smirked and snapped his fingers and Harry found himself flat on his back outside Malfoy's gate.

"Fuck," he said.

If he were perfectly honest about it, Harry was well aware that he'd behaved like an adolescent. He wasn't used to being perfectly honest with himself, though, particularly where Malfoy was concerned. There was just something about Malfoy that made Harry act like he'd never made it out of third year. There was no use trying to explain that to Hermione, though.

"Wait. You actually got yourself thrown out of his house?" she said. He was at Ron and Hermione's house for dinner that night, which had turned out to be carry-out curry, as Hermione was nearly too pregnant to move and the last time Ron had tried to cook he'd set Hermione's hair on fire.

"For the third time, yes, he did," Ron said.

"Malfoy was making us sound like idiots," Harry said. "It was just—we already knew there were problems with the intelligence. He didn't need to go calling us on it."

"But you still got yourself thrown out of his house," Hermione said.

"I might have . . . not acted as maturely as I could have," Harry admitted. "But, Hermione? Give it a rest."

Hermione smirked and took a bite of curry. "I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute. How certain are you that the intelligence isn't fake?"

Harry frowned. "I don't think it's fake."

"Looking at this from Malfoy's point of view, though, the DUC's in deliberations over whether or not to shut the Committee down. If I were on the Committee and wanted to make sure I kept my job, what might I consider doing?"

"No one on the Committee would fabricate intelligence just to keep the job," Harry said.

"We know that," Hermione said, "but—hypothetically speaking—it could be a possibility. You're meeting with the DUC in the morning, aren't you, Harry? I just want you to keep in mind that they don't trust everyone on the Committee the way that you do."

"No one on the Committee would fabricate intelligence," Harry repeated.

"And I don't really see who else would be trying to make us believe there was going to be an attack on Malfoy's life," Ron said through a bite of curry.

"If there were someone who wanted to make sure that the Committee wasn't shut down . . ." Hermione mused. "I don't know. I'm just speculating now. Where did Moody say the intelligence came from?"

"A Recording Charm in Kent," Ron said. "In a pub called The Brown Badger. Very popular hang-out for Death Eaters planning assassinations."

Hermione smacked him good-naturedly.

They sat in companionable silence as Harry and Hermione finished their curries, Ron having finished his long ago, and then Hermione sent Ron off to do the dishes. As soon as Ron was in the kitchen and the water was running, Hermione turned to Harry and said, "So. Malfoy. I take it you didn't succeed in convincing him to go under Committee protection, did you?"

" Er," Harry said. "No, not as such."

"And I also take it that you're planning on going back, most likely by yourself, and trying to convince Malfoy that he made the wrong decision?"

Harry did his best to not look shifty. He didn't think he was succeeding, because Hermione continued, "Right. Well. When you talk to Malfoy, it might be good to remember that you don't need to make his windows explode or anything, because you have a trump card."

Harry sat up straight. "Which is?"

"Honestly, the minute there stopped being so many Death Eaters around anymore, I swear you started forgetting everything you knew about how the Committee worked, legally speaking. Malfoy can't refuse Committee protection, if doing so would mean that he was getting in the way of the Committee potentially capturing Death Eaters."

Harry smiled. "That's the best news I've heard all day."

"You'll want to try to convince Malfoy to go under Committee protection voluntarily, though, if you can," Hermione said. "It'll make things easier."

"I know," Harry said. "But don't keep your hopes up."

"I'm not. Harry . . ." She hesitated. "You aren't going to have any problems dealing with Malfoy, are you?"

"That was five years ago, Hermione."

"Yeah. But I mean—"

Harry knew exactly what she meant, but the tap water had stopped running. "I'm over it, Hermione. I'll be fine."

Hermione looked distinctly like she wanted to say something more, but Ron walked into the room just then. "What do you want to do now, mate? See what's on the telly?"

Harry and Hermione had introduced Ron to television after the end of the war, and he was hooked. Usually Harry would have stuck around and watched T.V. with them for a while, but he wasn't particularly interested in continuing the conversation with Hermione. "I'm pretty tired, actually," he told Ron. "And I've got to meet with the DUC first thing in the morning. I'll see you after I get back from that."

Ron nodded and they said good night.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when it had happened. Sometime a few months into the war, November or so, maybe. Harry, Ron and Hermione were busy searching for the horcruxes, based out of Grimmauld Place. Harry had wanted search out of Godric's Hollow, but that hadn't proved practical: Grimmauld Place was under the protection of a new Secret Keeper and the inn at Godric's Hollow was not. Moody, the new head of the Order, had decided to live by the decidedly un-Tom Riddle-like philosophy that the best place to hide a needle was in a stack of needles, and so had chosen someone completely unconnected to the Order to be the Secret Keeper of its headquarters: a Squib in Essex named Mary Jane Malarkey who lived as a Muggle. Most of the Order saw the inside of Grimmauld Place at some point, and sometimes others connected with the Order saw it, too.

For instance, Draco Malfoy.

Malfoy defected in early July of 1997. He'd been in hiding after Dumbledore's death, waiting to see if he might be able to return to the Death Eaters, and somehow make up for his failure to kill Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower and save his family. The Death Eaters' capture and murder of his mother at the end of June had proved to him that it was not going to be possible. Lucius was more or less safe in Azkaban now that the Dementors were gone, and Malfoy decided that if he wanted to save his own hide, he'd best get join the side that might not actually kill him on sight. Harry was under no delusions that Malfoy had defected for any reason other than a great fear of death, and out of revenge for what the Death Eaters had done to his mother: Narcissa's death, as Harry understood it, had been messy, prolonged, and painful, and had necessitated the use of a number of paring knives.

But Malfoy hadn't killed Dumbledore, which was something, and he answered all of the Order's questions about Death Eater plans and whereabouts as best he could from the start, which was something else. He wasn't a member of the Order, and he wasn't trusted to leave 12 Grimmauld Place at any time during the course of the war until all hell broke loose in the Final Battle, but he was not entirely unhelpful.

And at some point a few months after Malfoy arrived at Grimmauld Place, Harry Potter walked in on him wanking in one of the upstairs bathrooms. It was a hideously embarrassing experience for all involved, and it became more so for Harry when, half an hour later, he still hadn't rid himself of a hard-on, and was forced to wank to the image of Malfoy wanking.

A week later, it had gotten worse. Instead of just remembering Malfoy wanking every time he saw him, Harry started imagining Malfoy writhing on the floor beneath him as he punched him and then kissed him, imagining Malfoy's lips around his cock, imagining pounding him into a bed, grinding him into a wall. He couldn't stop it, and it was awful, and this was Malfoy, Malfoy of all people. He had so many other things he needed to be thinking about, and yet his brain hated him. He would be crouched in a dark place, terrified of what might attack him, and out of nowhere he would think of Malfoy naked, spread-eagled on a bed, bound to the bedposts. It was a wonder he hadn't gotten himself killed because of it, being distracted when he shouldn't be. But then, he'd always been lucky.

Not long after the war Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone to too many bars and Harry had gotten too drunk and told Hermione everything while Ron lay sprawled on the couch in Harry's new flat. In the morning Hermione promised not to tell anyone. She was still the only one who knew.

Harry made a point of arriving at the DUC offices ten minutes early for the meeting the next morning. He was not entirely surprised to find that the entire DUC was already assembled and waiting for him in the conference room.

"Ah, Committee Chief Potter!" Ernie MacMillan stood up from his seat opposite the door. "Thank you for coming, and early, too! We'll just go ahead and get started right away, then. Oh, if you'd like anything to drink, there's tea, coffee, water . . ." He gestured at the sideboard.

"Thanks, Ernie." Harry poured himself a cup of tea and added cream and two sugars.

"I go by Ernest now, actually, Committee Chief Potter." He puffed up his chest even higher than before, if that was possible.

"Um, right. You can call me Harry, you know. We were in the same class at school."

"That won't be necessary, Committee Chief Potter." He waved at the table. "If you don't mind taking a seat so we can go ahead and get started?"

Harry took the only empty seat at the table, the one nearest the door. Everyone else was already seated with quills and parchment ready in front of them. They all looked quite happy to be there at 8:54 in the morning.

Dear Lord, Harry thought. I'm surrounded by Hufflepuffs.

Ernie—Ernest—cleared his throat. "I have called this meeting of the Departmental Usefulness Commission to discuss the reallocation of Committee resources upon its disbandment. Said disbandment will be effective the fifteenth of November 2003. I have called Committee Chief Potter here today to serve in an advisory capacity in—yes, Committee Chief Potter?"

"I'm sorry, but what was that you just said about November fifteenth?"

"That it is the date on which the disbandment of the Committee will be effective," Ernie said coolly. "As I was saying, Committee Chief Potter—"

"I was under the impression," Harry said tightly, "that this meeting was for theoretical purposes rather than practical ones. When exactly were you planning on informing me that the Committee was going to be disbanded?"

"I sent a courier to your office first thing this morning, Committee Chief Potter."

"I haven't been to my office yet this morning, Ernie."

One of the Hufflepuffs gasped—Harry assumed in horror that he hadn't been to the office yet, and it was already sometime past nine in the morning—and began to scribble furiously on her parchment.

Harry resisted the urge to hex her. "What time exactly is 'first thing in the morning' for you people, anyway? Seven-thirty?"

"Seven," another Hufflepuff said. Harry didn't think he was actually kidding.

"Right," Harry said. "Right. So you're actually shutting down the Committee, is what you're telling me. Just to make sure I've got this clear."

"That is what the message said, yes," Ernie said. "I wanted to make sure you knew about it before I alerted the media."

"That's . . . thoughtful of you, Ernie," Harry said.

"It's Ernest."

"Well, you know what, Ernie?" Harry said deliberately. "I'd like to have a chance to talk to you about the fact that you're trying to shut down the Committee at all before you call me in to discuss divvying up its resources, thanks."

"The place for that sort of discussion is in your quarterly reviews," said Ernie. "You had plenty of opportunities to prove the Committee's continued usefulness to the wizarding public at those times, Committee Chief Potter. In the past three quarters, however, our records show that the Committee had made progress on not a single case, new or old. That's a testament to the effectiveness and efficiency of the Committee in the past five years, and shows just how much you have accomplished, but we feel thoroughly justified in sending our recommendation to Minister Deschellain that the Committee be dissolved. It has served its purpose."

"You're wrong," Harry said. "There are still Death Eaters out there. There's been new intelligence—"

"Within the past forty-eight hours?" Ernie said skeptically.

The Hufflepuff secretary looked like she could barely move her quill fast enough to record everything she was hearing.

"Yes, within the past forty-eight hours," Harry snapped.

"Would you mind sharing just what this intelligence entailed?"

"You know I can't do that," Harry said. A number of the Hufflepuffs in the room weren't cleared for anything higher than basic intelligence; their sole purpose in the meeting seemed to be to up the DUC's numbers, Harry assumed for reasons of intimidation.

"I may not yet know what this intelligence entails, Committee Chief Potter, but considering its timing, have you thought about the fact that it might have been artificially manufactured?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand just what you're getting at," Harry said coldly, though he thought he had a very good idea indeed. He just wanted to hear Ernie say it plainly.

Ernie did not disappoint. "The dissolution of the Committee will mean anywhere from a change of duties to, in some cases, unemployment for certain Committee members. Surely it had occurred to you that someone in your office might have manufactured the intelligence of which you speak?"

Harry was momentarily glad that Hermione had already mentioned that people might think this. "My staff has yet to receive the news that the Committee is to be shut down, and you accuse them of manufacturing intelligence? Even if I didn't have the utmost confidence that none of my staff members would do such a thing, doesn't it seem strange to be creating false intelligence to keep your job before you ever know that your job is in danger?"

"There have been rumors of the Committee's dissolution for far longer than forty hours, Committee Chief Potter. Is it so very incredible that someone in the Committee might have correctly read the political climate and put a plan to falsify intelligence into motion at just the right time?"

"Your paranoia is inspiring, Ernie. Truly."

Ernie and the rest of the table just looked at him.

"Contact my secretary after you've seen the intelligence, Ernie. You can even put the technicians who recovered and analyzed it under Veritaserum, if you'd like."

"That shouldn't be necessary, thank you," Ernie said stiffly. "Expect an owl within the hour."

"I'll be looking forward to it," Harry lied, beating an exit before it occurred to Ernie that they hadn't discussed reallocation of Committee resources at all.

It was irresponsible of Ernie to try to call him in for a meeting like that. He hadn't even had a chance to consult with the rest of the Committee, see what their ideas were . . . No, he wasn't thinking about that anymore, because after Ernie had seen the intelligence, he wasn't going to shut the Committee down. He couldn't.

Harry didn't want to go back to the office and wait for Ernie's owl. He didn't much feel like reading Ernie's first missive of the morning, either. No. Instead, he was going to go have another talk with Malfoy.

He Apparated to Malfoy's front gate and placed his wand on the call box pad. "Harry Potter, Committee chief," he said before it even prompted him. "I'd like to speak with Mr. Malfoy."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"One moment, please."

Harry waited.

"Master Malfoy isn't in at the moment. Would you like to leave a message or would you prefer to wait until he returns?"

"I'll wait, thanks," Harry said.

The call box buzzed him through, onto the drive that was every bit as immaculate as it had been the day before. It was mid-September and the trees were brilliant shades of red and gold, but there wasn't a single fallen leaf to be seen on the ground. It was kind of creepy, really. He wondered if Malfoy had charms in place that incinerated leaves as they fell.

The same house elf as before opened the door at Harry's knock and showed him into the drawing room.

"Is Committee Chief Potter wanting anything to drink?"

Harry almost said no, but then remembered that he didn't know just how long it was going to be before Malfoy showed up. "Tea would be good, thanks," he said.

The elf reappeared almost instantaneously with a tea tray. "Is Committee Chief Potter needing anything else?"

"No, thanks," Harry said.

"Master Malfoy is arriving shortly," the elf said, and left the room.

Harry meant to figure out how he meant to go about convincing Malfoy to change his mind about Committee protection, really he did. It would be easier for all involved if Malfoy would go along with the Committee's plan voluntarily. But now that Harry was sitting down with nothing to distract him, he found himself incapable of thinking about anything other than the DUC meeting. Ernie and the Hufflepuffs were actually going to shut them down. He couldn't get his mind around it. He'd always known they were going to shut down the Committee eventually . . . but that was just it. Eventually. Many years down the road, not two or three or five. People like Ernie thought the Death Eaters were gone because they hadn't been heard from in eleven months, because the highest-ranking ones were all in Azkaban or dead. They didn't understand that that didn't mean that they might not find new leadership, or that someone might escape from Azkaban—because that had never happened before. But no, they wanted to move on with their lives, and keeping the Committee around would be a reminder that there still might be Death Eaters out there . . .

There was a knock on the door. "Master Malfoy is arriving, Committee Chief Potter," the house elf announced.

All right, Harry told himself. You will be nice to Malfoy, or at least civil. You are going to say hello, maybe even good morning, and then you are going to explain, calmly, why he should reconsider your offer of Committee protection. You will not raise your voice. You will not let Malfoy goad you.

But then Malfoy stepped into the room. "I'd say I was surprised to see you, Potter," he said, "except that I'm not."

Malfoy was wearing a dark gray Muggle business suit that looked like it had been made for him. He looked surprisingly good in it.

Harry hated his brain. Concentrate, Potter. "I'm glad we don't have to bother with pleasantries," he said.

"Right," Malfoy said. "What do you want?"

"For you to reconsider the Committee's offer."

"Potter, I know this might not have gotten through your skull, thick as it is, but I really did mean it when I said I wasn't interested. Does the part where I kicked you out of my house yesterday mean anything to you?"

I will not let Malfoy get to me. I will maintain a cool facade. I will—fuck it. "Malfoy, I don't give a shit if you think your protection is better than ours. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't care. This isn't about you. If you want to get yourself killed, that's your business, but tracking down Death Eaters is mine, and I intend to do it, and legally you can't get in my way. You have two options, Malfoy. Option Number One: you go under Committee protection. We stop the Death Eaters from killing you, capture them, everyone goes on with their lives. Or Option Number Two: you refuse Committee protection, we get a Wizengamot order that forces you to go under said protection for the purposes of capturing the Death Eaters, and after we've captured them you spend the better part of a decade in Azkaban for attempting to obstruct a Committee case. So, which is it going to be?"

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "Fuck you, Potter."

"Sorry, that's not the right answer. Which is it going to be?"

"You're a bastard. I just want to make sure you know that."

"I'm waiting."

Malfoy gritted his teeth. "You already know what the answer is. I'm not going to Azkaban over this."

Harry grinned. "It's been a pleasure, Malfoy. I'll be in touch."

Malfoy just pointed at the door.

Marie looked like she was about to have an aneurism when Harry stepped out of the Floo. "Chief! Where have you been?"

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"Don't you know? Ernie MacMillan went on the WWN and said the DUC's decided to shut the Committee down!"

Damn you, Ernie, Harry thought viciously. "When?"

"November fifteenth."

"No, I mean, when did he announce it?"

"About an hour ago. It's been insane, Chief. There are reporters here from every paper I've ever heard of and some I haven't, all wanting to talk to you . . . I've been saying you were in a meeting, but they aren't going to buy that for much longer. Where were you?"

"In a meeting, actually," Harry said, thinking of his discussion with Malfoy.

Marie looked a bit skeptical, but he did not elaborate. She'd long since accepted that there were things Harry wasn't going to tell her, and she was going to have to deal with the fact that this was one of them.

"Chief," Marie said, "are they really going to shut down the Committee?"

"It sounds like they want to," Harry said. "Listen, could you tell the press I'll be there in fifteen minutes? I need to meet with the rest of the Committee."

"Of course, sir."

Harry went into the main office. The whole Committee was assembled there: Daphne, Terry, Marie, Moody, and Ron. Six people, including himself. All of them, save Hermione, who was on semi-permanent maternity leave. The Committee had been much larger those first two years, when they'd been tracking dozens of Death Eaters, making captures practically by the week; but as they'd captured more and more of them, the amount of times between captures had lengthened, and the amount of danger posed to the public had lessened. The Committee's budget had been cut, Committee members' salaries had decreased, and many had left for better-paying jobs elsewhere. The Amycus Carrow capture had halted that trend for a time, but it had been two years since then, and there were beginning to be rumors that there were no more Death Eaters.

But the people in this room knew better than that.

Harry spent fifteen minutes briefing the Committee on the Malfoy situation, and then another fifteen dealing with the press. He'd been saying the same thing to the papers for more than two years, ever since the first rumors that the Committee might be shut down arose: he was thoroughly opposed to the idea, and he believed that the Committee continued to serve a necessary role in wizarding Britain. It had been his stance from the start.

After he'd done as much as he could with the press, he went back to the Committee and talked the Malfoy situation out thoroughly. It hadn't gone well. In the early days after the war, one captured Death Eater generally led to two or three more, and they'd been able to follow that trail to the proverbial snake pit. That strategy had stopped working after a while, though, and now, two years after the Amycus Carrow capture, all they had to work with was the one conversation they'd recorded in Kent, and Harry didn't like that there wasn't any more to work with than that.

The problem was that the Death Eaters had done some nasty things in the five years since the war had ended, but assassinations had never really been their style. Every other time that the Committee had advance warning of Death Eater plans, which inevitably involved large scale death and destruction, they had been able to clear the targeted area of people before the Death Eaters ever arrived, then swoop in and capture the Death Eaters. But that wouldn't work here.

"I don't see why we can't just put Malfoy under a Secret Keeper or something," Daphne said.

"Because keeping Malfoy safe isn't the whole goal," Harry said. "We also need to catch whoever's behind this."

"These people were stupid enough to get themselves caught on one of our Recording Charms," Moody said, "but that doesn't mean we can assume they're complete idiots. We have to assume they've got Malfoy under some sort of surveillance. Since the recorded conversation specifically mentioned breaching his wards, we can't assume these people are going to come after him if we remove him from his house. We need to keep him visible."

"We can't just camp out at his house and wait to grab the Death Eaters when they attack, then," Terry said. "If they've got it under surveillance."

There was another good reason why they couldn't do that, arguably an even better one: the Committee's budget had shrunk so much over the past year that Harry could barely afford to pay everyone, let alone afford the massive expense of keeping a task force on alert at all times. The only think that had kept him from having to lay off anyone was that they were already technically part of the Auror Bureau, and as such they shared an intelligence system. If the Committee had had to maintain its own intelligence network, he would have had to fire someone—and he was already working with a bare-bones force as it was. This was no secret to anyone in the Committee.

"We don't need to, anyway," Ron said. "We could just have one person stay with Malfoy—as a bodyguard, if you will—and they could sound the alarm when the attack came. We could get Malfoy to drop the wards, and the rest of us could be there in an instant."

"Or set them to just let in Committee members," said Terry, the resident wards expert.

"That should work." There wasn't anything Harry could think of that would work better. Now all they needed to do was figure out who was going to be Malfoy's bodyguard.

Everyone in the Committee was there for a reason: Terry was good with wards; Daphne was a genius with strategy; Moody knew everything there was to know about intelligence; Hermione knew everything there was to know about everything; Harry trusted Ron utterly: he knew Ron would fight to the death for him. Harry had one major talent, other than stubbornly refusing to die, and that was doing what needed to be done.

Harry was back at Ron and Hermione's for dinner. Tonight was Chinese carryout.

"In case you're wondering, Harry, we do eat things other than carryout," Hermione said.

"Mum's been coming by and cooking for us tomorrow," Ron explained. "She says Hermione needs her strength."

Harry, having been a frequent recipient of Molly Weasley's charity, knew that the refrigerator would be full with enough food to feed a small country. Luckily Ron's appetite was large enough to accommodate that.

"I'm pretty sure I don't need any more food," Hermione said. "What I need is to be deflated. Look at me! I'm a blimp!"

Hermione was sensible enough to know that she didn't look fat, per se. She just looked like the most pregnant woman Harry had ever seen. "When's the baby due?"

"The fifteenth," Ron said. "Three weeks."

"I don't think I'm going to last until the day after tomorrow, let alone three weeks."

"Maybe it'll come early," Harry said. He hoped it did, for her sake. Three more weeks . . . If it was three weeks until the fifteenth of October, the first was in just a little more than a week. That didn't seem like enough time to prepare for a Death Eater assassination attempt, not nearly enough. It was more than they'd gotten during the months after the war, of course, a lot more, but it had been the better part of five years since then, and Harry was a little worried they might've gotten out of practice.

Hermione seemed to be able to read his mind. "The attack on Malfoy's meant to happen in eight days, isn't it."

Harry took a bite of General Tsao chicken. "Yes."

"Ron was telling me about the bodyguard plan. Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"We don't want to scare the attackers off, and we don't want to just dangle Malfoy out there as bait. So, yeah."

"No, I meant you being Malfoy's bodyguard."

Harry looked at her. "Who else was going to do it?"

Ron couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't hex Malfoy in the face; Daphne was a Slytherin, too, and Harry didn't want to leave the two of them to their own devices; Terry was great with wards, but combat had never been his strongest suit; Marie was a secretary; Moody didn't do field work anymore . . . Harry looked at Hermione and could actually see her going through the same thought process he'd used. "Couldn't you have, I don't know, called in someone from the outside, someone who's trained as a bodyguard?"

"They wouldn't know how to take down a Death Eater alive," Ron said. "And we haven't the time to teach them."

"Look, Hermione, I've more experience with Death Eaters and Malfoy both than anyone save you two, and I'm not going to let him get to me. I'm not twelve."

"I know," she said, "but—well. Malfoy gets to you like no one else does, Harry."

"It's Malfoy," said Ron. "He just has that effect on people."

But from the weight of Hermione's gaze on him Harry knew she wasn't just talking about his maturity level. "It'll be fine, Hermione. I can keep him under control."

Hermione was still looking at him. Of course: keeping Malfoy under control wasn't the problem. Keeping himself under control was.

"It'll be fine, Hermione," he added.

"For the record, I still don't think this is a good idea," she said.

Malfoy took the news that Harry was going to be moving in with him for an indefinite period surprisingly well. Which was to say, he didn't actually hex Harry unconscious on the spot. All he said was, "Please tell me you're joking."

Harry scowled. "I'm not exactly looking forward to it, either, if that makes you feel any better."

"It doesn't."

"The rest of the Committee will be coming by this afternoon to learn the layout of your house and grounds," Harry said. "So they'll know what the place looks like when—if the attack comes."

"Because the whole Committee showing up definitely won't tip anyone off that you know the attack is coming."

"They'll be Polyjuiced," Harry said. "And posing as a wards repair team."

"Cute," Malfoy said.

Harry had taken his time arriving at Malfoy's house that morning, so by the time Malfoy's house elf showed him to his room—a spacious guest room on the same wing as Malfoy's bedroom, a fact that he was utterly ignoring—and he had unpacked, it was already time for lunch.

Lunch was quiet. Malfoy seemed to have decided that the best way to deal with Harry was to pretend he wasn't there, which was a strange but not entirely unwelcome development. Harry was pretty sure he could keep himself from wanting to strangle Malfoy, but as Hermione had said, Malfoy did get under his skin in a way no one else did. It was hard to want to hex someone for something they'd said when they weren't actually saying anything, though.

The food was tasty enough, some sort of fish in sauce, and before Harry knew it the Committee had arrived, traveling by a Portkey whose magical signature, if traced, would go back to the owner of Wimbledon Wards Services. The Committee members had arrived in their uniforms as well, for the benefit of anyone who might have Malfoy's front gate under surveillance.

Ron pulled Harry aside as soon as he got into the house. "You haven't killed him off yet?"

Harry smiled. "No. But I've only been here for a couple of hours."

"You're doing better than I would, mate."

The Committee spent the afternoon looking around Malfoy's grounds and making detailed maps. Daphne was best at this, though Ron was helping her. Terry was examining the wards.

"They're good wards, Harry," he said. "They wouldn't be easy to breach."

"But you could do it."

"Of course I could do it. But not quickly."

"How long?"

"Every time you try to breach them, these wards get harder to undo . . . so a day, maybe? Assuming I could work uninterrupted, that is, which I wouldn't bet on, since Malfoy's got them set so an alarm goes off if you so much as flick them hard enough, let alone start unraveling them. There's no way anyone's going to undo these wards without Malfoy noticing."

Terry was one of the best wards specialists out there. He did some freelance work for Wimbledon Wards on the side, which was how they'd gotten the Portkey and the uniforms. If Terry said the wards were near impossible to break, they were. But that didn't mean they couldn't be broken.

"Keep looking," Harry said, even though he knew Terry had examined them thoroughly already. Maybe if the recorded conversation hadn't specifically mentioned the wards, he would have let it go, but if there was something he and Terry had missed the first time through that allowed the attackers onto Malfoy's grounds, he would be pissed.

Daphne wandered over. "The thing that's bothering me," she said, "is that even if these people get through the wards, which they seem unlikely to do, they haven't got anywhere to hide before they get to the house."

The wards that protected the grounds and the wards that protected the house were not connected, Terry explained, so that even if the attackers managed to get onto the grounds without Malfoy's notice, they would still have to break the wards protecting the house before they could get to Malfoy.

"Look at this place," Daphne said. "I would hate to try to attack this house. The only cover on the grounds is along the drive, but the trees are way too spaced out to be useful. There's no good way to attack this place."

"I'm happy to hear it," Malfoy said, walking up to them.

"These are good wards, Malfoy," Terry said. "Who designed them?"

"I did," Malfoy said. "Arithmancy was my best subject in school."

Arithmancy had never appealed to Harry at Hogwarts, but during the war and after it, as he'd heard of its practical applications, he wished he'd learned at least the basics of it. Luckily, Hermione had, and it had saved his life on a number of occasions.

Terry and Malfoy were talking technicalities of the wards. It seemed that the wards were very complex, and Terry was impressed: he looked like Hermione when she was confronted with a particularly tricky logic problem, and Malfoy was lapping up the attention. It was making Harry feel a little ill.

Before too long it was dark and the Committee was going home for the night, leaving Harry alone with Malfoy.

"Firecall me if you kill him," Ron said just before he took the Portkey back to the office with the rest of them. Harry wasn't entirely sure he was joking.

It wasn't that he was actually planning on killing Malfoy, but he was acutely aware that this would be the first time he'd been alone with Malfoy for more than an hour or two since . . . well, ever. He wasn't worried about his hormones getting the best of him. He knew what true horniness felt like—he had been a seventeen year old boy, after all—and he wasn't anywhere close to that.

When he was seventeen he'd wanted to jump Malfoy every hour of the day and night, but that was five years ago, and except for the past week he hadn't seen Malfoy once in those five years. After his war crimes trial Malfoy had pretty much dropped off the face of the wizarding world. He'd made the papers with the purchase of his French-named mansion, which was rumored to have cost in the range of two hundred thousand Galleons, and his name had popped up in the society pages from time to time—he'd done a bit of philanthropy a few years ago, Harry remembered—but since the end of the war Malfoy had become more or less a recluse.

It hadn't really hit Harry when he'd first seen Malfoy again a week ago, because Malfoy had looked just the way he'd expected him to look, rich and sneering, but five years was a long time to go without seeing someone at all. Harry hadn't been treating him as if he'd changed but he surely he must have, at least a little. Suddenly Harry found that he was a bit nervous to be moving in here. This wasn't the Malfoy he'd fought with at school or the Malfoy he'd wanted during the war. This was a different person entirely, someone Harry didn't know at all.

Malfoy spent the week leading up to October first doing his best to ignore Harry entirely. It was infuriating. He didn't often go out of Harry's sight, for which Harry was grateful—he wanted to know where Malfoy was, in case the attack came early—but he didn't say anything to Harry at all other than the occasional "Good morning" or "Good night."

Malfoy seemed to live by a strict routine, and Harry found himself falling into it easily enough. Malfoy was awake each morning around dawn, and ate breakfast at seven. He then went into the library and read three newspapers cover to cover: the Prophet, an international wizarding daily called the Warlock Post, and, incongruously, the London Times. Harry received papers from Marie through the Floo around ten each morning, and would read those until lunch, which was served promptly at twelve. Malfoy read for most of the afternoon, or listened to shows on the Wizarding Wireless. Harry read Quidditch through the Ages cover-to-cover four times in three days. They ate dinner at seven, Malfoy read more after dinner, and went to bed by eleven.

Harry wondered if this was actually what Malfoy's life was like. There was no way a person could live like this, doing nothing but sitting in one's house and reading for hours on end each day. He wondered if Malfoy was purposefully being boring for his benefit, or if Malfoy was, in fact, actually the most boring person alive.

Malfoy's silence was also driving him insane. At first Harry told himself he wasn't going to be the first one to talk, based on some sort of twelve-year-old's logic that the first one to speak would lose. But this wasn't a game Harry had agreed to play, and it was driving him up the wall, no less due to the fact that when Malfoy wasn't talking to him, there was nothing to distract him from the fact that he still wanted Malfoy, now more than ever.

It was hideously inconvenient. He'd more or less managed to avoid thinking about Malfoy as anything other than the boy who'd been an utter git at school when he was trying to convince Malfoy to go under Committee protection, and when he'd been moving in. But now that he was alone with Malfoy for days on end . . . He'd been glad that he hadn't seen Malfoy for five years. He'd thought that being away from Malfoy for so long would kill these urges in him. He'd almost thought it had. He'd gone out with women, a few of them more than once, slept with them, but now that he was here, near Malfoy again, he knew that he wanted him.

The week leading up to it was torture, and the first of October was the dullest, most nerve-wracking day of Harry's life. He didn't even consider going to sleep the night before, for fear that the attack might take place at midnight. All day he was on alert, jumping at any sound, thinking it might be the sound of the wards being breached. He was ready to drop the wards at any instant and allow the Committee through. He had an additional dozen Aurors on alert, ready to be called in at any moment. He firecalled the office every hour to make sure they were still there—why they wouldn't be, he didn't know. They too were on edge, but none of them as much as Harry. He was responsible for all of them, but most of all for Malfoy, whose calm on this never-ending day was imperturbable. Harry was trying to appear calm, for Malfoy's sake, but Malfoy seemed to actually feel calm. Harry didn't know how he was doing it. Harry couldn't hate him for it. Much as Harry envied his icy exterior, Malfoy might die today, in spite of the best efforts of Harry and the Committee. They would do their best, he would make sure of it, but things couldn't always work out, no matter how much you wanted them to . . . No, they would be good enough. They had to be.

When darkness fell, Harry's fear rose thick in his throat. He'd studied Malfoy's grounds as well as the rest of them had, better even; he knew them to be regular and not wooded; he knew they would be difficult for an attacker to move through undetected. But defense was more difficult than offense, and he hated this ordeal of trying-to-anticipate, this waiting. He wanted the attack to come and be over, so that they could capture the Death Eaters and Malfoy could be safe.

But still the attack did not come. It was nearly midnight . . . It was one o'clock. It was three. Malfoy had dozed off, but Harry did not end his vigil. Only when the sun was fully up on the morning of October second did he realize that the attack was not going to happen, not this month, for the first of October was past. He firecalled the office and then the Auror Bureau, told them to stand down, and checked in on Malfoy to make sure he hadn't died in his sleep. He hadn't. And then, after nearly forty-eight nerve-wracking hours, Harry lay down on a couch and fell asleep.

Harry awoke some indeterminate time later, incredibly groggy, to hear Malfoy say, "The attack didn't happen. I've taken the liberty of having the house elves pack your things."

Harry sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Where're my glasses?"

Malfoy handed them to him; they must have fallen off while he slept. "So would you prefer to Apparate or Floo?"

He couldn't quite make sense of what Malfoy was saying to him. "How long have I been asleep?"

"The better part of a day," Malfoy said. "It's October second, quarter after five in the evening."

No wonder he was disorientated. "Okay," Harry said slowly, "so what were you saying about Flooing?"

Malfoy looked at him as if he were some sort of exceedingly stupid fungus. "The attack didn't happen yesterday, so you're free to leave any time now. I had the house elves pack your things."

"You had them—no, Malfoy, I'm not free to leave. Remember the conversation we recorded? The attack is going to happen on 'the first of the month'—not the first of October. It could be next month, or . . ." Or the month after that, but if that were the case, Malfoy was going to be on his own. Harry was not optimistic about what would happen to the Committee if these Death Eaters didn't make their move on November first. "I'm here until this attack happens," Harry said. Or until November second, whichever came first.

Malfoy scowled at him. "I don't remember this being part of the deal, Potter. But wait, is this another of those things where, if I fight you on it, I go to Azkaban?"

Harry badly wished he hadn't issued that threat. There had seemed nothing else to do at the time, but now he thought there must have been other options.

Like what? Anyone but Malfoy would have been happy to accept Committee protection. Anyone but him. He wished his charge was a normal human being, like an elderly witch in Kent.

But he was stuck with Malfoy, and things were what they were. He thought of what Hermione would do in this sort of situation, and said quietly, "I'm sorry I said that."

"That's nice, Potter. But does that make it not true?"

Harry hesitated. "No. It doesn't."

"Right. Forgive me if I'm not terribly enthusiastic about spending the next . . . how long, exactly? . . . in your company, but generally I prefer to choose my own companions rather than having them foisted on my under pains of imprisonment." He turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. "If there's a Death Eater attack, I'll be in my office."

Harry winced as Malfoy pulled the door of the drawing room shut behind him.

The best thing to do probably would have been to go upstairs and go to sleep, but Harry had been asleep for the better part of twelve hours and wasn't particularly inclined to sleep any more. He was awake and viciously hungry. When was the last time he'd eaten? He wasn't sure. Dinner the night before last, maybe? All day yesterday he'd been too nervous to eat more than a bite or two of anything.

Malfoy didn't serve dinner for another hour and forty-five minutes, so Harry wandered towards the kitchen and talked a house elf into fixing him a sandwich. It was an amazing sandwich. He didn't know what was in it, some kind of meat and cheese and something else, but that didn't matter, he was starving and it was delicious.

After he finished eating he went back to the drawing room and firecalled Ron, who'd just gotten home. "I talked to Malfoy this morning," Ron said.

"You did?"

"Yeah. You were asleep. You looked exhausted, mate, I didn't want to wake you."

"Did you tell Malfoy the threat wasn't over, that I was staying here?"

"Yeah," Ron said. "He said he'd expected as much, but that he wanted to hear you say it."

"He acted like he had no idea it was coming when I talked to him half an hour ago," Harry said. "What a git."

"You just woke up half an hour ago?" Ron said, amused.

"I hadn't slept in two days," Harry said.

Ron raised an eyebrow.

"How's Hermione?"

"Sick of being pregnant!" Hermione yelled from the kitchen.

Ron smiled. "Two more weeks."

"You'll let me know as soon as you take her to St. Mungo's?"

"Don't be daft, mate, of course."

"Dinner's ready, Ron," Hermione said, walking into the room. "Leftovers. Molly's been coming by every other day and cooking for us," she explained. "You hungry, Harry? We've got plenty."

"No, thanks, I just ate. I can't, anyway. Malfoy and whatnot."

"Oh, right," Hermione said. "How is he?"

"A right git."

Hermione smiled. "This might be twelve years overdue, but I'm going to say it anyway: it might be worthwhile to try to be the more mature person when you're around Malfoy."

"I don't think it's possible to act older than eleven when you're around him," Ron said.

"I'd best be getting back," Harry said. "I'll let you two eat dinner."

"Talk to you tomorrow?" Ron said.

"Yeah," Harry said, and with that he Apparated back to Malfoy's house.

After October first, Malfoy was still doing his damnedest to ignore Harry's existence. He still read the newspaper all morning and wrote letters till noon and read all afternoon. Harry wondered whom he was writing those letters to. He didn't seem to have any friends, not that Harry had ever seen, anyway. This must actually be what Malfoy's life was like, he'd decided. There was no way anyone could maintain a ruse for this long.

Whether it was a ruse or not, Harry's own life had begun to fall into the same routine as Malfoy's. He'd resented it at first, but now it was almost comforting to know exactly what he should be doing at any given hour. He knew too exactly where to find Malfoy if he wasn't in Harry's sight, in case of emergency, in case the attack came early.

The daily routine had made Harry hyperaware of Malfoy's whereabouts, although he tried not to show it. But on a Monday night towards the middle of October, when Malfoy disappeared for a time after dinner, Harry was all too aware of it. He didn't let it bother him for a while. This was Malfoy's house, after all, and Harry wasn't there to spy on him.

But when an hour had passed and Malfoy still hadn't reappeared, Harry began to worry that something might have happened to him, that he'd fallen in the bathroom and was drowning in the toilet or something—he realized midway through this thought that he was acting like he was Malfoy's babysitter, which was ridiculous, and yet he couldn't stop himself from going on a hunt for him.

He wasn't in the drawing room, where Harry had been. He wasn't in the study or the library or the kitchen or anywhere else Harry could think of. He'd canvassed nearly the entire house before it hit him: Malfoy must be in his bedroom.

That was fine. It was only ten o'clock and usually he stayed downstairs reading until eleven or so at least, but maybe tonight he was tired and wanted to catch up on some sleep. That was his choice, of course, and Harry definitely had no business knocking on his bedroom door, but he did it anyway.

There was no answer. Maybe Malfoy really was asleep. But then again, he also wouldn't be answering if he were unconscious on his bathroom floor, would he?

Harry tried the knob. To his surprise it turned easily in his hand. "Malfoy?" he said tentatively as he stepped into the room. There was no reply and it was incredibly dark in the room. Somewhere in front of him Harry heard a soft sound. "Malfoy?" he repeated, a little louder.

Still no reply. "Lumos," Harry said. There was a great rustling on the bed in front of him, but not fast enough to keep him from seeing a woman's naked buttocks and back arched over Malfoy. The woman screamed and pulled the covers up to her chin. From what Harry could see of her, she looked disturbingly similar to Malfoy's mother.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Potter," Malfoy said. "Can't you knock?"

"I did," Harry said irritably.

"Well. We're kind of in the middle of something, so if you don't mind . . ." Malfoy gestured towards the door.

"Actually, I do mind," Harry said. "Can I speak with you? Now?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes and stood up. He was wearing a pair of briefs, thank God, but Harry could see even through them that he was half-hard. "Right now?"

Harry could feel himself blushing furiously. "Yes. In the hall."

Malfoy followed him out and shut the door. "Okay, Potter, what's so fucking important that it couldn't have waited until the morning?"

"This," Harry said. It was difficult to concentrate when Malfoy was practically naked right there in front of him. "This . . . thing you're doing. Who's the girl? Do you know her? Can you prove she isn't under Polyjuice or Imperius, that she's not going to kill you the moment you turn your back on her?"

"Good God, Potter. She's a call girl. Her name is Bridget, and I've checked her thoroughly for potions, curses and signs of Dark magic. She isn't going to kill me." He considered. "Well. If I don't come back to bed soon, she might."

"Send her home, Malfoy."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"You haven't got the right to order me around in my own house, Potter."

"You've got a whore you didn't tell me about visiting you tonight and you're telling me I can't order you around? She's an enormous security risk, Malfoy!"

"I think I can manage to keep from bringing in a murderous companion without your help, thanks, Potter, and I don't care what—"

"I'll just be going then, shall I?" said Bridget from the doorway. She'd put her robes back on and looked more like Malfoy's mother than ever.

"Sorry, love," Malfoy said.

She smiled a little. "Some other time, eh?"

He smiled back. "Floo Powder's on the mantelpiece."

She nodded and closed the door behind her.

Harry waited a couple of seconds, until he was reasonably sure that she was gone, and then said, "Look, I don't care what you want to do with your, er, time, but if you're going to bring someone into the house, let me know, damn it!"

Malfoy smiled slowly. Harry wasn't entirely sure it was an expression he liked. "Why Potter, you're jealous."

"I'm what?"

"You aren't getting laid, are you? You should have told me. Bridget has plenty of friends."

"I don't need your help getting laid!"

Malfoy was still smiling. "Sure you don't."

Harry had the sudden, incredible thought that Malfoy was propositioning him, but then he regained control of his senses. "Really. How many girls do you know that don't want to sleep with the hero of the Second War?"

"You don't actually use that to get girls."

Malfoy was right, he didn't. But that didn't mean he couldn't. The problem was he didn't actually want to get girls. He wanted Malfoy. "Whatever. I want to be tied into your wards."

"You already are."

"Not entirely. I know if someone breaches them or tries to breach them. I want to know if anyone crosses them at all."

"Trying to spy on my personal life, Potter?"

Harry scowled. "I'm trying to protect you, you git. I don't care who you sleep with," he lied.

Malfoy looked at him appraisingly. "Fine. I'll do it in the morning."

Harry badly wanted to tell him to do it immediately, but decided that Malfoy was unlikely to have any more late night visitors this evening. "Thanks."

As he turned to leave, Malfoy called out, "Hey Potter?"

"Yeah?"

"Knock a little louder next time."

He must have looked as pissed off as he'd felt all day, because after dinner the following night Malfoy said, "Potter, what is your problem?"

Harry looked up sharply. Malfoy was staring at him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's something to do with Bridget, isn't it?" Malfoy said.

Of course it was something to do with Bridget. She had been a major security risk, whether Malfoy's wards had let her through or not, but Malfoy had kept his word and tied Harry into the wards first thing that morning, before breakfast even. It was a bit distracting, really, hearing a chime in his head every time an owl arrived, but maybe he'd get used to it. He'd never been tied into wards before, after all. Grimmauld Place was still under the same Secret Keeper it had been under during the war: a Squib in Essex named Mary Jane Malarkey.

Yes, Bridget had been a security risk, but nothing had come of it. The fact that she'd been a risk wasn't the problem. The problem was that he was jealous of her, of a call girl, because Malfoy had wanted her and not him.

He knew it was ridiculous. Being around Malfoy was always going to be torture, he knew that, yet here he was, acting like he'd just stuck his hand in boiling water and not expected it to be hot.

So was it, Harry's problem, something to do with Bridget? "No, not really," he said.

Malfoy looked at him appraisingly. "You really haven't been getting laid recently, have you?"

"It's really none of your business whether I'm getting laid or not. I don't care who you're sleeping with," he lied, "so you can just stay out of my love life, all right?"

"No," Malfoy said, "it's not all right. You're pissed off because you aren't getting laid, and it's pissing me off to be around you."

"You don't have to be around me all the time," Harry snapped.

"Actually, yes, I do. Or have you forgotten that you're meant to be my bloody bodyguard? What with all the time you've spent walking around looking angry I can see how it would be easy to forget. But since you've stuck me with your constant presence, you might as well be less of pain in the arse."

Harry made an infuriated noise. "Protecting you from Death Eaters is not actually the same thing as keeping you entertained. What do you want, some kind of bloody song and dance act?"

"I imagine it's hard to concentrate on being a bodyguard when all you can think about is how infrequently you're getting laid," Malfoy said.

"I can concentrate just fine."

But no, Malfoy apparently was not capable of such a thing. "I don't want to die because you refuse to get laid."

Harry couldn't do anything but stare for a moment. "Malfoy, that is the least logical thing I've ever heard you say."

"You're not getting laid," Malfoy continued, "and so all you're thinking about is how you're not getting laid—"

"Just stop talking, Malfoy."

"—lots of nervous energy to work off, you should really—"

"Malfoy."

But he was still talking: "—do something about it, don't you know that it isn't—"

Harry wasn't sure, afterwards, what made him do it. All he knew was that he wanted Malfoy to shut up and he also desperately wanted Malfoy, and between those two facts he'd managed to grab the front of Malfoy's shirt, pull him forward and kiss him.

It wasn't a long kiss, but it was hard. Harry registered the way Malfoy's eyes flared wide, the firmness of the teeth behind Malfoy's lips, and then his senses caught up with him and he pulled away.

Malfoy's fists unclenched slowly at his sides, as if they too were still trying to process what had happened. Malfoy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said something that ended in, " . . . Potter?" Harry didn't know what the rest of it had been, didn't want to know. "Forget it," he yelled back at Malfoy, just for something to say, and he was down the hall and down the stairs and he didn't know where he was going, except that nowhere in this house was far enough.

What had he done? He hadn't realized what he was doing until it was almost done, but that didn't excuse it. A thousand times he'd thought about grabbing Malfoy and kissing him, but he'd never thought he would actually do it. He was going to have to pull himself off this case. It had been stupid to assign himself to it in the first place. Someone else could have done it, Daphne or Ron . . . Neither of them would have gone about attacking Malfoy. You couldn't go about molesting the people you were supposed to protect, even if they were Malfoy.

Harry just kept walking; he didn't realize he was heading for the drawing room until he was already there. He lay down on one of the couches and beat his head against the cushions. Stupid, stupid. He was going to have to turn the case over to someone else. Ron couldn't do it, not with Hermione almost due. Maybe Daphne: she was small but vicious; she wouldn't let the Death Eaters kill Malfoy. She wouldn't let anything bad happen.

It was too late to do anything about it tonight. First thing in the morning he would firecall Daphne. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, but right now he just didn't want to think about it. He pulled out his battered copy of Quidditch through the Ages and began to read. He spent half an hour on the section about Quodpot before he realized he wasn't seeing the words. He put the book down, took off his glasses and slumped his head against the cushions. He tried not to think.

He barely slept at all, and he was awake well before dawn. It was way too early to firecall Daphne, even at home. He still didn't have any idea what he was going to say to her. "Malfoy was talking to me about whores and I kissed him"? "I've wanted Malfoy since the war and I just couldn't stand it any longer"? He couldn't tell her that. Hermione was the only one who knew how he felt about Malfoy. He couldn't tell Daphne Greengrass when he still hadn't told Ron, his best friend since he was eleven . . .

Maybe he could tell her he'd decided he'd be more useful supervising the case from the office . . . No, she'd never believe that. No one would. He'd never been able to stand being a rear general, to the unending frustration of the Ministry bureaucrats, who were worried he was going to get himself killed off during a Death Eater take-down. Which was stupid, really: Harry's one great talent had always been Not Dying, and he figured he might as well use it. Nobody would be willing to believe that he was suddenly becoming a rear general now. They'd want an explanation, which would leave him right back where he was now.

He would think of something, though. He had to.

He checked his watch. It was still early. He could go directly to the kitchen and get something to eat from the house elves and go up to his bedroom. He would use the back steps, the ones furthest from Malfoy's room. Malfoy would never be the wiser.

But the universe hated Harry Potter some mornings, and there were no house elves in the kitchen, nor was there any food to be seen. He wandered towards the dining room, where, undoubtedly, Malfoy would be, because this particular morning he would see fit to get up early. Harry had wanted to avoid Malfoy for longer than this, possibly for the rest of his natural life, but it was going to have to happen eventually, and it might as well be now, because sometimes the best thing to do when you don't want to do something is to go ahead and get it over with.

Harry walked into the room and, sure enough, there he was, sitting at the head of the table and buttering a croissant. "Morning, Malfoy," Harry said cautiously.

Malfoy glanced up long enough to say, "Morning, Potter," then returned his attention to his breakfast.

Harry had been so worried about what he could say to Daphne that he hadn't even thought about what he was going to say to Malfoy. But here Malfoy was, acting normal enough. He didn't seem to be in hysterics or anything. He was sitting there eating his breakfast as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

That was a good idea: pretend the whole thing didn't happen. Astonishingly, it seemed to work. Malfoy read the paper throughout breakfast and Harry ate his eggs and buttered toast and everything was fine. Harry was starving. He hadn't realized what an appetite he'd worked up, worrying over what to do about the situation. The fact that Malfoy was acting as if it hadn't happened at all was brilliant.

And the rest of the day it really was as if nothing had happened at all. Malfoy might have been a little less talkative than normal, but that was it; that was nothing to worry about. Everything actually seemed to be fine. Nothing had happened. Good.

Harry was all right with that, with pretending the kiss hadn't happened, and he might well have successfully never mentioned it again had Ron not firecalled him at ten the next morning. "Harry, I'm at St. Mungo's. Hermione's in labor."

"I'll be right there," Harry said, unthinking. He was about to Apparate when he remembered Malfoy. Harry swore under his breath and turned to go find him, but found that Malfoy was already there. He must have just walked into the room.

"I hadn't realized Granger was pregnant," Malfoy said.

"It's Weasley now," Harry said. "She and Ron've been married for three years."

"Ah."

"What were you planning on doing today?" Harry asked, although if Malfoy were planning on doing anything different than the usual he'd eat his own foot.

"I've a number of very important things to do. Why?"

"Could you possibly do them later? I've got to go to St. Mungo's but I can't leave you here alone. I could get one of the other Committee members to watch you, I guess, but that would take too long to figure out—"

"I don't need a bloody babysitter, Potter," Malfoy said darkly.

"That's not what I meant," Harry said, frustrated. "Look. I don't want to argue with you right now. My two best friends are having a baby and I want to be there for them, and could you just—do you think you could come along? Please?"

Malfoy looked at him for a long moment. "I'll need to send some owls from St. Mungo's."

"Fine," Harry said, surprised. "Great. Let's go."

Harry might have wondered why Malfoy had agreed to go along so quickly, but now was not the time for that. He was filled with a sense of urgency that only heightened when they arrived at St. Mungo's and saw a line of people ten long waiting to speak with the receptionist. He couldn't wait that long.

"Excuse me," he said loudly. "Excuse me! Where's the maternity ward?"

"You'll have to get in line, sir, and wait like everybody else," the receptionist said without looking at him.

"I need to know where the maternity ward is!" Harry yelled.

"Blimey, that's Harry Potter!" said a man in line in front of him.

"Harry Potter is having a baby?"

"I'M NOT HAVING A BABY," Harry said firmly. Then to the receptionist: "I'm looking for Hermione Weasley."

"Hermione Weasley's having Harry Potter's baby!"

"Just tell me where the bloody room is!"

"First floor, Creature-Induced Injuries," the receptionist stammered. "I'm sorry, Committee Chief Potter, if I'd had any idea Mrs. Weasley was having your child . . . "

But Harry was already past the desk, Malfoy in tow. Malfoy was looking entirely too amused for his own good. "I knew the three of you were close, but really, Potter, I had no idea," Malfoy said slyly.

Harry ignored him. The lifts were all full. "Fuck," he said with feeling. "Stairs, where are the bloody stairs?"

Malfoy grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "Potter. Calm the fuck down. You'd think this really was your kid Granger's having."

Somehow through the nerves that had overtaken him, Harry was aware that this was the first time since the kiss that Malfoy had touched him. He was very close to Malfoy's face, and his cock was beginning to stir, and Malfoy had been holding onto his shirt far longer than was really necessary. Finally Malfoy flushed and released Harry.

"It's Weasley," Harry said when he'd found his voice. "Hermione Weasley. Look, about this. It's Ron and Hermione, I—" He realized he had no idea how to explain to Malfoy how he felt about the two of them. "Never mind. I just need to be there."

Malfoy's interruption had slowed him down enough for a lift to arrive. It seemed to take forever to ascend to the first floor. Harry had time to wonder about why Malfoy had held onto his shirt for so long—did it mean that he was still thinking about the kiss, too? It had to—and then about halfway up Harry realized that the receptionist hadn't told them which room was Hermione's and that he had no idea how he was going to find it.

He needn't have worried. As soon as the lift doors opened, he saw Ron standing in the hall.

"Harry! She kicked me out, mate, can you believe it?"

"Yes," Malfoy said, smirking.

"What the fuck is he doing here?"

"I'm meant to be his bodyguard," Harry said out of the side of his mouth. "I couldn't very well just leave him."

"I'm right here," Malfoy said. "Just saying."

"Shut the fuck up," Ron said.

"Ron," Harry hissed. That was just what they all needed, for Ron and Malfoy to hex each other to bits while Hermione was having a baby.

Malfoy didn't really look like he was going to hex Ron to bits, though. Mostly he just looked amused.

Ron, on the other hand, still looked furious. Distract him, Harry thought. "How long since Hermione kicked you out?"

That did it. Ron deflated instantly. "Half an hour, maybe? It's driving me crazy. I can hear her straining in there. How'm I supposed to stay out here?"

Right on cue, a groan came from the other side of the door.

"Fuck it, I'm going back inside," Ron said. "I can't just stay out—"

Harry stepped in front of him. "Why don't you go get some . . . some coffee or something, and I'll talk to Hermione for you, okay?"

"Coffee," Ron said, latching onto the idea. "Yeah. I'll get some coffee."

"You do that," Malfoy said. Luckily Ron was already halfway to the lift and out of earshot. "Weasley doesn't need any coffee," he said to Harry. "Sedatives, more like."

Harry grinned in spite of himself. Ron's nervousness had rather put his own jitters in perspective.

When he knocked and opened the door to Hermione's room the first thing she said was, "Ron Weasley, I told you to stay out!"

"It's Harry," said Harry. "And, er, Malfoy."

Hermione's eyes flew open. "Well, that's a little awkward, isn't it?"

She was wearing a hospital gown but it wasn't covering anything below the waist at the moment. Thankfully Malfoy was enough of a gentleman that he'd averted his eyes. Harry, on the other hand, had been friends with Hermione long enough that this shouldn't be awkward, or so he told himself. He kept his eyes on her face, nonetheless. A nurse was touching the tip of her wand to Hermione's belly. "Aren't you Harry Potter?" the nurse said, starstruck.

"Never mind," Harry said. "How're you doing?" he asked Hermione.

"High as a kite," Hermione informed him. "Ron was driving me insane. Did you see him in the hall?"

For someone who'd just proclaimed herself high as a kite, Hermione seemed remarkably lucid. "Yeah. I sent him for coffee."

"Good God, that's the last thing he needed," she said.

"He needed something to do. He was about to hex Malfoy through the wall."

"No, he wasn't," Hermione said. "I had the nurse confiscate his wand. I thought he might curse his foot off by mistake."

Harry didn't have to look at Malfoy to know that he was smirking. "Probably a good call."

A second nurse came into the room. "What are you two doing in here? Shoo!"

"They can stay," Hermione said.

"No, it's okay, we'll wait outside," said Harry.

"When Ron gets back, tell him he can come in," Hermione said. The second nurse gave her a phial of some green potion, which she threw back. Her jaw went slack. "This is good stuff," she said.

Ron was back entirely too soon, clutching a large and empty coffee cup. "What'd she say?"

"She said you could go back in," Harry said, pitying Hermione. He wondered if there was any way Ron could get some of whatever that phial of green stuff was. He wondered too if it could overcome half a gallon of caffeine.

Ron grinned maniacally and went back into the room. "Wish me luck!"

As soon as the door shut, Harry slumped down against the wall.

"I wonder if that door can be locked from the outside," Malfoy said.

Harry looked up at him. He'd been thinking something remarkably similar.

But Ron wasn't ejected from the room again. Things were silent for a while. Harry caught Malfoy's eye once or twice, but neither of them said anything, and each time Malfoy scowled and looked away, flushing. Harry meant to say something to him, but before he could think of what to say, a few cries came from inside, with long pauses between them. They continued for some indeterminable length of time, and then there was a long scream and Ron stuck his head out the door. "Harry! It's a girl!"

Harry scrambled up off the floor. Malfoy followed him into the room, but stood just to the side of the door once inside. Harry walked right up to the bed. Hermione was sweaty and exhausted-looking but smiling, and resting on her stomach was a tiny red ball of a baby.

"Isn't she gorgeous?" Ron said.

Well, no: she was purplish and wrinkled and too little to look entirely human, but she was Ron and Hermione's daughter, so that was something. But Ron wasn't really looking for an answer. "What're you going to call her?" he asked.

"Ginevra," said Ron.

"Ginevra Anne," Hermione said. She paused for a moment. "We thought it was appropriate, considering."

It took Harry a minute before realized that it was the fifteenth of October.

October 15, 1997 was a Wednesday. It was warm in London, but in Ottery St. Catchpole it was unseasonably cold.

Ginny Weasley hadn't returned to Hogwarts after all; the school had not reopened the year the war began. Molly was happier with that, really. She wanted her daughter near her in those dangerous times. She would not even consider allowing Ginny to help Harry, Ron and Hermione with the secret mission they would not talk about. She wanted her daughter near her.

The first frost had come early to Ottery St. Catchpole, and Molly had set Ginny to renewing the charms that protected the garden vegetables from the cold. Ginny wore her winter cloak. Molly was inside renewing the Heating Charms that warmed the house, a messy business full of banging and clashing metal. She did not finish the job until well after noon, at which point she went outside to call her daughter in for lunch.

Only then did she notice that the vegetable garden was unusually quiet.

At first she thought Ginny might have gone inside without her noticing. She went back into the kitchen and called Ginny's name, but there was no answer.

She went back out into the vegetable garden. She forced herself to walk slowly, looking under each plant. Beneath the spinach leaves, she found Ginny's wand.

Her death was immediate, painful and excruciatingly public. The Death Eaters had gained control of the Wizarding Wireless Network and broadcast the death of Ginny Weasley on every station. The Aurors had arrived at the Burrow just a little too late to trace her captors; the signature left by Apparition had newly gone cold. Ginny's captors had come upon her quickly: the last spell her wand had cast was one to protect the tomato plants, and she was not the type to go without a fight.

Some of the Aurors were in the kitchen with Molly, asking her questions. One of them had thought a bit of music might calm her down, and so it was that Molly was listening when Voldemort came on the Wireless and announced that he had captured her daughter, that he was personally going to rip the heart from Ginny's chest and crush it between his fingers as it stopped beating.

The Wireless was silent as Voldemort gave Ginny time to beg for her life. But she did not do it. She did not say anything at all.

There was the sound of rending flesh and a terrible scream. Then there was silence.

The Aurors found her eventually, of course. But then it would have been hard not to find her: the Death Eaters had hung her body from the top of Big Ben, and the Muggles had not failed to notice. The Obliviators didn't even try to alter the Muggles' memories. The Ministry issued a statement to the Muggle police: a serial killer was on the loose, a madman who didn't look entirely normal. The description of Voldemort was not inaccurate. If any Muggles had any information, they should call a hotline set up for that purpose, run by wizards with good knowledge of Muggles. Nobody was suffering under the delusion that a Muggle would get close enough to Voldemort to identify him and live to tell about it, but having the hotline seemed to make everyone feel better, feel that something was being done to stop the person who had torn the heart from a girl's body, crushed it in his fist, and dropped it to the ground beneath her dangling feet.

The hotline didn't make the wizarding world feel any better, though. It only showed them how far away they were from the end of the war.

It was after ten p.m. by the time Harry left with Malfoy. Ron and Hermione had asked him if he wanted to be the godfather, and he'd said yes, of course; how could he not? He wondered what Sirius had felt like when his parents had asked him to be Harry's godfather. Sirius had never married, as far as Harry knew. He wondered if Sirius had ever been in love, if he'd ever planned on marrying . . . Harry had never thought to ask him about it. He supposed Lupin would know.

But here he was, Harry, godfather to his best friends' kid, unhappy and alone, and that was mostly the only way he'd seen Sirius, the brief time that he'd known him . . . It was just, damn it. He tried not to think about Ginny anymore. He'd thought about her a lot, at first, thought about how if he hadn't pushed her away, if he'd kept her near him, maybe the Death Eaters wouldn't have been able to catch her alone . . . Really he shouldn't have dated her at all, even for those few weeks, because even though he'd broken up with her it hadn't been enough to protect her, had it? Someone had figured out that she meant a lot to him anyway.

The real bitch of it was that Harry didn't know if he'd ever been in love with her at all. Much as Dumbledore had touted Harry's ability to love as his greatest strength, Harry wasn't sure if it hadn't all been bullshit. He cared deeply for Ron and Hermione. He would kill anyone who tried to harm them—had done, during the war. He supposed he loved the two of them if he loved anyone. But Ginny? He had gotten along with her well, thought her beautiful, wanted to throttle anyone else who was interested in her . . . He'd assumed he would marry her, though he'd never spoken of it to anyone, just the same as he'd assumed Ron and Hermione would marry. That was at the end of sixth year, before Ron and Hermione had so much as kissed, but it was obvious where they were going.

But what he'd felt for Ginny, was that love? He had no idea. He'd figured he would marry her, but he had no idea what would have actually happened. She was dead and Ron and Hermione were alive and married and happy; they'd just had their first child, and Harry could see the other children they would have as clearly as he'd been able to see their marriage back when he was sixteen. Their lives were going exactly as they'd been meant to, whereas Harry had nothing but a string of failed relationships with women in whom he'd had no real interest and a useless, awful attraction to Draco Bloody Malfoy. It would have been bad enough if he hadn't gone and kissed him. He'd been following Malfoy's lead for the past two days, pretending it hadn't happened, but who the fuck was he kidding? He wanted to know what it felt like to curl his tongue around Malfoy's tongue, to crush him up against a wall . . .

No. What he really wanted was to go back to a time before Ron and Hermione had known that they wanted each other, before he dated Ginny, before he ever thought of Malfoy as anything other than the most annoying git to walk the face of the earth. He wanted to undo what had been done, do it again differently, and better.

Failing that, he wanted a strong drink.

There was a bottle of brandy in one of the drawing room cabinets. Harry wasn't really much of a brandy drinker. He thought you were supposed to pour it in a glass and swirl it around before you drank it, or was that cognac? He didn't know or care; he was more of a beer kind of bloke, but liquor would get you drunk just as well and quicker, wouldn't it? There were glasses in the cabinet, too, he saw now, but he didn't bother with them. He unstoppered the bottle and took a swig. It burned a little going down, but he took a second swig and it was better. By the third sip he could feel the warmth spreading out from his stomach. This was good.

Suddenly he was certain that he couldn't stay in the house any longer. He had to get out. It didn't matter where he went, as long as it was to a pub.

He pulled out his wand and thought about pubs, dark ones with long bars and lots of liquor, and when he opened his eyes there was one in front of him. This was great. He walked in and announced, "I need a beer."

He sat down at the bar and banged his hands on the counter. The bartender handed him a pint and Harry took a long sip and slammed it down. He picked it back up and drained the rest of it.

"Another," he said.

"Are you all right, sir?" the bartender asked.

"I'm great," Harry said cheerfully. "Great. M'girlfriend died six years'go. T'night. Could I get that beer?"

"Shit," said a man further down the bar. "That's shitty luck, that." He hailed the bartender. "Give him another on me."

. . . Vodka was great, vodka. He loved vodka.

. . . "think you need to go home, sir."

"'M not drunk. 'M good. 'Nother beer."

. . . Man in a shirt. Black one. Tall hat. Holding beaters bat, why's he holding beaters bat, this's a bar, not a Quizza—Quizzi—Quidditch field. ". . . need to leave now, pal."

"'M not leaving."

" . . . drunk. You're leaving."

"'M not drunk!"

"Come on, mister."

Not leaving, can't—hit him, make him stop, not leaving, make him stop—

Outside. Cold. Hard thing on wrists.

" . . . drunk in public, assault—"

Got to leave. Apparate. Hand things on wrists. Wrists things. Can't move. Concenpate. Concenpate.

Warm. Inside. Not at bar.

"Sobriecus."

It was like having a bucket of icy water dumped on his head. His head was throbbing; he was going to puke . . . He wasn't drunk anymore.

"Hello, Potter," Malfoy said.

Harry registered a number of things very quickly: he was standing in the hallway outside Malfoy's bedroom; his hands were cuffed behind his back; his wand wasn't in his pocket; his nose felt like it was broken; a wand was trained on him, and behind it Malfoy looked furious.

"The thing I dislike about Sobriety Charms," said Malfoy, "is that they don't help you remember what you did while you were drunk. But don't worry; I'm sure we'll be able to piece it together. You started in the drawing room, where you drank the better part of half a bottle of brandy." He held up the telltale bottle and dangled it in front of Harry's face. "Then," he continued, "you Apparated to a pub. That would have been around ten-thirty, when I felt you cross the wards. Sometime between then and now you got ragingly drunk, got your nose broken, and got arrested for public drunkenness and for attempted assault of a police officer." Malfoy held up an official-looking slip. "I assume the broken nose and the attempted assault are related."

Malfoy was standing too close to him. Harry took a step backwards and his cuffed hands hit the wall. "I don't remember precisely," Harry said. Surreptitiously he tried to pull his hands from the cuffs. He couldn't do it; they were locked tight.

"I don't guess it really matters what exactly you were doing," said Malfoy, stepping towards him. "The better question is, why was Harry Potter trying to get himself drunk in the first place?"

"It's really none of your business—"

"Yes, it is," Malfoy said. "You made it my business. Considering how concerned you were that I go under your bloody Committee protection, you'd think you would be doing a better job of actually, you know, protecting me. But who am I to criticize the Boy Who Just Won't Die?" Harry really didn't like the expression on Malfoy's face, the catlike grin. "I'd like to remind you of a couple of things, Potter. You just abandoned me to get ragingly drunk at a Muggle pub when you're meant to be protecting me, first off. Secondly, the last time I checked, the gossip column at the Prophet was under the distinct impression that you were straight. I imagine they'd be very interested to hear what I could tell them . . . "

"Are you threatening me, Malfoy?"

Malfoy's grin grew wider. "Oh, Potter. You're so good at this self-righteousness bit. As if you didn't threaten me with Azkaban if I didn't go along with your Committee protection plan."

"I was just telling you the way things are!"

"Yes? Well, I'm doing the same. Now, Potter," Malfoy said, "I'll be more than happy to keep your secrets, but I'd like some answers. What exactly was it that drove you to drink tonight?"

"Ginny died six years ago tonight. Or yesterday by now, I guess."

"I'm aware. That's not what did it, though, is it?" Malfoy stepped closer.

Harry swallowed and tried to back up, but his cuffed hands hit a wall. Fuck. He was hard, there could be no denying it, and Malfoy was close enough to reach out and touch him. Damn it, he didn't need this.

"Tell me, Potter." Malfoy touched the tip of his wand to Harry's neck.

Harry was tired and miserable and had a throbbing headache, and suddenly he just didn't give a fuck. "Fine. You want to know, I'll tell you. My two best friends just had a baby, on the day the girl I was supposed to marry died, and nothing in my life is going the way it was supposed to—"

"That's what drove you to drink? That your life isn't some happily-ever-after story? Get over yourself, Potter."

"I don't expect you to understand, Malfoy," Harry snapped. "It's just—I gave up everything, everything to win that war, and Ron and Hermione are married and happy; it's like the war never happened, and I didn't come out of the war with anything I wanted—"

"Wow," Malfoy said.

"What?"

"You actually are as self-absorbed as I always thought you were." Malfoy shook his head. "I almost can't believe it. It's like it never occurred to you that you aren't the only one who lost something in the war, whose life didn't turn out exactly as he'd meant it to. You think I wanted to lose my mother, my fiancée, the Manor? It was fucking awful, Potter, but I got over it, because I had to. You can't just keep thinking about what might have been until you go insane and have to be put down like a mad Krup." Malfoy paused. "I take that back. By all means, do. It would save the world from miserable, whining heroes.

"And Potter? Don't tell me you never get anything you want."

He reached out and grabbed Harry's crotch.

"I don't want this," Harry lied desperately—he'd never thought this would happen, never, and now that it was happening he didn't know what to do about it—but Malfoy just gripped him tighter and the hitch in Harry's breath betrayed him.

"But you don't even like me," Harry said.

"Are you really so much of a Gryffindor as to think that liking someone has to have anything to do with this?" Deftly he undid Harry's flies and gripped the length of him and after that there could be no arguing.

Harry's arms were crushed between his back and the wall and they were beginning to hurt from the odd angle but he didn't care. Malfoy's fingers ran down the length of him, fondled his balls, caressed the head, the slit—Harry tried to concentrate on exactly what he was doing so that he could remember it later, but Malfoy was going faster, faster until he was coming so hard his eyes squeezed shut and even after he opened them again he saw black for a moment.

Malfoy looked inordinately pleased with himself. "Do you know how I knew you wanted that? Other than the fact that you were hard the moment you recognized me?"

Harry was too busy recovering from his orgasm even to attempt snarkiness. "How."

Malfoy grinned. "You're the most powerful wizard in Britain, Potter. You could have opened those handcuffs with a thought, and you were so busy staring at me that you never even tried." Malfoy waved his hand and the cuffs disappeared.

Harry loosed his hands, wincing as his shoulders popped back into their normal positions.

"Good night, Potter."

Harry started. "Malfoy, what the—"

But Malfoy had already gone into his bedroom and turned the lock in the door.

"Fuck," Harry said with feeling, though what it was that he was feeling, he couldn't have said.

He was exhausted and hung over and confused, and the only thing for it seemed to be to go to bed and deal with it in the morning. This was a disturbing habit to be falling into, but the moment his head touched the pillow Harry just didn't care anymore: he was fast asleep.

Harry would have had a major bit of thinking to do the next morning, were it not for the fact that Malfoy grabbed him the moment he stepped out of his bedroom and shoved his pajama bottoms down. That rather took care of the first question Harry would have had for Malfoy, which was, "Was what happened last night a completely random thing?"

But he still couldn't stop himself from saying, "Malfoy, what are you doing?"

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "I should think that would be obvious."

"No, I mean—in general."

"You're fucking kidding me, Potter. You want to talk about it? Let me make things easy for you: I want to get laid. So do you, obviously." He looked pointedly at Harry's cock, which was standing at attention. "Is there really anything else you want to discuss?"

Yes, lots of things, but Malfoy was undoing his own flies and he was hard, too; Harry's cock was leaking already at the sight of it. He really shouldn't want Malfoy this much, it wasn't healthy; he was still hung over and he wanted something greasy for breakfast, but Malfoy had grabbed Harry's cock and was pulling him off and saying, "Reciprocation, Potter, would be nice," and God, breakfast could wait.

Malfoy's cock was heavy in his hand, longer and thinner than his own. He'd never touched someone else's cock before but he had the idea that it couldn't be that different from pulling himself off. Malfoy arched his hips up towards Harry's hand and made a sound deep in his threat and he was coming and that did it for Harry: he could feel the orgasm building and he too was coming . . .

After a moment Harry recovered enough to let go of Malfoy's cock and wipe his hand on his pants.

Malfoy too wiped his hand on Harry's pants.

"Hey!" Harry said.

"There's no sense dirtying mine, too," Malfoy said logically.

He had a point, but still—fucker. "I'm going to go change clothes," he said pointedly.

Malfoy grinned. "See you at breakfast."

Harry woke up abruptly in darkness, disoriented. He was in a bed, but it didn't seem to be his own—

Of course it wasn't. He hadn't slept in his own bed at 12 Grimmauld Place in nearly a month. He was at Malfoy's house.

He was in Malfoy's bed.

Late last night they'd pulled each other off and fallen onto the bed, sticky and too exhausted to remember even to cast a Cleaning Charm. Harry had meant to close his eyes for just a minute before he got up and went back to his own room. He and Malfoy had been doing this . . . thing, whatever it was, for nearly a week now. And yet each time Malfoy kissed him, rolled their hips together, touched his cock, it was like the first time: Harry still couldn't believe it was actually happening.

Now it was the middle of the night. Harry wondered what could have awoken him, but then he saw that Malfoy too was awake in the bed beside him.

"Hey," Harry said, propping himself up on his side.

"Hullo," Malfoy said. His head was still on his pillow, but there was no way you could have thought he was asleep. In the moonlight filtered in through the curtains his expression was strange, neither guarded nor open.

"I was thinking about this attack," Malfoy said.

"What about it?"

Malfoy sat up slowly. "My wards are good, right? Boot said it himself, and Boot's one of the best names in the business. How many people are there who can disable wards like mine?"

The Committee had been doing a good deal of research into that very question, under Terry's lead. "Not many," Harry admitted. "A dozen, tops, in all of Britain."

Malfoy nodded. "And how many of them have Death Eater connections?"

"None that we could find." Harry looked at him closely. "You already know that, though," he said, sure he was right as he spoke.

"I made some inquiries," Malfoy said.

"Those letters you've been writing in the morning?"

He nodded.

"You've been discreet, I assume."

"No, Potter, I took out a full page ad in the Prophet. Of course I was discreet. Back to my point: there aren't any wards experts out there with Death Eater connections."

"And there aren't any Death Eaters still out there who could take down the wards," Harry added. The Committee had researched the matter from both directions. He added, "Not that we know of, anyway."

Harry realized two things all of a sudden: that this was the first real conversation he'd ever had with Malfoy, and that he'd never thought to ask Malfoy if he knew why someone was trying to kill him. He wasn't about to mention the former; he didn't want the conversation to stop. But as for the latter . . . Motive had never really been an issue with Death Eaters before—death and destruction, that was their idea of a good time—and Harry had never really wondered why anyone would want to kill Malfoy; it had seemed obvious. "Malfoy, why is someone trying to kill you right now?" he asked.

He rather expected a snarky answer, but instead Malfoy looked thoughtful. "I've been wondering about that, too," he said. "I mean, I've got plenty of enemies. The Death Eaters hate me because I defected and most everyone else hates me because I was a Death Eater. But it's been five years since the end of the war. The timing of it doesn't make a lot of sense."

"It doesn't," Harry agreed.

Malfoy looked like he was going to say something more, but then he hesitated. "There was an order," he said finally. "From the Dark Lord. That anyone who failed him must report for punishment. If someone didn't do it, the other Death Eaters were to bring that person back to him. They were told that they would be rewarded for doing the Dark Lord's bidding . . . That was what happened to my mother, you know. Even though she wasn't a Death Eater. My father had failed him, and I failed him, and so she . . . " He trailed off, but when he spoke again his voice was even. "They came after me, too. Two of them, not long after she was killed. They were trying to collect their reward." His voice was bitter.

"They tried to stun you and take you back to Voldemort," Harry said, remembering from having read Malfoy's file long ago.

"Unsuccessfully," Malfoy added. He paused for a second. "My father tried to kill me, too, you know."

"What? When?"

"During the Final Battle."

"How did we not have this in the Committee file?"

"I didn't much see the point of mentioning it during my Wizengamot hearing. I didn't want my father to be sentenced to anything worse than he was already going to get."

"He tried to kill you, Malfoy!"

"He didn't succeed, did he? I don't think he was acting under his own volition, anyway. It's not important; he's in Azkaban for the rest of his life." Malfoy's tone made it clear that that was the end of that topic. Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Malfoy could talk so casually about his father having tried to kill him when Malfoy continued, "Back to when you asked why someone might be after me, though, that was the first thing I thought of: the Dark Lord's order. It doesn't really make sense, though. If these people want to kill me, that's not what the Dark Lord would have wanted; and the Dark Lord is gone, anyway. They wouldn't be rewarded for it."

"Nobody would be killing you because of that," Harry said.

"Nobody sane, anyway," Malfoy amended.

Harry thought about that. He wondered how many of the Death Eaters could be considered, strictly speaking, sane. He thought of Bellatrix Lestrange, who had committed suicide immediately upon learning that Voldemort was dead. A number of other high-ranking Death Eaters had done the same. Harry had hated them all the more for it at the time. He was glad that Lucius Malfoy was in Azkaban, suffering for what he had done.

"We made a special effort to go after the crazy ones," he said. "The ones who hadn't already killed themselves off, that is."

Malfoy smiled wanly.

They were silent for a moment. Malfoy lay back down as if to go to sleep and Harry thought to do the same. Just when Harry thought he was asleep, though, Malfoy said quietly, "I'm beginning to wonder if this attack is going to happen at all."

Harry too had wondered that. They had no suspects and no good motive. There had not been a single hint of Death Eater activity since that one conversation they'd recorded in Kent, and that had been the better part of a month ago. Even if there was going to be an attack, there wasn't anyone who could get through Malfoy's wards . . . It all seemed more and more improbable by the minute.

Harry looked down at Malfoy, meaning to voice some of this to him, but Malfoy's eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open. He'd fallen asleep again.

Harry lay down and closed his eyes. He was still thinking about what Malfoy had said. What if the attack did never come? What if he just stayed here at Malfoy's house indefinitely, waiting for it?

It wouldn't actually happen that way, Harry knew perfectly well. The Committee was meant to be shut down on November fifteenth, and if the attack didn't happen on the first the Committee would be shut down for sure. But the thought of staying here with Malfoy forever wasn't all that bad, Harry thought as he drifted off to sleep.

*

On the morning of October twenty-fifth, Harry opened the Daily Prophet and read,

LUCIUS MALFOY FOUND DEAD IN PRISON CELL

OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND—Lucius Malfoy, 49, was found dead in his Azkaban cell late last night, according to a Ministry spokesperson.

A guard making the rounds shortly after eleven p.m. noticed Malfoy slumped over in the chair in his cell, in what the guard described as "a funny position." The guard called out to Malfoy, but there was no reply. He called for back up and, under the supervision of Azkaban warden Plumbly Fitzwilliam, opened the cell.

The guards reported that Malfoy was non-responsive and did not have a pulse. Prison physician Agnes Oswald pronounced him dead at 12:03 this morning. Apparently he died of natural causes; Oswald cited no signs of foul play.

Malfoy was serving a sentence of life-imprisonment for his actions as a Death Eater and public enemy before and during the Second War . . .

He wasn't sorry that Lucius Malfoy was dead, not after everything he'd done, but God, Malfoy . . . He thought to hide the paper, but before he did, Malfoy appeared in the doorway, clutching a letter that bore the Ministry seal. He looked horrible. His eyes were rimmed in red, and his hair was mussed, as if he hadn't bothered to fix it since he'd awoken. He was still in his pajamas. He padded into the room and put some toast on his plate. He showed no signs of actually wanting to eat it.

"I'm sorry about your father," Harry said.

"You hated my father," Malfoy said flatly.

Harry couldn't very well lie about that. "I did," he said. "And I don't see how you possibly couldn't, too, seeing as he tried to kill you—"

"I don't expect you to, Potter."

"—but what I was going to say is, I'm sorry you lost your father, anyway."

Malfoy didn't reply.

"If there's anything I can—"

"I don't want to talk about it, Potter," Malfoy said. He put the toast in his napkin and stalked out of the room.

Harry tried to eat breakfast but found that he wasn't hungry. Malfoy had gone into his bedroom and locked the door, he discovered. Harry gave him some time, figuring that that was what he wanted, but when lunch came and went without a sign of him, Harry went and knocked on the door.

"What do you want, Potter?"

Harry pressed his ear against the door. "To make sure you're all right. Can I come in?"

Malfoy didn't reply, but a few seconds later he unlocked the door and threw it open. "Do I look all right?"

He had showered and dressed, and his eyes weren't red anymore. "Yeah, but—"

"See, this is why I didn't want to be around you earlier. You feel bad that my father is dead, so you're going to try to comfort me, maybe hold my hand a little—"

"All I wanted to do was make sure that you're okay," Harry said. "That's all."

"I'm okay," Malfoy said bluntly. "So why aren't you leaving?"

Harry made an exasperated noise. "Malfoy, look—"

"Are you going to try to comfort me, Potter? Kiss it, make it better?"

"Malfoy . . . "

"I don't want comforting, Potter."

"Fine!" Harry snapped. "Fine. You don't want comforting. I get it." And then, because clearly he no longer possessed a brain, he said, "What do you want?"

At first Malfoy looked as if he badly wanted to tell Harry to fuck off, but then his expression shifted. "Come here, Potter."

Harry should have known to be wary, and yet he stepped forward. Malfoy pulled him into the bedroom and closed the door.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Harry repeated, though the gist of it was obvious: Malfoy was pulling him towards the bed, unbuttoning Harry's shirt.

"I want," Malfoy said, "to fuck you through the mattress."

Harry swallowed thickly. He meant to offer up some sort of protest, to mention that when he'd fantasized about this sort of thing, Malfoy was always the one on the bottom. But Malfoy's father was dead, and this was something Harry could do for him; and Malfoy was stripping them of their clothes and pressing Harry down into the bed and now didn't seem like a very good time to stop and remind Malfoy that they'd never actually fucked, per se, and judging from the expression on Malfoy's face Harry doubted that he would stop no matter what Harry said.

Usually when they had sex Malfoy just did what he wanted and saved the talking for later, but right now he seemed to be in an ordering kind of mood. "Spread your legs," he said, Summoning some lube from the bed stand. He slicked his fingers and pressed one of them into Harry's arse. It felt strange and a little uncomfortable but not entirely bad, but then Malfoy inserted a second finger.

"Fuck," Harry said, "fuck, ow, that burns."

Malfoy ignored him and scissored his fingers. After a moment it hurt a little less, and Malfoy inserted a third finger. Harry leaned his head back against the mattress, more comfortable now that the burning sensation had passed—

And without warning Malfoy pulled his fingers out, flipped Harry onto his stomach, and pressed his cock against Harry's arse. One of his hands was on the bed by Harry's side; the other was positioning his cock so that the head was pushing into Harry's arse. He hit a ring of muscle that Harry couldn't seem to unclench, because there was just no way Malfoy's cock could fit in there.

"Um, Malfoy . . . "

"Stop being such a pussy, Potter," Malfoy said, and thrust deep into him.

"Fuck," Harry bit out. Malfoy was pushing further into him, how was that even possible? He was going to feel Malfoy's cock in his stomach in a minute, it was so long. Logically he realized that Malfoy's cock wasn't, actually, that long; he'd become rather familiar with it lately, as a matter of fact, but good God, how was there still more of it to be pushing into him?

But finally Harry felt Malfoy's balls against his arse and the hand that had been guiding his cock gripped Harry's shoulder. Harry finally remembered to breathe. After a few moments of lying there with Malfoy on his back and not moving, though, he said, "Can't say I've ever been fucked up the arse before, but generally I though movement was part of sex."

Malfoy smirked against his neck. "I'm just enjoying the fact that I've got Harry Potter taking it up the arse."

"Get over yourself, Malfoy, I'm—" But before he had a chance to finish his thought, Malfoy pulled out a bit and thrust back in, his balls slapping against Harry's buttocks.

"God," Harry said. Malfoy rolled his hips and the tip of his cock hit something that made Harry's brain explode. Malfoy snaked a hand between Harry and the mattress to grab Harry's cock. He had barely touched it before his cock hit that place inside Harry again, and Harry was coming harder than he'd ever come in his life.

Distantly he registered that Malfoy was coming too, coming deep in his arse, and that should have seemed disgusting but wasn't, since Harry wasn't entirely capable of thought; he'd just had an orgasm whose aftershocks could probably be felt in London or maybe Africa.

Malfoy continued to lie on top of him for a moment, but then pulled out and slid to Harry's side, panting a little. His eyes were closed.

Harry rolled over to face him. "You feeling any better?"

Malfoy opened an eye and glared at him. "If you ever ask me that again, I'm going to fuck you so hard you can't walk for a week."

Harry suspected that he'd already done that, but still, he half hoped that Malfoy meant it less as a threat and more as a promise.

A couple of days before November first Harry began to feel nervous. Moody had said from the start that the people who were planning this attack would likely have Malfoy's house under surveillance, but only now did Harry feel, when he looked out the windows, that he was being watched. Ron ran some diagnostic spells on the area around Malfoy's house to see if he could detect the watcher, but he came up blank. Either Harry was imagining things or these people had found some way to hide themselves from Ron's spells. He wasn't sure which of the options was better, but no one had ever managed to shield themselves from Ron's detection spells before.

The feeling that he was being watched did not diminish, but nothing more ominous happened before the first. As darkness fell on the night of October thirty-first, though, Harry's nervousness grew. Malfoy too was jittery, in contrast to his utter calm the first time they'd been through this ordeal. Harry hadn't mentioned the sensation that he was being watched to Malfoy, but he couldn't help wondering if Malfoy had felt it nonetheless, if Malfoy felt as he did, that October first had been a trial run, that this was the real thing.

The Committee was as prepared as it could possibly be, and there were a dozen Aurors who could Apparate in at a moment's notice. There was nothing to do now but wait.

The windows of the drawing room afforded a good view of the front of the estate. They would wait there. Harry tried to read Quidditch through the Ages, thinking to calm himself with the familiarity of the words, but he couldn't concentrate. He went to the windows. In the twilight he could see the shapes of the trees that lined the drive but little more. The trees had fully shed their leaves now, and the grass had browned, though the first frost had yet to come. He didn't feel, as he had for the past few days, that he was being watched, but that did nothing to diminish his anxiety. If the people who had been watching Malfoy's house weren't watching it anymore, Harry wondered what they were doing instead. Nothing good, he was sure.

By ten o'clock Harry was sweating through his shirt. He didn't remember having been this nervous ever before, not about killing Voldemort, not about anything. He hadn't had to think about killing Voldemort at all. When the time had come for Harry to kill him, he had done it; he had not allowed himself to be distracted. He was good at focusing on what needed to be done, at forgetting all but the essential thing, at being single-minded, but that was when he was in motion. He'd tried to learn patience, but he didn't like waiting; he didn't like inaction.

He found himself checking the time constantly. He couldn't stand it; time wasn't moving at all. He took his watch off and stuffed it in a drawer. Less than a minute later he pulled it out and replaced it on his wrist.

"Potter," Malfoy said, "stop it. You are making me insane."

"Sorry," Harry said. He sat back down on one of the couches and tried to be still. He needed something to think about. He tried to recall the Cannons' past season, what teams they'd played against and when, the final scores, the highlights. He forced himself to concentrate. That was what he needed, something to concentrate on other than how slowly his watch was ticking . . .

Finally it was 11:45, almost midnight, almost November first. He had the horrifying thought that the attack might not come until tomorrow night, when it was almost November second, a whole day away—no. There was no way his nerves were going to make it until then, no way.

"Potter," Malfoy said. "In case—if something happens, I just wanted to say I don't . . . actually hate you."

Harry almost laughed, he was so nervous, but Malfoy's expression was sincere. "I don't hate you, either, Malfoy."

"I mean, I did hate you, for a long time," Malfoy added rapidly. "And I was pissed when you moved in here. I kept hoping that you'd just leave if I was dull enough."

"Wait a minute. You mean you aren't actually that boring?"

Malfoy laughed, and Harry felt some of the tension in the room lift. "Great Salazar, no. I'm worth thirty million Galleons, Potter. I haven't got an heir, and not much chance of producing one lately, either—"

"I'm not likely to give you one," Harry agreed.

Malfoy waved him off. "I was referring to the fact that my fiancée broke off our engagement four years ago, but yes, that too."

"Pansy Parkinson was your fiancée," Harry said, remembering. "But her family fled the country at the end of sixth year—good God, you weren't already engaged then?"

"Potter, we're aristocrats. Of course we were. We'd been engaged since birth. Close your mouth, it's not like there's anything odd about it."

"Not anything odd about it—Malfoy, there are more odd things about that than I can even begin to—"

But then the clock on the mantelpiece tolled once, twice, again: it was midnight. All the tension that had left the room returned immediately, and Harry fell silent. As the clock struck twelve Malfoy stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth. "For luck," he said.

Harry nodded tersely, unable to reply, and felt for his wand in his pocket. He drew it out and replaced it, drew it out again. They settled down to wait.

Harry's nervousness did not diminish but after a while his concentration did. It was hard to stay focused for too very long when they was nothing tangible to focus on. But sometime after three Harry found himself suddenly on alert, though there didn't seem to have been anything to trigger it.

Malfoy, who had slouched on the sofa, sat up. "What is it?" he said.

"I don't know." Harry went to the window. There was no one to be seen in the darkness outside, no hint that anyone was watching him, and yet the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. "I don't know," he repeated, 'but something's going to happen."

"Soon." Malfoy said. It was not a question. He stood up and drew his wand.

Harry did the same.

After Malfoy had tied him into the wards, Harry had insisted that he explain the way the wards worked, what would happen if someone tried to breach the wards. Malfoy told him that an alarm would sound in his head, but that different people didn't hear the same sounds. Malfoy heard a low whistle when an owl crossed the wards to deliver the paper, for instance, but Harry heard a high-pitched chime. Malfoy spent part of a morning tricking the wards to believe that someone was crossing the wards with Malfoy's permission, then trying to cross without permission, then trying to breach the wards, so that Harry could become familiar with the sounds of the warnings.

For Harry, the sound of someone trying to breach the wards was an ear-splitting screech. The sound of someone trying to cross the wards without permission, but not attempt to disable them, was a Muggle fire siren. But neither of those was the sound Harry heard sometime after three in the morning on November first. What Harry heard that was a low-pitched chime: someone crossing the wards with permission.

Malfoy was on his feet immediately. "No one could be crossing the wards," he said before Harry could ask. "I closed them off to everyone but you and me. You know that. You watched me do it."

Harry nodded. His senses were on high alert. He Summoned a pair of Omnioculars and looked out at the grounds. There was no sign of anyone out there, but then again they might have entered from the rear.

"Could you tell how many of them there were?" he asked. "From the sound?"

Malfoy frowned. "Two, I think. Maybe three. The alarm isn't as specific as I'd like."

No kidding, Harry thought. "But they haven't entered the house yet? They're still on the grounds?"

"No, we would have heard another alarm," Malfoy said.

As if on cue, a second chime sounded in Harry's head. Malfoy's eyes went big. "That would be them entering the house, I assume."

Malfoy nodded.

"Great," Harry said. That was his cue to call for backup. He felt in his pocket for the single Galleon it contained, felt for the center of it that, when depressed, would alert the Committee and the Aurors that the attack was happening. He touched his finger to the slightly raised center of it, and hesitated.

He gestured to Malfoy. Malfoy came forward and Harry leaned in to whisper against his ear. "Do you know where they came in?"

Malfoy turned and said into Harry's ear, "The back. Near the ballroom."

Almost the opposite corner of the house from where they were. The Committee and the Aurors would be using the charmed Galleon as a tracking device, and would be Apparating directly to where Harry was. The intruders were far enough away that the backup would be able to Apparate in without them noticing. And yet, the fact that the intruders had managed to get through the wards without a bit of trouble was bothering him. There was no way they could be anyone but the attackers, he knew that. But he wanted to see them. He wanted to know who he was dealing with before he called for backup.

During the war Harry, Ron and Hermione had spent a great deal of time concealing themselves from the Death Eaters. Sometimes they had had the protection of the Order, but not always: there simply weren't enough Order members to do everything that needed doing, and the Order's resources were stretched too thin. Probably they could have gotten full time protection, had the Order known what they were doing, but Harry had deemed it best to inform as few people as possible. As head of the Order, Moody had known, but he was the only one besides Ron and Hermione. It was safer for everyone that way, Harry had thought.

The downside of this was that their protection was not a priority for the Order, and so the three of them never knew when the Order would be around and when it would be called away elsewhere. They'd had to learn to protect themselves, and they had. Now, knowing that there were intruders in the house, Harry's survival instincts kicked in. Now that there was something to do, that he wasn't waiting any longer, he could concentrate on the essential thing, and did: the drawing room was good for watching the grounds, but it was located at the end of a hallway. It didn't give them many options. "We need to get out of this room," Harry whispered into Malfoy's ear.

Malfoy nodded and moved towards the door. Harry remembered himself and stepped in front of him. Me first, he mouthed. He was meant to be Malfoy's bodyguard; if anything happened to Malfoy, it was his fault. Malfoy looked at him for a moment but let him pass.

Slowly Harry eased the door open. It was silent in the hallway. The house elves had, per Malfoy's instruction, made themselves scarce for the duration of the night and day, so that they would cause no surprises if the attack came. Harry crept along the wall, grateful for Malfoy's foresight, and grateful too that Malfoy lived in a house whose floorboards did not squeak.

There was nothing to be seen or heard along that hallway. The intruders couldn't have made it through Malfoy's house that quickly, though: even moving briskly, it took three or four minutes to get from the ballroom to the drawing room, and if they'd been moving briskly surely Harry would have heard them. Once he and Malfoy approached the foyer, though, Harry's sense of awareness heightened. The intruders were near.

Halfway across the foyer was the main staircase leading up to the bedrooms. Harry hesitated as they moved towards it, thinking strategically. From the rear of the house there were two different routes the intruders could have taken to get to the foyer, one through the hallway that led past the kitchen, and the other through the shorter, more direct route that led through the center of the house. Both hallways came out on the far side of the staircase. The stairs would provide a decent amount of cover for them, as long as—he heard a sound—the intruders weren't—

"Expelliarmus!"

—upstairs. Harry threw himself to the ground, rolled and came up on his feet. He couldn't see who'd thrown the curse, but it had come from the balcony. "Reducto!" he yelled, and the railing exploded.

There: one of them, tall, wearing a Death Eater's black hood; and there: the second one, also hooded, but shorter.

"Everte Statum!" Harry yelled, and, "Stupefy!"

The Death Eaters dodged both of them neatly. The taller one threw a Blasting Curse. Harry cast a second Stunning Spell and missed again, just barely.

"Tarantallegra!" someone yelled from behind Harry, and only then did he remember that it was Malfoy. He was meant to be protecting him. He still hadn't called for backup. He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt for the coin, found it, depressed the center. He whispered the word to drop the wards so that the backup could get through, and then he was dodging curses, throwing up ones of his own. Behind him Malfoy was doing the same. Harry was acting swiftly and without thinking about what he was doing—this was what he was best at, not thinking but doing—and so the thinking part of him was free to feel pride in Malfoy, in the fact that he was fighting and not hiding, even though his life was at stake.

The thinking part of him was also free to wonder why the Death Eaters had yet to actually try to kill Malfoy . . . But then another of his curses destroyed more of the railing to the left of the stairs and the taller Death Eater fell through the gap. The smaller Death Eater screamed, "Arresto Momentum!" and the taller one landed on his feet, recovering quickly enough to throw a Cutting Curse at Harry. He twisted out of the way but slipped on some of the rubble from the railing and the curse caught him on the side. He cried out and threw curses at the Death Eaters; he didn't even know what spells he was casting, only that he wanted to cause them pain. In the part of his mind that was removed from all this he was aware that he needed to capture these Death Eaters alive, to learn if they were working alone or under contract, to find out why they'd come after Malfoy, to try them for this and other crimes . . . He knew this and yet could not stop himself. One of his curses struck the smaller Death Eater, who screamed, and Harry raised his wand to cast another curse, the final blow—

But then from behind him he heard people casting Binding Spells and Containment Charms, saw the spells flashing through the air, and knew that the backup had arrived. It was the Aurors, he saw immediately. It didn't occur to him to wonder where the Committee was; the Aurors were here and they were rushing forward. There were too many of them for the Death Eaters to fight. The situation was under control.

Harry turned to look for Malfoy. It wasn't hard to find him. He was standing in the corner opposite the steps and staring, paralyzed, down the hallway to the left of the stairs, where someone Harry had never expected to see again was standing.

"Father?" Malfoy said, eyes wide.

Lucius Malfoy raised his wand and yelled, "Avada—"

Harry's wand was up. He opened his mouth but he was too slow, too far away, he had no way of stopping Malfoy—

And out of nowhere someone yelled, "STUPEFY!" and Lucius Malfoy crumpled to the ground. Emerging from the hallway behind him was Ron, followed by the rest of the Committee.

"Sorry we're late," Ron said.

Harry resisted the urge to laugh hysterically and grinned at him for a moment, and then went over to Malfoy, who was shaken but not visibly injured.

"You're hurt," Malfoy said.

"I'm fine."

"No, Potter, you're hurt. Your side . . . " He pointed.

Harry looked down and saw that his entire left side was soaked in blood. "I'm fine," he repeated, and then the world went black.

Harry awoke at St. Mungo's some time later. Malfoy was at his bedside.

"Hey," Malfoy said.

Harry sat up a bit and tried to reply but his throat was parched. Malfoy handed him a glass of water. He took a sip and tried again. "Hey. What happened?"

"You caught a Cutting Curse," Malfoy said. "You lost a bit of blood."

"Ah," Harry said. "You're okay, though?"

"Yeah," Malfoy said. He looked as if he were going to say something more, but just then Ron rushed into the room.

"Harry! You're awake!"

Harry sat up all the way, wincing at the twinge in his side. "Yeah, still hurts a little, though."

"Seeing as you lost more than half of your blood, I'd be surprised if it didn't," Ron said.

Harry looked at Malfoy. "A bit of blood?" he said.

Malfoy shrugged gracefully, his expression unreadable.

"Would you mind giving us a minute?" Ron said to Malfoy.

Harry was about to say that he could stay, that whatever Ron wanted to say could be said in front of Malfoy, but before he could do it Malfoy said, "Of course," and left the room.

"I'm glad you're awake," Ron said, clicking the door shut behind Malfoy. "You've been out for the better part of two days."

Harry sat up straighter. "I have?"

"The Healers said you were just exhausted," Ron assured him. "You're going to be fine. It was just that you were up the whole night before the attack, and then losing all that blood."

Harry nodded. "So what time is it? What day is it?"

"Two in the morning on November third."

"Oh."

"No kidding. Next time wait till a decent hour to wake up, why don't you?" Ron said. He grinned. "Don't worry about it, mate. I'm just glad you're all right."

"Me too," Harry said.

"Malfoy's glad, too," Ron said, a little too casually.

Harry froze. "Why do you say that?"

"He was by your bed almost the entire time you've been here."

"Really?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Look, I know about you and . . . " he trailed off, making a gesture that somehow described exactly what Harry and Malfoy were.

"Ah," Harry said, flushing. "How'd you, um. From Hermione?"

"She knew?"

"Not as such, no. She didn't know about now, that is. She knew how I, er, during the war . . ."

"You were obsessed with him," Ron said. "I knew about that."

"You did?"

Ron grimaced. "It was pretty obvious, mate."

"Ah," Harry said eloquently. "Well. I, ah, told her about it. After the war. I was drunk," he said by way of explanation, then added, "I didn't mean to keep it from you."

When he looked up, though, he saw that Ron wasn't mad. "Probably for the best, really."

"I'm sorry," Harry said.

Ron shrugged. "Don't worry about it."

They were silent for a moment, which Harry took as a cue to change the subject. "So what's happened since I've been here? Was that really Lucius Malfoy?"

"Yeah, it was him. We checked him for all the known glamours and watched him for Polyjuice, but it was really him."

"But he was meant to be dead."

"Yeah," Ron said. "That's what they thought at Azkaban, too. Daphne went and interviewed the guards who called in the doctor. All three of them took Veritaserum willingly. None of them was an accomplice, and they all really believed he was dead. They said he looked like he'd died in his sleep. She would have interviewed the Healer who pronounced him dead, but he was missing."

"Missing?" Harry said.

"They found him after Daphne left," Ron said. "He was responsible for burying the dead, too. It seems that he took Lucius Malfoy, whom he thought was dead, over to morgue—which is a room attached to the Healer's cottage—and Lucius overpowered him, took his wand and killed him before fleeing to the mainland."

"Avada Kedavra?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't anyone pick up on Lucius's magical signature when he Apparated?"

"That's just the thing. We don't think he Apparated. The Auror techies ran tests on the wand Malfoy was using. They confirmed that it had belonged to one Smithfield Witherson, Azkaban Healer, and they also said that the last spell that wand had cast was the Killing Curse on said Azkaban Healer."

Harry puzzled over that one for a moment. "It's not impossible to get from Azkaban to the mainland without using magic," he mused. "Sirius did it." Somehow he couldn't see Lucius Malfoy swimming the North Sea, though. Maybe there had been a boat. That wasn't the biggest thing that was bothering him, though. "How did he fake his own death in the first place?"

Ron shrugged. "Beats me."

Harry tried to think of ways to fake one's own death when one was working from the maximum-security section of Azkaban. He wasn't coming up with many options. "So what day did Malfoy escape?"

"The twenty-fifth, presumably," Ron said. "The Healer had been dead for about a week when the guards found him."

"The twenty-fifth," Harry repeated. The day the article about his death had run, Lucius Malfoy had actually been alive and free somewhere in Britain. "So no one thought to check on the Healer during the week between then and the attack? Did no one in Azkaban get sick in that whole time?"

"Guess not," Ron said.

Harry sighed. "So what was Lucius Malfoy doing for that week?"

"Nothing that required magic, that much we know," Ron said. "I put out feelers to some of our Muggle contacts and got one hit. Lucius Malfoy withdrew the entire contents of a Muggle safe deposit box in Surrey."

"What the hell would he want with a Muggle safe deposit box?" Harry said.

"I can answer that, unfortunately. Remember how Malfoy said he created his own wards?"

"I'm not entirely sure how that's related," Harry said.

"Just bear with me here for a second."

"Yes, I remember how Malfoy created his own wards. Go on."

"Right, well, guess who taught him Arithmancy during the summer?"

"I have a feeling I know where this is going."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Ron said. "So daddy was good at Arithmancy, and taught his son how to make really good wards. Except the wards had one catch."

"That daddy could get through them."

"Not exactly. That anyone who possessed fifteen pints of blood from the creator of the wards and had an excellent knowledge of how the wards worked could convince the wards to let them pass."

Harry let that sink in for a moment. "Fifteen pints of—there isn't that much blood in a person's body. You couldn't get that much even if you killed them and bled them dry."

"Exactly," Ron said. "Oh, I forgot: it has to be fifteen pints, willingly given."

Harry thought instantly of Malfoy when they were twelve or thirteen, how nearly every sentence he'd spoken had begun with My father this or My father that. And things became clear in his mind. "What you're saying is that when Malfoy was little, Lucius bled him?"

"He must have been really young when Lucius did it," Ron said grimly, "because he doesn't have any memory of it having happened."

"Any evidence of a Memory Charm?"

"None that we can find."

Harry nodded slowly. "So that's what was in the safe deposit box? Fifteen pints of Malfoy's blood?"

"Yeah."

"Lucius couldn't have possibly known what he would do with all that blood when he took it, though."

"I had Terry talk to Aubrey Chisholm, the Ministry Potions expert," Ron said. "Apparently there are lots of things Lucius could have used that blood for, the majority of them not very pleasant."

"But Malfoy hero-worshipped his father," Harry said. "Remember how he was when we were at school? If Lucius asked him for blood, he would have slit his wrists and asked how much."

"Usually you take someone's blood to gain an advantage over them," Ron said.

Harry thought of fourth year, when Pettigrew had taken his blood so that Voldemort could regain a body—blood of the enemy, forcibly taken—and nodded.

"Lucius might not have known what he was going to do with the blood then, but Malfoy was his heir. Malfoy might have done everything Lucius wanted when he was little, but once he got older, if he tried to stray from what Lucius wanted . . ."

Harry shuddered involuntarily. "Where is he now? Lucius, I mean."

"In the Ministry's maximum-security holding cells."

"Have you tried interrogating him?"

"Yeah. The man's insane, Harry. That or the wiliest bastard I've ever met, and I know he's a wily bastard. I've never met anyone who can talk his way around Veritaserum like that who isn't insane, though."

"Talk his way around, how?"

"He would just open his mouth and start talking about the weirdest things, like badgers, in response to questions about how he escaped from Azkaban. We tried giving him higher dosages, tried different questioning methods . . . Much as I hate to admit this, I kind of wish Snape had been there. That Ministry potions lady just wasn't cutting it."

"Did you get any kind of motive for why he was trying to kill Malfoy?"

"He said something about killing the traitor and getting his reward, but Harry, he's completely nutters."

"Getting his reward?" So Malfoy had been right about the motive. It was just that neither of them had expected Lucius to be the assassin . . . He tried to think if he had any more questions for Ron. He didn't.

They were silent for a moment and then Ron said, "I'm glad you're all right."

"Yeah. Me too."

Ron nodded. "I'm going to go home. Haven't seen Hermione and the kid in a day or two, thought it might be nice to make an appearance."

Harry grinned. "Tell them I said hi."

"Will do."

"Could you, er, send Malfoy back in? When you go?"

"Sure," Ron said, but Harry really needn't have asked: Malfoy was back at the door the minute Ron opened it. Ron let Malfoy in and then slipped out himself. "Bye, Harry. Malfoy."

Malfoy nodded to him. "Weasley."

"Bye, Ron."

"Hey," Harry said.

"Hey," Malfoy said. He was still standing by the door, fidgeting. Harry had never seen him fidget before.

"I'm sorry about your father," Harry offered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Malfoy said without rancor.

He considered. "I don't know. I'm sorry that he wasn't actually dead?"

Malfoy smiled wanly. "I wish he were. I'd rather him be dead than be alive and trying to kill me."

"He's insane, Ron said."

"He's fanatical," Malfoy said. "There's a difference."

"He believes Voldemort is still alive."

"I seriously doubt that." Malfoy looked at him pointedly. "You weren't there when Weasley interrogated him, Potter. I was."

Harry sat up straight, too quickly. "You were? What?"

"I wasn't in the room, Potter, don't be an idiot. I was watching through a one-way mirror. Fascinating invention. You've got to give Muggles some credit. Anyway, my point is that my father's insanity is selective. He was able to recruit two men from inside Azkaban and mastermind his own escape."

"He thought killing you would solve all of his problems," Harry said flatly. "If that's not insane, I don't know what is."

"I know," Malfoy said, "but saying he's insane makes it sound like he doesn't know what he's doing, and he does. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's spent so long in Azkaban that he's gone twisted, but that doesn't excuse him. You know what I'm the most pissed off about?"

"What?"

"That I mourned the bastard. I was actually sad that he was dead. I guess I thought there was still something left in him of how he was when I was younger." Malfoy's jaw set. "Clearly I was wrong."

Harry could only nod.

"I won't be mourning him again," Malfoy said. "When he actually dies, I mean."

Harry couldn't help but crack a bit of a smile at that. After a moment he said, "I'm just glad you're all right."

"Likewise. But if you tell anyone I'll have to kill you."

Harry swallowed. "I, er, might've told Ron. About, uh . . ." He made the same vague gesture Ron had made earlier.

"Ah," Malfoy said.

"Do you, er—"

"If you ask me if I want to talk about it, I am going to hex you," Malfoy informed him.

Harry decided that this was a good time to change tacks quickly. He blurted out the first thing that occurred to him. "Why'd you name your house la maison jaune?"

Malfoy looked at him for a moment. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I was just curious," Harry said with a shrug. "I'd been wondering for a while, and there were all those long stretches where you just wouldn't talk to me, and there never seemed to be a good time to ask . . . "

Malfoy did not rise to the bait. He waited a moment and then said, very seriously, "It's called la maison jaune because—listen closely, Potter, you might have missed this—it's a house, and it's yellow."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I caught the staggering lack of creativity, yes. Why the French, you git?"

"Ah," Malfoy said. "Well. My mother taught me French when I was very small. She never told me why I should learn it; I thought it was just the sort of thing a rich pureblood should know, and I wasn't exactly wrong about that, but the real reason was that my parents planned to flee to France should the Dark Lord ever rise again. I didn't figure that out until Pansy and her family disappeared. My mother helped Pansy with her French pretty often—Pansy's mother wasn't as good at French as mine was . . ." Malfoy shrugged. "I talked to Cheswick—Mr. Parkinson—once, after they came back, to confirm that hiding in France had been my father's plan, too. It had been."

"Why didn't you leave before? Surely Lucius could have realized that Voldemort had returned after he regained a body," Harry said, gripping the duvet.

Malfoy shrugged. "I don't know why he didn't leave then. Cheswick didn't, either, though. The Parkinsons waited until the end of sixth year, after Dumbledore . . . At any rate. About the house. I bought it just after I'd gone to see Cheswick, when he told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be marrying Pansy. I named the house in French, knowing they'd hear about it . . . I was a little bitter."

"So you couldn't marry Pansy because . . . what, her father was smart enough to flee to France when yours couldn't?"

"I'm over it, Potter. My father would have said the same to Pansy, were our families' positions reversed."

Harry stared at him and let that sink in for a moment. "But didn't you love her?"

Malfoy shrugged. "That didn't have anything to do with marrying her. Marriage between pureblooded families is about power, Potter. I didn't have the kind of power my family had been able to offer hers when we were born."

Harry didn't really know what to say to that, so they were silent for a minute. "What are you going to do after they release you?" Malfoy said finally.

"Go back to the Committee, I guess," Harry said.

"Ah," Malfoy said, his face suddenly, inexplicably cold. "I suppose you'll be by to pick up your things soon afterwards, then?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Harry said obliviously.

Malfoy made for the door. "Right. Good-bye, Potter."

"Malfoy, what? Wait!"

But he was already out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him. Harry stared at it for a minute, uncomprehending. What in the world had he said to make Malfoy act like that?

Something about the fact that Harry was going back to the Committee had set it off. That didn't make any sense, though. That was Harry's job. It wasn't like he was going back to the Committee to the exclusion of ever seeing Malfoy again . . .

He meant to think about it more, he really did, but then a Healer came in and gave him a smoking blue potion and he fell immediately asleep.

Harry was released from St. Mungo's the following morning. He still felt a slight twinge in his side if he moved suddenly, but other than that he was fine. He needed to go to Malfoy's house and get his things, he knew. He didn't have any excuse to leave them there. He couldn't bring himself to do that straight off, though, and so instead of Apparating to Malfoy's house, he went to the office.

It was the first time he'd been there in a month and a half, Harry realized with a bit of something like nostalgia. Little had changed. To look at it, you'd never know the Committee was meant to be shut down in less than two weeks.

"Chief!" Marie exclaimed, throwing herself at Harry. "You're back!"

Harry patted her back and refrained from mentioning that she was squishing his injured side.

Everyone else was there, too, and while they weren't trying to squish him, there were smiles all around. Even Moody was attempting to smile, though considering how heavily scarred his face was, Harry rather wished he wasn't. It was a scary sight.

"Glad you're back, Harry," Daphne said.

"Glad to be back," Harry said. "So what'd I miss?"

"Other than a month and a half?" Ron said cheekily.

"The DUC's been pushing us to start turning things over to the Aurors," Daphne said. "Give them our supplies and whatnot."

Harry stared at her. "The DUC's still going to shut us down?"

Daphne shrugged. "They don't see any reason why they shouldn't."

"No reason why they shouldn't? What about the attack?"

"Ah," Ron said. "That."

Harry looked at them suspiciously. "What are you lot not telling me?"

"The DUC doesn't exactly know about the attack, as such," said Terry.

Harry stared at them all some more, and then Ron began to explain. "We wanted you to be the one to announce that there had been an attack," he said. "You're the one who's been saying all along that the Death Eaters were still a threat . . . It's your victory, and we wanted to let you go public with it.

"We didn't realize St. Mungo's would hold you for forty-eight hours, but even though they did, it's not an issue. The news is still contained. The only people besides us who know that Lucius Malfoy escaped are the Aurors and the Azkaban guards. The public doesn't know anything and neither does the DUC. So yeah, they're going ahead with the plan to shut us down."

"I see," said Harry. One thing Ron had said was sticking out in his mind: it's your victory. It was, at that. He'd been right: Death Eaters were still a threat. There was no way the DUC could shut them down now.

And yet, he hadn't been entirely right, had he? Yes, there was still danger from Death Eaters, but not from any new ones. The accomplices weren't Death Eaters. They'd been interrogated under Veritaserum, and they'd confessed to having been hired by Lucius Malfoy. It seemed they'd been solicited by owl; no one had been able to figure out how he'd managed to owl them from Azkaban, and he wasn't talking. They'd been paid ten thousand Galleons apiece to cause a distraction while Lucius killed his son. They would be convicted as accessories to attempted murder, but neither of them had actually attempted to cause harm to Malfoy, and so their sentences would be less harsh. And they weren't Death Eaters.

Lucius was. But he hadn't been at large, had he? He'd been recaptured immediately after the Final Battle. He hadn't been a danger to anyone for more than five years. The Committee's job was to track down and capture Death Eaters; it wasn't to make sure that, once justice had been meted out, it continued to be done . . .

Probably he was drawing an arbitrary line there. The Committee's job was to protect the public from Death Eaters. Just because a Death Eater had already been to prison once didn't mean he was no longer a Death Eater, or that it wasn't still the Committee's responsibility to protect the public. But the fact that there had been no new Death Eaters involved in the attack was giving Harry pause.

When the Committee was first created, it possessed a list of nineteen names of those who belonged to the inner circle of Death Eaters, compliments of the late Severus Snape. The Order had not known that Snape was still on their side; after killing Dumbledore he'd gone into deep cover. Only at the moment of his death, when he turned on the Death Eaters to give Harry an opening to kill Voldemort, did anyone learn of his true loyalties. After his death, Snape's solicitor had delivered a sealed envelope containing the names of and information about many Death Eaters, including the nineteen in the inner circle. It had been invaluable in supplementing the Order's own information. When the Committee was founded, less than two weeks after the Final Battle, all of that combined information came to it.

The Committee had been Harry's life for the past five years. It was meant to be a branch of the Auror Bureau and yet when Harry was appointed its chief at the age of eighteen, he hadn't so much as gone through Auror training. No one had argued with his appointment—he was the savior of the wizarding world, after all—but few expected him to be up to the task, either. He'd proved them wrong; he'd been more than equal to it. Of the nineteen members of Voldemort's inner circle, only five remained at large for more than a year after the war. Amycus Carrow had been the only one to evade capture for more than two years, and he had only managed that by sequestering himself off in a Muggle insane asylum in Lancaster. Were it not for the fact that he was still in possession of his wand and enough of his wits to blow the place to pieces, should the urge arise, Harry would have been tempted to leave him there.

Carrow had been the last of the nineteen. There were other Death Eaters out there, of course, but most of them were doing their best to lie low and get on with their lives. There was a time when Harry would have sought out each one of them and ensured that they were punished for what they had done, but now . . .

The war had been over for five years, and everyone seemed to be moving on with their lives. Everyone but Harry. Okay, and Moody, but was that really who Harry wanted to turn into? Mad-Eye Moody?

Fighting Voldemort and the Death Eaters was all Harry had known ever since he was eleven. He couldn't imagine doing anything else. And yet the Amycus Carrow capture two years ago had marked something that Harry hadn't noticed at the time, or maybe he just hadn't wanted to: that the Committee had done what it was intended to do, that it had served its purpose.

With the attack on Malfoy, the DUC would have to revoke its mandate to shut down the Committee. The results of the attack were about the best thing Harry could have hoped for: no one had died or been incurably injured and they'd captured all of the attackers. It would prove to the DUC that the Death Eaters were still dangerous.

But the DUC still didn't know the attack had happened. By keeping the news of the attack quiet, Ron and the rest of the Committee had opened up possibilities Harry hadn't considered before. He could see very clearly two futures laid out before him. In one future, he called for a press conference immediately and announced the news of the attack. The DUC revoked its mandate, the Committee became a permanent branch of the Auror Bureau and Harry remained its chief.

In the second future, Harry accepted what he had long known, deep down, to be true: that the Death Eaters no longer posed enough of a threat to warrant the Committee's continued existence. He did not announce the news of the attack. Lucius and the accomplices were tried and sent to Azkaban, but quietly. The DUC never learned that the attack had happened, and the Committee was shut down as planned. But after that, what? Harry didn't know. He'd never envisioned a future in which the Committee did not exist. It was a terrifying thought, and yet . . .

Gradually he became aware that he had been silent for a long time. He looked around the room, at the faces of the Committee members, these people he had known for such a long time, looked at them and knew what he must do.

The Daily Prophet
November 4, 2003

LONDON—In a surprise press conference last night, Committee Chief Harry Potter announced that he does not intend to appeal the Departmental Usefulness Commission decision to dissolve the Committee.

"I have discussed it with my fellow Committee members, and we all agree that the Committee has served its purpose. We don't think that the wizarding world is entirely safe, or that it ever will be, but we do feel that the Death Eaters no longer pose a significant threat to the public."

The Committee's resources and funding will return to the Auror Bureau. The Bureau has offered positions to all of the Committee members, and while some of the members have taken them, the Bureau said that Potter has turned down the offer. When asked what he intended to do after the dissolution of the Committee was complete, he did not comment . . .

Harry placed his wand on the sensor pad at Malfoy's front grate and said his name, all too aware that this might be the last time he ever came to this house.

"Please come inside," the speaker box said.

The front gates swung open and Harry stepped onto Malfoy's drive. It was a cold morning. The ground was still covered with frost, though it was nearly ten o'clock. Malfoy's yellow house was bright between the barren trees.

Walking down the drive seemed to take forever and no time at all. Suddenly he was on Malfoy's doorstep, staring at the door. Harry had no idea what he was going to say to him. It would be easier, he thought, to turn around and walk away. He was only here to retrieve his things. He hadn't taken anything particularly important to Malfoy's house, had he? Some clothes, a battered copy of Quidditch through the Ages . . . nothing irreplaceable. If he'd forgotten anything important, he could have Malfoy owl it to him.

He was being stupid. He knocked twice on Malfoy's door and willed himself to stand still. He barely had time to shove his hands back in his pockets before the door swung open. Behind it was not Posie the house elf but Malfoy himself. He was wearing a sweater and corduroys and socks and looked so Muggle that Harry couldn't help but smile. He hadn't known it was legal for a Malfoy to wear corduroys.

"Hi," Harry said.

"Hi," Malfoy said.

"I, er, came to get my stuff," Harry blurted.

Malfoy's expression was neutral. "Ah."

"The Committee's being shut down," Harry explained.

"I saw the Prophet," Malfoy said.

"The Committee's being shut down," Harry repeated. "So there's no reason for me to keep my stuff here, because the attack already happened and everything, and I have a house, anyway, and—" He clamped his mouth shut to stop himself from babbling any more.

Malfoy smirked. He stood there looking bemusedly at Harry for a minute. Harry ran a hand through his hair, self-conscious under Malfoy's scrutiny, and had the sense that Malfoy could see right through him.

And then Malfoy stepped to the side, his hand still on the door. Harry looked at him questioningly. He rolled his eyes. "It's fucking freezing out, Potter. If you're coming in, you'd better come now."

Harry wondered why Malfoy was looking so amused. He stepped over the threshold and Malfoy closed the door behind him.

The last time Harry had been in this foyer was during the attack, when he'd blasted away a good bit of the first floor railing. Malfoy had repaired it sometime in the past couple of days. You'd never know, to look at it, that an attack had happened at all.

Harry turned his gaze back to Malfoy, who had a strange look on his face. "I'll just be getting my things, then," Harry said.

Malfoy stared at him for a moment longer and then shook as a dog would shake off water. "Potter," he said, "don't be an idiot." And then Malfoy grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

Harry responded eagerly, sliding his tongue against Malfoy's, pulling him closer, but then he pulled back. "Are you sure? Because if you're not sure—"

"Potter."

"What?"

"If you don't shut up, I'm going to hit you." Malfoy kissed him again, and this time Harry did not argue. A thousand thoughts flashed through his head, this will never work featuring prominently among them, but as he wound his tongue around Malfoy's he found that he did not care.