Drabbles

“Morning,” Ginny said, kicking the door to their office shut behind her with a practiced jerk of her heel, one hand grasping a takeaway tea and the other a bag from Honeydukes.

Draco’s gaze flicked up, his quill scratching unceasingly over the report he was filling, eyeing the carrier bag and then looking back down. “You’re late,” he remarked.

“I walked Harry to work,” she informed him. “And I’m not late. It’s five past nine.”

He tsked at his paperwork, head ticking to the side in a disapproving half-shake as he crossed a pair of t’s with a brisk stroke. 

Being assigned to Draco as an Auror partner had been, at first, irritating, and at second, an exercise in self-control, but the tedium of a boring workday had soon softened the edges between them. Over their two-year partnership, they’d found they had plenty in common (snark, sport, and striking good-looks chief amongst them) and in the end, the transition from enemies to allies had been rather smooth. 

It helped that Draco had been on the receiving end of her Bat-Bogey Hex a time or two and therefore carried a healthy appreciation for her inability to let empathy get in the way of a well-deserved arse-handing, something he was quite happy to utilize professionally and bore with surprising grace when on the receiving end of. Likewise, she learned of and subsequently leaned on his ability to shmooze everyone from grannies to gangsters, a skill he wielded with unpretentious confidence and one she wasn’t ashamed to admit she’d fallen prey to once or twice. 

They worked well together — rather marvelously, actually — their Good Cop, Bad Cop dynamic changing hands on a case-by-case basis, depending on which of them would be most effective in a given role. She’d grown to rather like him as a partner and a pseudo-brother-in-law and, when she was feeling sentimental, as a true friend.

She carried on forward, coming to stand in front of his desk.

“Don’t worry, I got you something,” she said knowingly, reaching into her Honeydukes bag and then holding out a packet of Pepper Imps with her left hand, palm down to make sure her brand-new engagement ring was situated for maximum effect. 

Draco checked the sweets packet first – typical – and then blinked with surprise at the new jewelry on her ring finger. 

“Merlin,” he exclaimed, taking her hand to shift it in the light, turning the facets of the diamond into a shifting rainbow. “That’s a pretty little thing. Glad to see he's finally making an honest woman out of you.” 

“Ha.” She regained her hand, dropping the sweets on his desk and retreating the few feet across the room to her own. She took up her chair, spinning it a quarter turn to tuck under her desk, facing him. “If only it was as easy as donning a little bauble to adjust my entire personality.” 

Draco tore into the packet of Imps, humming with agreement. “Would that it were.”

He popped a curled black peppermint into his mouth, sucking and then tilting his head to the side, letting the magically-generated smoke stream from his nostrils down beside his desk rather than across to her. She didn’t mind the pepperminty scent it left in the air but didn’t appreciate it being blown right at her, thanks very much. He tucked the mint into his cheek, leaning back and gesturing to her with his chin. 

“Go on then, how’d he do it? Don’t tell me he asked if you’d be his Chosen One.” He smirked at his own joke. 

Ginny gave him a placating smile, sarcastic and simpering, then raised her hand to admire her ring. 

“It was perfect, actually,” she informed him. “He took me flying and surprised me with a picnic.”

“How common,” Draco said politely. 

Ginny flicked her eyes up to meet his, letting her hand drop to her desk with a hard slap. He didn’t flinch, though he did smirk, happy to have goaded her.

“And after he asked me,” Ginny said, resting her forearms on her desk and putting a little weight on them as she leaned forward, “he chased me into a forest, tackled me out of the sky, and defiled me, quite thoroughly, in the middle of a clearing.”

Draco poked his tongue in his cheek, amused. “Hmm. You sure it wasn’t the other way around?”

She faked a look of disgust. “Yuck. Don’t insinuate that you’ve thought about how I might shag. I’ll tell Hermione on you.” 

He raised both hands in a gesture of peace but his expression was shameless. “Pardon me for being shocked by the concept that Saint Potter is in any way the dominant between you two.”

She grinned, all teeth, and he chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Actually…” She drew the word out. “He really did take me down. Ordered me around, forbade me from coming, the whole shebang.” She faked a look of sudden realization. “Now that I think of it, it was probably due to you that he got so aggressive to begin with.”

She watched a muscle tic in Draco’s jaw, anticipating the forthcoming taunt but nosy enough to risk asking on the off chance it was something else. After a half second of silence, during which she got herself a Cauldron Cake from the Honeydukes bag, he capitulated. “Oh? What do I have to do with it?”

She smiled sweetly and his expression went wary. “Well, right before he chased me with salacious intent, I had reminded him of the little homoerotic competitions you two had at school; all those heated insults and rough-play on the pitch and such. I think the memory of all that repressed sexual tension probably got him quite excited.”

Draco clicked his tongue, chastising himself for taking the bait and her for reprising an oft-repeated and, both men insisted, patently untrue history between himself and Harry. 

She sent him a look of apology, so earnest it slipped straight into sarcastic. “Aw, sorry. I didn’t mean to get you all on high alert without Hermione here to calm you down.”

Draco rolled his eyes, the gesture well-loved and further perfected after his years married to Hermione, the eye-roll queen. “As previously stated, the thought of your soon-to-be mister does nothing to me, genitally-speaking.”

“Just an emotional connection, then, was it?” she said understandingly. 

He ignored her, looking thoughtful. “So you’ll be Ginny Potter, will you? Taking his name?”

“I think I will, yeah,” she said, crumpling the Cauldron Cake wrapper and tossing it casually at the bin. “There should be more Potters in the world.”

Draco nodded sagely. “Quite right. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: there are far too many Weasleys roaming around. I honestly can’t believe Pansy added herself to the mix, hyphenated or not, when she settled for your unfortunate brother.”

Ginny suspected the comment meant that Ron had beaten Draco at chess again, or perhaps had deflected all his attempts at scoring against him in a pick-up game of Quidditch, given that the two men had formed a begrudging friendship after Ron's marriage to Draco’s practically-a-sister. Ginny sent him a sympathetic look for whichever loss he’d befallen at Ron’s hand, which he received with an unimpressed scoff. 

He waved a hand, getting back to his point. “But this won’t do. I refuse to continue calling you Weasley if I’m not legally required to post-matrimony and I can’t exactly call you Potter because–” 

“–because it will give you a semi,” Ginny interjected, nodding seriously, “which isn’t professional at all.”

Draco tsked. “No, it will not. Merlin, you and Granger–” He cut himself off with an irritated flick of his fingers, dispelling her taunt to the storage shelves at the edge of their office. “I won’t call you Potter–” He gestured to his lap as if to say see? No erection and she pretended to look through a magnifying glass, squinting. He snorted then carried on, “-because you’re more than just that. You’re a class all of your own, so you need a nickname to match.”

He tilted his head, considering her and she sat back, tucking into the Cauldron Cake, unperturbed by the close examination. He’d gone from a shrewd, watchful teen to a shrewd, calculating man and she was quite familiar with the silver stare from across the room. 

She’d almost finished her makeshift breakfast when his expression curled from thoughtful to something almost feline. She had a sense that if he’d had one, his tail would’ve been swishing with satisfaction. 

“Hendricks,” he declared, like the word alone was worthy of him finally earning the Order of Merlin he insisted he didn’t care about but could never restrain himself from openly bragging about whenever Hermione’s came up in conversation.

Ginny gave him a purposefully blank look, smothering her smile at the way her lack of reaction made him look like his swishy little tail had been stroked backwards.

“Gesundheit?” she offered and then couldn’t hold her grin back at his face.

He collected himself with a long-suffering sigh. “Hendricks,” he repeated with emphasis. “As in the gin? Because, well, your first name, obviously, but also because you’re best paired with something bitter–” He gestured to himself, “–and something sharp–” He waggled his left hand, wedding band glinting, which she took to mean Hermione, “–and something a little fruity.” His expression went cheeky and she raised a brow, amused. 

“By that, I surmise you mean my fiancé?” 

“Mm.” Draco leaned back, propping his ankle on his knee, looking quite satisfied with himself. “Yes, it’s a perfect nickname for you.”

She observed him for a moment, boyish in his adulthood, a man who’d both finally figured out who he was and was actually allowed to be it. 

“Gin is your favorite spirit, isn’t it?” she mused idly, after a moment.

He narrowed his eyes at her and she blinked placidly at him. The edge of his mouth twitched upward. Her’s copied it and then they were both grinning at each other. 

“I’d never settle for anything else,” he agreed, voice faux-serious even amid his smile.

She propped her chin on her fist, elbow crushing the stack of parchment below it. “Nor should you,” she said firmly and then smirked. “Your solve rate is already shit, I can’t imagine what you’d do without me. Lose evidence, probably.”

“Fuck you,” Draco said pleasantly, rummaging around noisily for another Imp. “Though speaking of evidence, Robards has us on a retrieval this morning. Apparently someone’s discovered something in their back garden which may or may not pertain to the Linden case.”

“Damnit.” She sighed gustily. Retrieval usually meant a pat on the head to a well-meaning citizen, a fuckton of documentation, and ultimately a dead end. “Fancy a solo trip?”

Draco tutted, a burst of fire curling off his tongue. He blew it to the side impatiently, annoyed at how it had ruined the effect of his comeback. “I thought I was hopeless without you? I really ought to have my ginger handler with me at all times, oughtn't I?”

“Sure thing, posh-boy. You really oughtn’t be alone out with the general pop, anyway.”

“Too right.” He crunched the mint and she screwed up her nose at the brittle sound. He crunched louder, teeth flashing on an unapologetic grin.

“Well, where are we being sent to then? Please say nowhere north of Birmingham; it felt like it was about to snow on the walk in.”

“It’s October,” Draco said pityingly. “It’s not going to snow.”

She snapped her fingers impatiently and he reached for a file at edge of his desk, sending it to her with a flick of his wrist. She refused to be impressed with his wandless magic, especially since hers was obviously far superior. 

“Bishop’s Stortford,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms. The leather of his wand-holster squeaked across his chest with the motion, a noise she’d grown to associate with a good brainstorming session. 

She snatched the file out of mid-air, rifling through it and familiarizing herself with the supposed evidence and the do-gooder who’d reported it. 

“Right,” she said, flicking it closed and pushing her chair back. “Shall we get this over with?”

“That’s the spirit, Hendricks,” Draco said jovially, standing as well. “Makes me proud to be on the force with attitudes like that to surround myself with.”

She got the door for him, gesturing him through with a gracious sweep of her arm. “Happy to be a constant source of inspiration to you, Imp.”

His resounding bark of affront kept her warm for hours.