Prologue
A/N: I own nothing. Enjoy!
(The year is 2014)
There was nothing about the sudden large explosion that decimated half of the Auror department to suggest that Harry Potter was an idiot. The writing was on the wall. Literally. Ginny Weasley had cursed the wall in Harry’s cubicle to display the sentiment in bright green lettering. To match his eyes, she had said. Because it was the Slytherin house color, and he was a disgusting snake.
Draco Malfoy had made the mistake of taking offense to the statement. Really, it was hard to tell which of the two was the bigger idiot. Sure, Potter couldn’t seem to keep his ‘Gryffindor’ in his trousers, and he kind of deserved the large bucket of dragon dung that had been charmed to hover over his desk chair and magically refill whenever he walked away, but Malfoy should have known better. He and the wizarding world had been on shaky ground since the war had ended almost fifteen years ago. He was starting to be accepted again in some wizarding circles, becoming an Auror and working with Potter to capture most of his former colleagues. He should have known better than to get between the jilted red-head and her cheating ex-boyfriend and to then complain about ‘Slytherin Discrimination’. That was a buzzword he was trying to convince the world to get behind. It wasn’t catching on.
Really, nobody was all that surprised when Ginny screamed something unintelligible and affixed him to the ceiling. They had to call in the Unspeakables to get him down. It took them two weeks and he lost half of his bum in the process. Potter, however, was not so lucky. Scar-Head had the audacity to tell the woman to calm down, and she retaliated by removing the body part that had offended her in the first place. She would forevermore wear it around her neck as a trophy. Potter was able to get a new one at Saint Mungo’s, but he was never quite the same.
It didn’t help matters that Ginny Weasley then decided to become the new Voldemort. She didn’t start systematically murdering muggle-borns. No, she flipped the narrative and went after the purebloods, those she really felt were to blame for the war and her brother’s death. Ginny had become unhinged.
Ron wasn’t much better. He’d been the one to find Harry and Hermione together. Everyone had thought it strange when The Queen-Muggleborn-Braintrust-of-Gryffindor had decided to settle down with Ron the Weasel, but against all odds, they had been married for twelve years and had a pair of twins; Fred II and Georgette- currently in their first year at Hogwarts. Fred II was in Gryffindor, and Georgette was in Ravenclaw. Their pranks were already legendary. But Ron was always at work, and Harry had always been a good friend. The nerd and the hero had a special connection. Really, it was only a matter of time before they got together.
As Potter’s partner in crime deterrence, Draco knew all about it. Hermione was pregnant. She kept dragging her feet about leaving Ron because their marriage was a sacred thing for her. She had been raised muggle, where marriage was supposed to last forever, the ones that didn’t were failures or jokes or bad ideas that should never have been given wings. And Hermione Jean Granger was no failure. No-sir-ree-Bob. She would see the world crash down around her in flames before admitting that she had made a mistake.
Thing was, Harry and Ginny just weren’t compatible. They were great friends. Malfoy had once had a low-key crush on the girl-weasel. She was one hell of a quidditch player, that was for damn sure. However, he could see where Potter was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Literally at times. Granger was a rock, and Potter’s genitalia frequently put him in a hard place.
It was strange. He and Potter were sort of friends now. Even after losing half of his ass, when he could not do so literally, Malfoy still figuratively gave a shit. A small one. Like, hardly noticeable. He would never admit to it, but he wanted his partner to be happy.
Then, just weeks after the two left the hospital, the Auror department received word that several former Slytherin’s had mysteriously gone missing. So, the odd couple worked the case. Ginny had moved out of Potter’s apartment and Hermione had moved in but the two weren’t sleeping together. Malfoy wasn’t sure why Potter insisted on telling him that, but whatever. So, they worked the case. Business as usual. Tracking dark wizards all over the globe, they started noticing similarities that once observed could not be ignored. From surveying locals involved, it became clear that before each disappearance, each town had observed a sudden influx of gingers.
Malfoy smelled a Weasley, or eight of them. Harry wouldn’t hear of it. The Weasley’s had always fought for the light. They had treated him like family when he had had none.
“People change,” Malfoy reminded his partner, suggesting that if he, darkest wizard in their year, could become a wizard cop and work beside his school yard rival, anybody could do anything. Life was weird. Also, bloody unfair.
“It’s the Weasley’s, though,” Harry argued. “The Weasley’s!”
“I’m a Malfoy,” Draco countered, “we’ve always been evil…except for great uncle Stan…but we don’t ever speak of him.”
When Hermione went missing, Harry still didn’t believe that it could be the Weasley’s, but then he found a wrapper from a Skiving Snack Box under the bed and he knew that it couldn’t have been hers. It was the best lead they had gotten yet. The department ran tests and found that it had originated in Diagon Alley on a rainy day, and had traveled from London on the bottom of a shoe. A particular shoe that Harry knew the Weasley’s favored. Then he couldn’t deny it anymore. The label directed them to the burrow. The Aurors left before anybody saw them and headed back to the ministry to regroup.
“I hate everything about this,” Potter groaned.
“So, you’ve said,” Malfoy said with a sigh, “could it possibly be because you’re an idiot? Because, I already knew that. And you’re wall sings. Everybody has heard it. Where She-Weasel cursed it? Yes. It’s a rather high-pitched soprano.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I always make fun of you.”
Potter pouted, but allowed it.
“So, what do you say? Should we find out what they’re up to? Or should we make amateur mistakes and get ourselves killed?” Draco asked.
“Are you sure those are my only choices?” Harry asked, “because, I’ve got to tell you, I hate them both.”
Draco couldn’t help but laugh at that, because he could see from Potter’s perspective how awful both of his choices truly were. And he should have left it alone, but he was who he was, and he could not do that.
“It’s your own fault, you know. If you had just kept it in your pants, none of this would be happening. Now all of the Weasley’s are pissed at you. You’ve broken up two marriages, and my friends are missing.”
“Ginny and I were never married,” Harry replied.
“You’re obviously missing my point. Clearly she thought you were going to marry her at some point and all of her people did as well.”
“How’s that my fault?”
“For somebody who can take on the weight of an entire world to save, how can you be so dense? You live with somebody for ten years; people are going to assume that you’re something serious.”
“But we weren’t. It was fun for a while, but that was all. She was cool when we were young, you know? I was fighting evil, she was playing quidditch. I was at the office and she was on the road. When we were together, it was fire. Then we got older and she turned into her mother.”
“Molly Weasley is a badass,” Draco argued, “how’s that a bad thing?”
“She’s not exactly my idea of a MILF.” Harry replied dryly.
“I don’t understand that reference.”
“I’m being a shallow bastard, but I don’t care,” Harry maintained. “I’m male. We’re visual creatures.”
“Ginny is hot.” Draco argued, “I mean, she’s not my type, but I can see why so many of you lesser cretins find her visually pleasing.”
Harry snorted. “She’s single, if you’re interested.”
“She’s also evil.”
“Angry and murderous, maybe,” Harry allowed, “but not evil.”
“Look, I’m not going to pretend to understand affection and loyalty. Malfoy’s were into arranged marriages. My parents married for social gain, and I have as well. Astoria and I rarely see one another, and that’s just how wizard marriages work.”
“I don’t want that,” Harry argued. “My parents loved one another. The Weasley’s married for love. Ron and Hermione. Bill and Fleur. Hell, even my horrible relatives, Vernon and Petunia married for love. They married each other because being together was better than being alone.”
“I won’t pretend to understand your kind,” Draco replied. “Just, it could be worse, you know?”
“My kind? Malfoy, we’re probably related.”
“Don’t be crass, Potter.”
Harry laughed. “Thanks, Malfoy.”
Draco wasn’t sure what it was that he had done, but he accepted the credit. It would be rude to do anything else. After all, he knew Potter had a hard time with wizarding politics and Potter knew that familiar matters were a foreign language to him.
“I hate that everything has to be this hard.” Harry replied.
Harry returned home to his empty apartment and stayed awake for several hours wondering what tomorrow would bring and how all of this could possibly be his fault. Stupid things happened and everything had consequences. Why couldn’t life ever just be easy? Everyone did it, so why wasn’t there an instruction manual? Why were ignorant buffoons who might be descended from monkey’s given free will if there were things that had to be done a certain way?
The hero of Gryffindor and the villain of Slytherin had turned out to be good for each other. They were no longer the annoying kids their house prefects had learned to keep separate. They were, in fact, grown-ass men who had learned to use their words and grow from their mistakes. They weren’t the boys who had met in Madame Malkin’s and then grown to hate each other during that first train ride. They weren’t the same boys who had made each other’s Hogwarts experience miserable. They had been baptized in fire and come out stronger. They were enemies who had become best friends in spite of themselves.
The pair had closed more cases than any other Auror team in the department- though, that might have been because they actually had more enemies than their peers. Because they were the most divisive in the department, the enemy of one might be the friend of the other, as they had fought on opposite sides during the war and had only become friends in recent years past. People who were once friends could turn out to be the worst of enemies. The opposite was true as well.
Malfoy knew there were people he had counted as friends during his school years who would rather kill him than speak to him now. He didn’t even think his wife would cry at his funeral if he were to be killed today. He wasn’t entirely sure that Astoria was even in the country, or why she would be out.
He thought, maybe, he’d kill anyone who repeated this, that the muggles had it right when it came to marriage. Harry had once told him that he wanted to be with somebody whose company he enjoyed more than his own. Draco had to admit that he was pretty good at being alone. He had been an only child, and his parents had not exactly spent a lot of time doting on him. There had been a house elf once who had paid attention to him, but he had been fired following Draco’s second year at school. It was hard to forge lasting friendships with people who abandoned you, or with people you knew were only interested in your company because of the benefits they could gain.
-X-
On a sunny morning in October, Harry and Draco, in full Auror riot gear, apparated into a field near The Burrow. The Weasley’s were still operating out of their homebase and this was as close as they could get without a team of cursebreakers. The Burrow was heavily warded and Mr. Weasley had enchanted several guns to include spells that made it impossible to miss their targets.
“He probably got them at the ministry,” Draco grumbled.
“I don’t see why not,” Harry replied, “He enchanted a car to fly once.”
“Really?”
“Second year. That’s how Ron and I got to Hogwarts when Dobby closed the barrier to Platform 9 3/4.”
“Flying car?”
“A Ford Anglia, actually.”
“Of course,” Draco agreed with a nod.
Harry laughed. “It’s hard being the chosen one.”
“It’s also hard being the son of a Death Eater,” Draco replied, “having to watch your father being evil when you don’t agree with large statistics of what he does.”
“Large statistics,” Harry snorted.
“I could start making shit up, but my knowledge of the horrible things my father has done is vast and would make your toes curl.”
“That’s why you’re better. You’ve actually seen how the other half lives and you care enough to try and prevent it from getting any worse.”
“You try to make me sound like a good person.”
“You are a good person, Draco.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
“No.”
“That’s fair,” Draco replied. “You wouldn’t want to commit to anything that you cannot follow through with.”
“I’m not convinced that I can follow through with anything.”
“You vanquished the Dark Lord.”
“That was my destiny.”
“Who said?”
“Professor Trelawny.”
“Who told her?”
“The powers that be.”
“Well, fuck them!”
“They’re the powers that be.”
“So, you’re just gonna sit there and let these ‘powers that be’ dictate what you are and who you become?”
“Probably.”
“You’re better than this, Potter.” Malfoy replied.
“You almost sound like you care.”
“I assure you, I do not.”
“Now I know you love me.”
“Ugh. Potter, you’re an idiot.”
This was all happening of course in whispered conversations as the men observed the activity around The Burrow. In addition to all of the Weasleys’ -yes, even Fred’s ghost was there- several former Gryffindors made an appearance. Most of the key players from the last war stayed home, retired or possibly dead. They did not see Granger, though Fleur stepped out of the house looking frustrated on several occasions.
Professor Fresh, the current potions master at Hogwarts was brewing something putrid and purple in the garden shed, and people spoke constantly in hurried whispers.
Then came the bang. It was a loud sound, not unlike a door slamming, but at a greatly increased magnitude. It could have been any number of things. Harry wanted to investigate; somebody could be hurt. Draco reminded him that their intervention would not be appreciated in any way.
“We’re here to watch, Potter. This is a surveillance only mission. We don’t have clearance for infiltration yet. Sit tight, man.”
Potter groaned but Malfoy didn’t budge. His partner’s heroic tendencies had landed the both of them in St. Mungos more times than he could count. It was probably because of all of the head injuries.
Another bang. This one was even louder and followed closely by a puff of turquoise smoke from the garden shed. Draco considered this along with his knowledge of potions, scanning the inventory in his brain for answers. To narrow it down, he considered the potions He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had made Snape keep on hand.
“Shit,” he murmured, having come to a realization. “You-Know-Sorry. Voldemort always made Professor Snape brew a potion called the Purple Firebomb. We’d all carry it around in small vials and throw them at the ground if we needed a distraction in order to escape a dangerous situation."
“I know you’re telling me a personal story, but you sound like a textbook.”
“Textbooks do have their benefits.”
“Yeah yeah, go on.”
“As I was saying, the small amounts of the potion we carried were useful for that purpose, but it was also handy for causing a general nuisance. For example, if an object needed to be destroyed or a location needed to be closed for a while? Perfect for that. A tiny explosion will shut down the muggle world for several hours.”
“Ginny always did enjoy blowing shit up.”
“If I recall correctly, it was one of the things you liked most about her,” Draco replied dryly. “Clearly ‘the couple that blasts shit to smithereens together, stays together’ is not a motto young wizards should live by.”
Harry offered a rude hand gesture as a response, but before Draco could retort, they heard a high-pitched scream coming from The Burrow.
“Hermione!” Harry gasped.
There was no stopping Harry as he raced across the field, throwing generic ward breakers as he went. The wards turned his skin blue, but the nastier curses seemed to have been handled. Draco debated for half a second. He should go back to the ministry and get back up. Maybe some hit wizards. But that would take time, and then there would be paperwork. So. Much. Paperwork. It didn’t take long to decide that running after Potter into the house of evil gingers was the best option he had right now.
“Potter, send a Patronous to the ministry requesting back up!”
“You’re my back up.”
“We’re bloody doomed.”
-X-
If somebody ten years ago had told Harry that he would be going into battle against his best friend and ex-girlfriend with Draco Malfoy at his back to rescue his other best friend who was pregnant with his child, he would have laughed in their face. It was the sort of ridiculous scenario that he and Ron would have come up with to appease Professor Trelawny in divination class. Hermione had always scolded them for not taking their classes seriously. Nobody could have predicted this.
Harry tore through the wards protecting The Burrow. He charged straight through a cloud of mist and felt a cold tingle on his skin. His body turned blue, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage. He would later learn that deep down, inside his body, all of his organs were turning to goo. He bit down on an insulting barb when Malfoy ran through the cloud after him and turned blue also. Now was not the time. Later, over copious amounts of fire whiskey, they could hurl insults at one another. Now, people were spilling out of The Burrow. Harry recognized some of them. Friends from Hogwarts. Coworkers from the ministry. They were all pointing wands at him.
What happened next was all a blur. Harry shot off shield and hex after shield and hex, trying to protect himself and get past his assailants. He could hear Malfoy behind him doing the same. Faces blurred. Voices ran together. The movements and the words lost their meaning as Harry focused all of his efforts on putting one foot in front of the other and cutting a path through the wizards that were in his way trying to impede his forward momentum.
Bang.
This close, the sound was deafening.
The turquoise smoke rose up, just feet in front of him. The witch he was dualling with yelped and leapt backwards as another potion landed at her feet. The glass vial shattered, and she fell. Harry’s ears filled with high-pitched ringing as he watched the girl fall to the ground. Bloody stumps where her feet had been. He cast a charm to staunch some of the bleeding and continued pressing forward.
Now he had to be even more alert. There was a spell to stop the ringing in his ears, but he couldn’t think of it. He paid more attention to his surroundings watching for familiar wand movements. Hoping that somehow, magically, his ability to read lips had improved since the training exercise when his superiors had assigned each member of his class a sensory impairment and sent them on a fake mission.
He’d had his hearing removed. Malfoy had been blinded. Ron had been rendered mute. They had all been shit at adapting to the manipulation and had had to complete the trial a second time.
He felt a wand pressed into the skin of his shoulder and suddenly the ringing cleared. Looking back, Malfoy had turned and was firing a body-bind at a group of wizards that was approaching from their right. Harry threw out stunners with a lack of discrimination at anything that moved. For two men against an army, he thought they were doing pretty well. He cast shield charms in every direction, and Purple Firebombs bounced off of them, maiming anyone in the vicinity. He congratulated himself on figuring out how to use their own firepower against them. Malfoy had cast sort of an explosion dampening bubble over their heads, and now the potions weren’t bothering them at all.
Harry cleared the front door of The Burrow and Percy Weasley began to read their rights as homeowners, as if the law would protect them when they had already thrown bombs at a pair of Aurors. Several of their minions had attempted Unforgivables as well. He’d heard Malfoy scream out in pain multiple times and had turned quickly to blast his partners assailants away with a well-placed stunning spell.
“Right, you kind of threw those out the window what you started bombing us, but nice try.” Harry said as amicably as he could.
Malfoy came in behind Harry and began to writhe in agony immediately once across the threshold.
“The wards are keyed to stop his kind from entering this house,” Percy explained, grinning like a mad man. “Soon he’ll pay. They’ll all pay!”
Harry tried to stun the man, and found himself affixed to the back wall, with force as if punched in the gut. He tried to struggle, but found that he could not budge.
“Really, Potter? Trying to use battle magic in The Burrow against a Weasley? You should know better than that,” a female voice said softly. “Then again, you always were a bit daft.”
“Yeah!” agreed Percy.
“Shut up, Percy,” Ginny glared at her brother.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I can see now that letting you live was a mistake,” Ginny continued, glaring at Harry. “You’ll make a habit of this and I’ll never have any peace.”
“Ginny, what are you on about now?”
“It’s Ginevra.” The female ginger replied coolly. “And I’m going to kill you.”
The last thing Harry saw was a bright flash of green light.