A Willing Infusion

The call came in just before dawn, a Patronus bursting through the frosted glass of Harry’s office with the clipped voice of Auror Rowena Flint. “Senior Auror Potter. Need you at Level Three annex. Sealed scene. Something’s wrong with the magic.”

He was already moving as it dissolved, shrugging on his cloak and grabbing his field kit from the peg by the door. Grimmauld Place was quiet, save for the creak of old timbers and the pop of the Floo as he stepped out into the Ministry atrium two minutes later. The Friday morning bustle hadn’t started. The security desk was manned by a yawning clerk with ink on his sleeve; he waved Harry through without comment. The lift groaned and rattled down.

Level Three annex used to be storage: stone corridors, heavy doors, the faint smell of damp parchment and spell-waxed floors. Now it housed the Department of Magical Records and Oversight. A cordon shimmered across the corridor like heat over cobbles. Two junior Aurors stood either side, wands out, faces pale.

“Sir,” Flint said when Harry approached. She was wiry, freckles sharp against her skin, her hair scraped back. She gestured to the door behind the cordon. “Miriam Blott. Senior clerk for Wizengamot summons. Found at half-five by a runner. No forced entry. Wards intact. She’s breathing, but…” Flint swallowed. “She’s not here.”

Harry stepped through the cordon. The room was small and neat: a tidy desk, files stacked in clean, precise piles, one cup of tea gone cold, with a slick of milk curling at the rim. Miriam Blott lay on the carpet between her chair and the desk, one hand outstretched toward a fallen quill. Her eyes were open, pupils not blown but fixed; her chest rose and fell in steady, untroubled breaths. No bruises, no gray cast of curse-rot, no singe marks, no stench of dark magic burned into the air the way it usually was when someone botched an assault spell.

Harry crouched beside her, letting his wand hover an inch above her sternum. Diagnostic spells bloomed silently, a mesh of pale blue light settling over her like a web. The outer layer read normal: pulse, respiration, body temp. Her skin was warm. He traced the mesh downward, focusing deeper. The blue bled to a sickly whitish haze around her core, then sputtered and broke. He tried again, slower. The same outcome—like someone had cut the threads that tethered her magic to her flesh and then tied them back in loose, pretty bows.

“Any signs of a struggle?” he asked without looking up.

Flint shook her head. “Nothing. She came in early, like always. Tea’s still warmish. No one entered on the ward log except her, and us.”

“Let me see the log.” He accepted the slate Flint handed over and scanned the neat runic entries. Wards intact, keyed signatures consistent. He flicked an authorization charm with his thumb and watched the last hour replay in ghost-limn at the threshold: a translucent Miriam arriving, hanging up her cloak, sitting, writing. At 5:25, the image blurred, then resumed—Miriam standing in the same place, then falling carefully, as if her knees simply forgot they had bones. No intruder shadow, no flux at the door. The wardline didn’t even shiver.

Harry’s mouth went dry. He set the slate down and moved his wand to Miriam’s temple. “Legilimens,” he said softly, not pushing in, only skimming. He hit nothing that felt like thought or memory. It was like dipping into a bath and finding water that didn’t wet the skin.

He withdrew, jaw tight. “Get Healer Adams,” he told Flint. “Now.”

“Already called,” Flint said. “He’s… he’s on his way.”

Harry stood and took in the rest of the room with a cop’s practiced sweep. The filing cabinet wasn’t tampered with. The window wards hadn’t been touched; he checked anyway, walking his magic along the leaded panes, picking at the lattice for flaws. The barrier hummed back, a familiar, low thrum that should have reassured him. It didn’t.

He cast Homenum Revelio, even though he knew. The air quivered and said: one. He pressed his palm against the desk, feeling the residue of last night’s routines—ink, parchment, a simple warming charm on the tea clipped neatly to the rim. Under that, a smear of something faint and delicate, like the echo of a melody. He chased it, narrowing his focus, tuning out Flint’s breathing and the murmur of the Auror at the door.

There. Around Miriam’s body, a ring of barely-there magic, not on the floor but around her, suspended like an old ward made of spider silk. Not Ministry issue. Not standard anything. He reached toward it with the meshed diagnostic again, slowed his spell to a crawl so he wouldn’t disturb the thread, and saw it for what it was: layered weaves, fine and tight, braided into a pattern he didn’t recognise. It sat like a collar around the place where Miriam’s magic should be interfusing her muscles, nerves, blood. The collar pulsed, faintly—once every ten seconds, in rhythm with her breathing. With each pulse, her magical core flinched.

Not suffocation. Not obliviation. Something worse: something that told the soul to stand down.

“You see it?” Flint asked, voice low, as if loud words would tangle the strands.

“Yes.” Harry straightened. His back ached; he ignored it. “Don’t touch her.” He looked at Flint. “Did she have enemies?”

“Miriam? No one I can think of. She’s the one who told people where to sit and when to show up.” Flint hesitated. “But she worked late on the Nott reviews. The old cases. People are angry about those.”

Harry kept his face neutral, though his mind ticked. The Wizengamot reviews were bringing up the past in a way that had made everyone uncomfortable—too lenient, too harsh, too late. He’d had three letters in the last week alone accusing him of betrayal from opposite directions.

The door opened to admit Healer Adams, a stout man with thinning hair and the kindest hands Harry had ever seen set a bone. He went to his knees beside Miriam with a soft sound and began his own series of diagnostics. Harry watched the shapes their magic made in the air: Adams’ spells were broader, designed to catch obvious snags, and they flowed right over the intricating. He frowned and recalibrated. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He sat back on his heels and looked up at Harry.

“She’s… empty,” Adams said, bewilderment edging toward fear. “No, not empty—she’s there, but she can’t… reach.” He shook his head. “This is out of my depth.”

Harry nodded once. He felt the familiar, unwelcome prickle of recognition when a problem lifted its head and said: you will not solve this alone. “We’ll secure the scene,” he said, voice even. “We’ll move her carefully to St. Mungo’s once we’ve mapped the weave. And then—”

“And then what?” Flint asked, pinched.

Harry’s gaze went back to the collar of magic breathing gently in place of Miriam’s own. He thought of the Auror department’s curse healers: good, solid, war-tested. He thought of the archive of known Dark Arts patterns he’d burned into his head over the years. This wasn’t in it. This wasn’t anywhere you could get with brute force and counter-curses learned in a classroom.

“And then we call in someone who can unpick this,” Harry said. The words tasted like grit. “Start the request to St. Mungo’s for a specialist consult. Top of the roster.”

Flint blinked. “You sure? Robards—”

“Will sign it.” Harry crouched again, letting his magic hover an inch above Miriam’s chest, careful as if a violet bruise might burst at a touch. He could feel the cage now, not with his eyes but with the prickling sense that had kept him alive through a war: elegant, patient, cruel. The kind of cursework that made its caster feel brilliant and untouchable.

Harry set markers around the room with the flick of his wrist, bright green beads of suspended light pinging softly into place to capture the dance of lingering spells. He glanced at the cup of tea, at the exactness of Miriam’s neat piles, at the quill dropped just so. It all told the same story: the attacker hadn’t broken in. The attacker hadn’t needed to. They’d reached right in past the door and untied the knot that made her Miriam.

He stood, the lift of his chest tight. “Lock it down,” he told Flint. “No one in or out except our team and St. Mungo’s when they arrive. And get Robards.” He paused at the threshold and looked back at Miriam, pale hair fanned out, eyes staring at nothing. “There’s more of this coming,” he said, mostly to himself.

And that was the worst thing: he was certain.

Robards arrived ten minutes later with his coat half-buttoned and his mouth set in the line Harry knew meant a decision had already been made. He stopped just inside the cordon, eyes flicking to Miriam, then to Adams, then to the shimmering markers Harry had set. The line of his shoulders tightened.

“Brief me,” Robards said.

Harry walked him through it in clipped sentences, keeping his voice steady: arrival time, ward logs clean, the blur in the playback, the ring of woven magic around her core. Adams added three words—empty but present—and fell silent.

Robards swore under his breath. He rubbed a knuckle against his jaw, gaze fixed on the pale rise and fall of Miriam’s chest. “We can’t have this in my department,” he said quietly. “Not with the press already chewing at the Wizengamot reviews.” He looked at Harry, eyes sharp. “This stays locked down.”

“It’s already locked down.” Harry tamped down the urge to point out the obvious. “Whoever did this bypassed everything without leaving a ripple. They’ll do it again.”

Robards’ gaze cut back to the shifting beads of green that marked the weave’s pulse. “And you think it’s bespoke.”

“It’s not anything in the archive. Not a variant of anything I’ve seen. It’s… tailored.”

Robards nodded once, as if Harry had confirmed something he’d suspected. He straightened, all decisiveness. “Right. Here’s how it’s going to go. We’ll transfer Miriam to St. Mungo’s under escort as soon as you finish mapping, and we’ll put a guard on her door. In the meantime, I’ve already put in for a specialist.”

Harry stilled. “I can pull in Clarke from our side. She’s dealt with layered bindings. If we—”

Robards sliced a hand through the air, silent and efficient. “No. This case has the Minister’s breath on it, Harry. I had a call before I came down here. He wants the best. He wants it visible. He wants to be able to say we did everything, immediately.” Robards’ mouth flattened. “We’re not arguing this. St. Mungo’s is sending their top curse-damage specialist. He’ll be on it by midday.”

He’ll. Harry’s stomach dropped, ridiculous and instant, as a name slotted into place. He felt his jaw clench before he could stop it. “Who?”

Robards didn’t flinch. “Malfoy.”

The air in the room thinned. Flint swore under her breath at the door; Adams went still and then pretended not to have heard. Harry didn’t let himself look at Miriam as if to measure whether this was an insult to her, to him, to the department. He kept his eyes on Robards.

“There are other specialists,” Harry said. It wasn’t a plea. It came out even, almost bored. “Adams has contacts. We can—”

“Malfoy,” Robards repeated, heavier. “He’s done three cases in the last six months that no one else could touch. He consults for the Unspeakables on soul-interface theory. He’s not the boy you remember making a mess in a school corridor.”

Harry had the irrational urge to say that he had never watched Malfoy make a mess in a corridor, that the memories he did have were of white masks and dark woods and a manor with screaming in the walls. The edges of those years were always there, pressing against his ribs when he least wanted them. He took a breath and set them aside.

“We can handle this,” he said instead. “My team—”

“Your team is good,” Robards said. “They’re not the best at this. And I’m not interested in you turning this into a personal proving ground.” His eyes softened a fraction. “I put your name on every report for a reason, Potter. But I won’t have you digging your heels in and losing us days we don’t have.”

Harry looked at Miriam on the floor, at the careful tilt of her hand toward the quill. He thought of the review letters, of the names on the lists, of the way the weave had pulsed under his magic like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. He swallowed anything that sounded like pride and said, “Fine. But this stays my case. He consults.”

Robards’ mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “It’s your case. He’s assigned to it. He’ll have access to the lab and to the scene. You’ll liaise, you’ll keep him updated, you’ll take his recommendations seriously, and you will not make my office a battlefield.”

Harry could feel the prickle along his skin that came when he was being told not to do something he hadn’t even started doing yet. “I don’t need a minder.”

“You need a result.” Robards looked tired for a half-second, then buried it. “I’ll handle the politics. You handle the work. And you do it with Malfoy at your elbow until this is solved.”

Flint shifted at the door, and Harry caught the ghost of her expression: sympathetic but relieved it wasn’t her. He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t have room in his head for blame right now; he had room for Miriam and the echo of that woven collar and the step of walking back into St. Mungo’s with a man he hadn’t looked in the eye in years, not properly.

“When?” he asked.

“Eleven, in my office,” Robards said. “You’ll brief him and set your schedule. He’ll want to see the victim at St. Mungo’s immediately after. Adams, coordinate with transport; Potter, finish your mapping and get your report started. Keep it clinical. The fewer adjectives the better.” He paused. “And Potter—”

Harry met his gaze.

“Malfoy’s reputation is earned,” Robards said, voice low. “Don’t make me remind you of that in front of him.”

Heat crawled up Harry’s neck; whether from anger or something closer to shame, he didn’t examine. He nodded. “Understood.”

Robards dipped his chin once and turned, barking orders at Flint in a low voice as he left. The cordon shimmered closed behind him.

For a long beat, Harry stood in the quiet room and listened to Miriam breathe. Adams cleared his throat softly. “He’s right about one thing,” Adams said, eyes on the intricate, invisible thing only their magic could feel. “If anyone can see the shape of that, it’s Malfoy.”

“I know,” Harry said. He did. He’d read Malfoy’s name on journal articles he’d never admit to keeping in a drawer. He’d heard, second-hand, about healings that had sounded like miracles and been nothing of the sort—just patient, difficult work.

He crouched again, let his magic hover a hairsbreadth above Miriam’s core, and forced himself to stay with the weave instead of with the clock in his head counting down to eleven. He followed the braid, set more markers, memorised the cadence. He would hand over his notes because that was his job. He would not hand over his case.

He finished the map, assigned Flint two more guards, took statements with his quill scratching unjustifiably loud in the silence. By the time transport arrived, his head ached the specific ache of too much careful magic and not enough coffee. He watched them levitate Miriam as if she were made of spun glass and accompanied her to the lift, feeling the eyes of everyone in the corridor slide to him and away again.

In the lift, alone with the soft hum and the mirror that always tried to flatter him, he pressed his hand briefly to his eyes and inhaled until the worst of the tightness eased. Then he squared his shoulders and stepped out. Eleven o’clock. Robards’ office. He could do this. He didn’t have to like it. He would do it anyway.

Robards’ office smelled faintly of ink and old parchment. The clock on the wall ticked three minutes past eleven by the time Harry was ushered in. Robards stood behind his desk, not sitting, as if that would keep things moving. He didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“Potter,” he said, and then shifted his gaze past Harry’s shoulder. “Healer Malfoy.”

Harry hadn’t heard the door open behind him. He turned.

Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway with a dragon-hide satchel over one shoulder and his Healer’s robes falling straight and precise, the dark St. Mungo’s green a cool foil against his pale hair. He’d changed. The sharpness Harry remembered had been honed down to something contained and controlled. His jaw was clean-shaven, his mouth set in a line that might have been neutrality if not for the faint tension at the corners. His eyes—cool grey—flicked over Harry once, assessing, then cut to Robards.

“Head Auror,” Draco said. His voice was even, softened by years of professional polish. “I’m here under the directive you sent to St. Mungo’s. I understand you have a victim on the Curse Damage ward.”

“We do,” Robards said. He gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk. “Sit.”

Harry didn’t want to. He did anyway. Draco’s robe whispered as he took the other chair, setting his satchel down with care. For a moment the room was full of the sounds of nothing important: the tick of the clock, the scratch of Robards flipping a file open. On the cover: Miriam’s name.

“Potter is lead,” Robards said. “You’ll consult. Full access to the scene, to the ward, to any files you need. I want you two in step on this.”

“I’m not here to step out of turn,” Draco said, cool. He glanced at Harry again. “I’m here to solve a problem.”

The old impulse to bristle at that tone rose and died. Harry tapped the corner of the file he’d brought. “She’s at St. Mungo’s now, private room, guarded. I mapped residual spellwork at the scene.” He slid his notes across the desk; Robards didn’t touch them, just looked pointedly at Harry, then at Draco. Harry adjusted, moving so the papers ended up angled toward Draco.

Long fingers picked up the top sheet. Draco scanned quickly, eyes moving in disciplined, quick darts. He halted over Harry’s notation of the weave’s cadence. “You counted it,” he said, mostly to himself. “All right.”

“I’m not a Healer,” Harry said, keeping his tone even. “But I know how to watch.”

Draco’s mouth tugged, barely. “You always did.”

The words hung there, a ghost of another lifetime. Harry kept his gaze on Draco’s hands; there was a faint, pale remnant of a mark high on the inside of his forearm where his sleeve had shifted, but nothing else, no give-away tremor, no outward sign of the familiar. He wondered when Draco had trained those hands to do something other than hex.

“What else?” Robards pressed.

“The ward logs were clean,” Harry said. “No forced entry, no alarms. Playback had a blur. It’s not standard disillusionment. It’s more like a bleed-through of layered masking. And the curse—if that’s what we’re calling it—is sitting around her core like a collar.” He swallowed the tightness in his throat at the word. “It’s not cursing the flesh. It’s—”

“Interfering with animus conduction,” Draco finished. He slid Harry’s notes back and opened his satchel. Inside was the clean order of someone who needed everything exactly where it belonged: phials, a case of polished wands, a rolled mat with diagnostic foci. He withdrew a slim notebook and a quill that inked at his touch. “Soul-anchoring threads can be teased, but not this cleanly without significant risk to the host. If she’s physically unharmed, someone knew what they were doing.”

Harry’s jaw tightened. “You don’t say.”

A flick of Draco’s eyes, irritation or amusement—it was hard to tell. “Do you have a copy of the ward runes from her home?”

Harry handed over a second sheet. “Flint’s pulling them now. Preliminary sketch.”

Draco studied it, his brow furrowing as he dragged his thumb along one line and then back. “If this was bypassed rather than broken, I need to see the anchors. And her. The conduction rate, the separation line—if there’s a tear…” He shut his mouth, as if refusing to speak the worst into the room. When he looked up again, his face was all professional composure. “I’ll need Potter’s map of the cadence recalibrated against live readings at the ward. It will save me hours.”

“I’ll escort you,” Harry said. The sentence left his mouth smoother than it felt inside it.

Draco nodded once. “I assumed. Robards?”

“Go,” Robards said. “Keep me updated every hour. If this is linked to the Wizengamot review, I’ll have the Minister breathing down my neck.”

Draco stood. He didn’t offer a hand; Harry didn’t either. They left together, the door clicking closed behind them more quietly than it had opened.

The corridor outside the Head Auror’s office was a wash of familiar faces pretending not to stare. Draco ignored them with the kind of practiced indifference that came from years of being watched. Harry felt the itch of it on his skin and kept his shoulders narrow.

In the lift, they were alone. The mirror slid into existence, preening. “Such serious faces,” it cooed. “Trouble at the Ministry?”

“Shut it,” Harry said, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and the mirror sniffed and fogged itself.

Draco’s profile looked cut from something hard. Close up, there were new lines at the corners of his eyes, the sort that came from concentration, not laughter. “You still talk to inanimate objects,” he said, voice neutral.

“You still walk like the floor owes you money,” Harry said, not looking away. “We’re going to St. Mungo’s. Adams and Flint are on rotation outside the door. I told them you’d need uninterrupted access.”

“Thank you.” There was no sarcasm in it. “Has she any family?”

“Brother. He’s in Romania. We haven’t reached him yet.”

Draco nodded, as if that, too, was a piece to file away. The lift shuddered to a halt. They walked through the Ministry’s atrium side by side and Flooed to St. Mungo’s without a word, stepping from polished marble to old stone and antiseptic charm.

In the reception hall, magic moved in quiet threads under everything, the way it did in hospitals, tuned to triage and need. Healers in green and white glanced up, then away, reacting to the sight of Potter and a Malfoy together with the brief starburst of gossip that would make its way around by supper. Draco didn’t break stride. He led Harry through corridors with the ease of muscle memory and nodded to a witch at a desk who sat up straighter immediately.

“Healer Malfoy,” she said. “They took your patient up ten minutes ago.”

“Thank you, Pansy,” he said without a blink, and Harry did blink, because Pansy Parkinson gave him a small, professional smile and added, “Good to see you, Potter.”

“You too,” Harry said, because it was easier than asking all the questions sitting behind his teeth.

They passed into the Curse Damage floor. Doors were spelled for privacy, the air thicker here with precaution. Draco stopped outside a room bracketed by wards that hummed at the edge of hearing. Two Aurors stood on either side of the door; Flint inclined her head to Harry, then to Draco, keyword already on her tongue.

“Healer Malfoy,” she said. “We’ve kept interference to a minimum.”

“Excellent,” Draco said. He looked at Harry. “You ready?”

Harry didn’t say yes. He didn’t have to. He adjusted his grip on the folder, breathed once, and nodded. Draco placed his palm against the ward plate, murmured his Healer’s clearance, and the door peeled open on a whisper.

They stepped into the quiet together, years of unspoken history walking at their shoulders like a third presence.

Miriam lay on crisp white linens, chest rising and falling in a pattern that was almost too regular. The curtains were drawn half across the window to mute the afternoon light. Her eyes were open, unblinking, pupils slack and wrong, as if the room was a painting hung before her instead of air and substance.

Draco didn’t go to the bed first. He drew a half-circle on the floor with a thin piece of powdered silver, set three glass foci at measured intervals, and unrolled a narrow strip of dragonhide with runes burned into it. He spoke a series of soft, precise spells that laced through the warded air, his voice steady and low. The room responded with a faint tightening, like a breath held.

Harry stood to the side, fingers on the back of a chair, watching Draco’s hands. The wand he chose was slender and dark; when it lit, the glow was cool and disciplined. Draco’s mouth flattened as he held the light over Miriam’s sternum and then away, measuring the way it refracted.

“Don’t speak for a moment,” Draco said without looking up. “Even sound shifts the pressure.”

Harry swallowed whatever retort was on his tongue and focused on the silent shape of a woman who should have been drafting committee briefs, not lying like this. He registered small things: the threadbare cuff of her cardigan, a faint ink smudge on her thumb, the way her shoes, placed neatly under the bed, didn’t match her robes.

Draco moved the right-hand focus two inches and muttered an adjustment. Pale lines etched themselves between the crystals like hairline cracks in glass, forming a web that hovered over Miriam’s body and then sank until it adhered just above her skin. When Draco spoke again, his voice had that clinical patience he used like a scalpel.

“What you saw at the scene—the cadence you counted—was the scaffolding. This is the finished trap.” He flicked his wand and a thread of light lifted from Miriam’s torso, taut as a wire. It vibrated in a pattern Harry could almost feel in his teeth.

“Animus conduction,” Harry said, because he remembered the words he’d used in Robards’ office, and because the thread made the hairs on his arms rise.

“Yes. The animus—the self—moves along established channels between core and body. This—” Draco motioned to the lattice settling around Miriam’s ribcage, the faintest shimmer like frost. “—is a grafted circuit. It’s diverting flow without rupturing the original lines. That’s… uncommon.”

Harry frowned. “Uncommon isn’t unheard of. We’ve seen siphons before.”

“This isn’t a siphon.” Draco tapped once, gently, on the thread, and it split, two twin cords humming opposite frequencies that set Harry’s molars on edge. “A siphon draws. This is looping. It turns her own conduction back on itself, a closed system that gives the appearance of function while isolating the animus from sensation and directive. It’s elegant in the most unpleasant way.”

Harry glanced at Miriam’s still face. “She’s in there.”

“She’s intact,” Draco said. He shifted the light toward Miriam’s throat, and a new pattern revealed itself, a collar of rune-shadows ghosting just under the skin. “But she’s severed from input. No pain, no fear, no will. If you pushed a needle into her hand, her core would register it, but the translation back to the body is interrupted. See here.” He leaned in, and for the first time Harry saw a flicker of something like anger under Draco’s composure. “This series—two, five, seven—interlaced with a reverse-tempered warding thread—wasn’t in your map. It’s the pivot. It mimics a ward anchor to keep any external magic from sticking.”

Harry bristled despite himself. “We pulled those layers. Our scans didn’t catch a second set.”

“Your scans weren’t wrong,” Draco said, not unkindly. “They just weren’t tuned for soulwork. Whoever did this knows healers will look for residues along the body’s conduits and Aurors will look for forced entries. They chose to sit in the space between disciplines.” He withdrew a stylus from the rolled mat and began to draw in the air above Miriam’s sternum. Lines appeared, faint as steam, then steadied into a schematic. “Do you see the bleed at each junction? You noted the cadence as seven-four-seven-four. That’s the first layer. Under it there’s a twelve-count pulse—not standard—sitting just out of phase. That’s what bypassed her home wards.”

Harry’s attention sharpened. “Explain.”

“Wards read rhythm as much as structure. This curse-line hums in a way that mimics a ward’s own maintenance oscillation. It’s like whispering the password under your breath while you walk through the door. The house thinks you belong there.” Draco’s gaze flicked to the right, where the door plate’s private ward floated. “It also means any attempt to brute-force it off will trigger a collapse. Don’t,” he added, as if Harry might try. “You’d shred the conduits. She’d never come back.”

“I’m not a monster,” Harry said, and it came out flat.

Draco’s expression shifted, a small acknowledgement. “I’m saying it for the benefit of anyone who might come in after me with more enthusiasm than training.” He set his wand over Miriam’s heart. The glow settled and deepened, coaxing a pulse that wasn’t physical. “All right. There you are.”

The air changed. Harry felt it, subtle and undeniable: a soft, distant push against his awareness, like the brush of a hand through water. He didn’t move.

“She can’t hear you,” Draco said, quieter. “But she knows she’s not alone. I can stabilize the loop temporarily to keep any further drain from occurring. We need time to work a counter without tripping the failsafes.”

“Failsafes,” Harry repeated. “Plural.”

Draco nodded at the rune-collar. “At least three. Here, here, and one embedded in the anchor under the scapula. If I misread them, they’ll collapse inward. At best she stays like this. At worst…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

Harry exhaled slowly. “You think this is modern.”

“The framework is old,” Draco said. “Archaic. The control—this triple weave—is recent. Someone has been studying. Someone with access to theory that should be buried and locked.” He straightened, withdrawing the light by degrees until the web relaxed its tautness without snapping. “Your Aurors missed the phase shift because it’s designed not to leave residue for basic scans. They also missed an anchor fold in the ventral line—here.” He pressed two fingers gently just above Miriam’s navel. Harry saw nothing until Draco murmured an unglamour and a line wavered into view, sickly and thin.

Harry felt something like shame and the stubborn rise of argument at once. “We were on the clock.”

“So am I.” Draco’s tone didn’t sharpen; it cooled. “I’m telling you what this is so you understand why I’m about to tell Robards I need full control of her magical environment and absolute veto on any intervention. If anyone touches her with a spell outside what I authorize, we could lose her.”

Harry met his eyes. “You’ll have it.”

A beat, and Draco’s shoulders eased imperceptibly. “Good. I’ll log a stabilizing charm and a low-grade isolate to keep the curse’s feedback from expanding. Keep your guards outside. If the caster tries to reassert control, I’ll know.”

Harry glanced at Miriam again, at the grey cast creeping along her clavicle that he hadn’t seen until Draco pointed the light at it. “She looks like herself,” he said, and heard how inadequate it sounded.

“She’s in there,” Draco said again, as if the repetition could set a stake in the ground. He adjusted the nearest crystal a fraction. The faint hum in the room shifted, gentled. “I’ll go through your cadence map and recalibrate it to my readings. I’ll need your notes on the ward logs and access to the anchors at her home. And I want to see the blur.”

“The playback,” Harry said. “We can watch it at the Ministry. I flagged it.”

“Good.” Draco flicked his wand one last time and the schematic dissolved. The lines clinging to Miriam’s skin settled invisible again, but Harry couldn’t unsee them. Draco looked at him fully now, the professional polish not hiding the uncompromising intelligence in his gaze. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Whoever did this is careful, patient, and arrogant. They assumed no one would see the second pulse. We see it.”

Harry nodded, a muscle working in his jaw. “All right.”

Draco gathered his foci and rolled the mat with the same care he’d unrolled it. “I’ll brief Robards. Then we start.” He glanced at Miriam’s unblinking eyes. “Don’t make promises to the family,” he added softly, almost as an afterthought. “Not yet.”

Harry didn’t say that he already had, in his head if not on paper. He tucked his folder under his arm and stepped back to give Draco space as the Healer sealed the room with a precise sweep of his hand, layers of ward light clicking into place with a sound like distant glass. The hum settled. The silence held. Outside, the corridor waited. Inside, the work had begun.

Harry followed Draco into the corridor, the quiet shutting of the warded door pressing at his back like a judgment. The antiseptic brightness of St. Mungo’s felt too clean for what they’d just seen.

Robards was waiting near the nurse’s station, jaw tight, eyes flicking from Harry to Draco. “Report.”

Draco delivered it without embellishment. “The victim is stable under a containment weave of my design. We can’t remove the curse without complete environmental control. I need sealed access to her room, a prohibition on unauthorized magic within a twenty-foot radius, and a signed directive from you stating the Healer in charge has absolute veto authority.”

Robards’ gaze cut to Harry, measuring. Harry didn’t look away. “Do it,” he said. “I’ll draft it. No one steps foot in there without Malfoy’s say-so.”

“Good,” Draco said, not smug, just efficient. “I’ll coordinate with St. Mungo’s administration.”

Robards grunted. “You two work it out. I want movement by morning.” He strode off, already pulling a quill from his inner pocket.

The noise of the hospital came back in, footsteps and murmur and the faint rattle of potion vials. Harry folded his arms. “All right,” he said, looking at Draco. “Tomorrow. Ministry, eight o’clock. You’ll have a badge for access.”

Draco adjusted the strap of his satchel, the motion crisp. “I’ll need your full case file, every rune sketch, the original cadence notes, and the blur.”

“You’ll get them,” Harry said. “And we’re going to set some rules.”

Draco’s eyebrow tilted almost imperceptibly. “By all means.”

“First, chain of command. Auror operations run through me. You don’t go on-site without my authorization and without an Auror escort. If we’re at a scene, I’m responsible for security. You give input. If something needs to be done immediately for a victim, you do it, but you tell me before you start.”

“And you don’t allow an Auror who read about soulwork once at Hogwarts to throw a diagnostic at an active lattice because they’re overeager,” Draco returned. “If I say no spells, you make it an order.”

Harry nodded. “Agreed. Second, transparency. No surprises. If you’re going to try a counter, I want to know what it is, what it does, and what it risks. I don’t want to hear about a ‘failsafe’ for the first time while we’re triggering it.”

“You’ll have my protocols,” Draco said. “And I want access to your ward logs and the ability to review private protection schemes for all relevant locations. If this attacker is using phase mimicry to bypass wards, I need to see what they’re imitating.”

Harry hesitated—politics, permissions, privacy—but only for a heartbeat. “I’ll get you clearance. We’ll handle the owners.”

“Third,” Draco added, and Harry blinked at the unexpected counter. “Professional boundaries. I’m not here to prove anything to you. You’re not here to prove anything to me. We work. We disagree in private. In front of your team, we present a unified plan. If you undermine me in front of staff, I walk.”

Harry felt heat climb his neck and contained it. “Fair. You don’t go around me to Robards.”

Draco’s mouth curved, faint and sharp. “I already did. He assigned me to this case. But I won’t, unless you force me to choose between a patient’s outcome and your pride.”

Harry let out a slow breath. “I want them alive as much as you do.”

“I’m aware,” Draco said, and something in his voice was stripped of rhetoric. Tired, maybe. Certain.

They stood for a moment, the space between them crowded with a thousand unsaid things they’d both learned not to say. Harry looked down at his hands, at a faint ink smear on his thumb that matched Miriam’s. “We’ll set up in my office,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

“I’ll make a corner,” Draco said. “Bring coffee.”

Harry glanced up. “Is that a request?”

“It’s a medical necessity,” Draco said, deadpan. “Also, I’d prefer my desk not be sticky.”

“It’s parchment glue,” Harry said, then stopped, because he didn’t need to explain himself to Draco Malfoy. “Fine. Eight.”

Draco nodded. “I need two hours to recalibrate the cadence map. I’ll deliver a draft counter-structure for analytical review tomorrow afternoon. I won’t attempt application without agreed sign-off.”

“You’ll run it by me,” Harry said.

Draco’s eyes were pale and unblinking. “Yes.”

A healer in green robes brushed past, murmuring an apology. The moment shifted. Draco checked the time, then flicked his wand in a tight arc. The sealed door behind Harry chimed once—a status update only he could hear.

“Your guards?” Draco asked.

“Outside,” Harry said. “They’ll keep watch in shifts. If anyone tries to breach—”

“I’ll know,” Draco repeated. He set his satchel higher on his shoulder. “Potter.”

“Malfoy.”

They didn’t offer hands. There was nothing to shake on that the directives hadn’t already formalized.

Harry turned toward the lift, the ache between his shoulder blades a rigid band. He could already feel the pushback from certain Aurors, the sidelong looks when he brought Malfoy into his office, the delicate navigation of authority between a department used to brute force and a healer who worked in lace-thin increments. He’d asked for control. He’d given it away on the ward floor. Both were true.

He stepped into the lift and stared at the brass grate until it reflected a blur of his own face. He thought of Miriam’s still eyes. He thought of the almost-invisible grey bloom on her clavicle and the way Draco’s voice had gone quiet when he said she was in there. He thought of the war, and of breaking curses with hammer blows. He thought of precision, of patience. He let his jaw unclench and told himself he could do both. He could work with Malfoy because there wasn’t a choice. Because there was, and he was making it.

On the ward, Draco watched the lift doors close and stood very still until the hum receded. The quiet of the corridor swelled again, a tide he’d learned to breathe with. He turned back to Miriam’s door, pressed his palm against the seal, and felt the loop’s steady, wrong rhythm under the hiss of the hospital’s life.

Potter had said yes. He’d said you’ll have it and meant it. The old reflex—the one that braced for dismissal, for the ineffable social gravity that said someone like him was tolerated, at best—hesitated, then shifted its weight. He’d asked for control with a voice that didn’t shake. He had it, for now. He would save this woman. He would not fail in another way that couldn’t be undone.

He exhaled and moved. He logged the stabilizing charm. He signed the orders. He told the night sister exactly what would and would not be permitted in his patient’s room and made her repeat it back. He sent a note to the potions lab and another to the administrative liaison Robards would sic on him. He mapped in his head the twelve-count pulse, its staggering elegance and its maker’s smug certitude, and catalogued where it could be bent without cracking.

When he finally stepped into the Floo, soot brushed across the cuff of his sleeve. He didn’t shake it off. The green flames took him, and for a moment he was suspended, the angles of the day collapsing into a straight, necessary line: Ministry at eight. Rules. Files. Coffee. Work.

Somewhere else in the city, Harry walked out of St. Mungo’s and into the night air, the wards around the hospital humming in a rhythm he couldn’t hear until Malfoy had shown it to him. He squared his shoulders and Apparated, the twist of magic clean and cold. Tomorrow, he told himself. Eight. Ground rules. He didn’t have to like the man. He had to trust him.

Both of them, in separate rooms, turned down their lights later than they should have. Both lay awake longer than they admitted to themselves, thinking about a woman suspended in a closed loop, about arrogance disguised as elegance, and about a partnership neither of them had wanted and both of them understood was their best chance.