The Auror's Unwanted Partner

The call came just after dawn, when London felt both emptied and expectant, a breath held over wet stone. Harry stood under the eaves of a terraced townhouse in Bloomsbury, rain misting in a fine sheen that clung to his hair and the shoulders of his coat. Blue Ministry wardlight crackled across the doorway, a delicate web that kept curious Muggles and opportunistic reporters at bay. Behind the front steps, a brass plaque read Flat 3B, Edmond Thistlewhite, Department of International Magical Cooperation.

“Senior Auror Potter,” Hestia Carrow called as he approached, her voice clipped, her mouth set in a line. She’d been first on scene, a neat tear at her sleeve where a ward had snagged her. “We haven’t moved him.”

Harry nodded and took the narrow stairs two at a time. Inside, the flat smelled of smoke and stale tea, undercut by a tang of something older, like petrichor in a crypt. The living room was small, crowded with books, a half-unpacked valise, and the unnatural stillness that followed a spell gone wrong. On the rug, Edmond Thistlewhite lay on his side, eyes open and glassy, chest rising shallowly, as if his lungs had forgotten how to take full breaths.

On the low table beside him sat the locket.

It was silver, tarnish black in the crevices, a serpent worked into the hinge and an oval of pale stone set in the center. It was beautiful the way a blade is beautiful. Harry felt the prickle at the base of his skull that had never left him, the part of him that recognized danger before he consciously did. He crouched, wand in his hand. A perimeter of runes flickered around the locket like an iris, opening and closing, opening and closing.

“Curse-breakers?” he asked, without looking away.

“In the kitchen,” Hestia said. “They stabilized him. Stunner rebound sliced his wrist; we’ve healed it. But he’s not waking. It’s not a Stasis Charm. It’s like his mind is… caught.”

Harry’s fingers hovered over the air above the locket, feeling for the pull of active magic. It was there, elusive as a heartbeat beneath a duvet. He had known crude malice in cursed objects, the kind that burned and screamed. This wasn’t that. This felt almost polite. A narrowing. A hand closing gently around a throat.

He stood and forced himself to look at Thistlewhite as a victim and not a problem. The man was in his fifties, sandy hair gone to gray at the temples, a hint of sunburn along his nose. His right hand was outstretched toward the table, just short of touching the locket’s chain. Something had compelled him to reach and something had arrested him mid-motion.

Harry stepped into the kitchen, where two curse-breakers from Gringotts—Rowena Flint, severe and elegant, and Cara Mbatha, younger, eyes bloodshot—stood over a counter that had been transformed into an array of detection charms. Diagrams burned themselves faintly into parchment and faded, refusing to hold.

“We’ve run six diagnostics,” Rowena said, not waiting for pleasantries. “It’s not a Horcrux. It’s not a blood-ward trigger, or at least not one I’ve seen. There’s no siphon or feedback loop we can identify. Whatever it is, it’s layered like an onion and the outer shell is already adapting to our presence.”

Cara rubbed at her eyelid with the heel of her hand. “We tried to lift it with a latched levitation, no physical contact. The spell slid off.”

“Slid off?” Harry repeated.

“Like the locket decided the charm wasn’t relevant,” Rowena said, crisp. “I don’t like it.”

Harry didn’t either. He let the tired clatter of the flat fall away and listened. He had learned to pay attention to the spaces between spells, the way magic pressed back against the wand, the way a room changed shape around it. This magic sat in the center of the flat and drew everything toward it, rearranging gravity by millimeters.

“What do we know?” he asked, forcing himself through the familiar cadence of questions. Routine gave shape to the fear.

Hestia handed him a clipped report. “Neighbors say Thistlewhite came home late. No visitors. He was due to leave for Zurich this morning—conference about treaty renewals. We think he opened a parcel.”

Harry flipped the page and found the remnants of brown paper and twine, a card: For services rendered. No signature. No address he recognized. The handwriting had the angular neatness of old families.

“Someone wanted him to open it,” Harry said, more to himself than to anyone else.

“And someone wanted to send a message we can’t read,” Rowena added.

He returned to the living room and knelt again. “All right,” he said quietly, to the locket, to the air, to the past. “Show me what you want.”

He cast a gentle Revelio, feather-light, a question rather than a demand. For a fraction of a second the runes around the locket flared in acknowledgement. They weren’t runes, not exactly. More like vows written as equations, intentions spun into sigils. He felt his stomach knot.

He swallowed. He did not think about a different locket, a different time, when the weight of a chain around his neck had been a cold anchor dragging him under. He did not think about hands shaking and voices raised. This was not that. But it remembered, as he remembered.

“Could be oath magic,” he said, keeping his voice even.

Rowena leaned in the doorway, frowning. “If it is, it’s older than what’s in our texts. And refined.”

Harry stared at the serpent worked into the hinge, at the stone that seemed to hold light without actually gleaming. He felt the wrongness tug in the direction of lineage, of families who had kept their knowledge quiet and their secrets closer. He thought of files locked behind charm-sealed cabinets. He thought of the empty column in his report where he would need to put a source.

He stood. “Containment?”

Hestia lifted a sectioned case lined with charmed glass. “We can transport it. But if we can’t name it, we can’t undo it.”

Harry looked at Thistlewhite, listened to the shiver of his breathing. The rain had deepened outside to a steady fall, percussive against the window. He felt the room tilt toward decision.

“We’ll bring it in,” he said. “Keep him at St. Mungo’s on monitored stabilization. No contact with the locket without clearance. I’ll brief Robards.”

Rowena snapped the case open with sharp efficiency. The locket sat where it was placed, docile as a sleeping cat. For a beat, the air pressed down, and then released.

Harry exhaled. The weight didn’t lift.

On the way out, he paused in the doorway and looked back, taking in the half-turned teacup on the desk, the scarf tossed over a chair, the life paused mid-pour. He knew the pattern too well. Darkness that wasn’t loud. Things left unsaid that strangled as effectively as any rope.

In the stairwell, Hestia touched his sleeve. “You looked like you recognized it.”

“Not this,” he said, honest because lying about it would do nothing. “But the shape of it.”

She absorbed that with a small nod. “Curse-breakers will keep at it.”

“Let them,” Harry said, already hearing Robards asking him how long they could afford to be careful. “But we’ll need someone who speaks this language.”

He tucked the parcel card into his pocket, the words For services rendered pressing against the lining like a brand, and stepped into the rain, bracing for the conversation he did not want to have.

The Ministry’s corridors were washed in gray morning light, the kind that made everything look tired. Harry took the lifts down two floors, the locket contained and signed over in Records, Thistlewhite Apparated to St. Mungo’s with Hestia. The Auror Office buzzed around him, parchment and steam from charmed kettles and the low murmur of too many cases and not enough answers.

Robards’ door was ajar. Harry knocked anyway, an old habit he couldn’t shake, and stepped in at the curt, “Potter.”

Gawain Robards looked as he always did: broad, solid, an iron-gray beard trimmed close, eyes that missed nothing. He had a stack of reports in front of him and a half-drunk cup of tea that had long gone cold. He gestured Harry into the chair with a flick of his hand.

“Report.”

Harry laid it out with no adornment. Thistlewhite: stabilized but unresponsive. The locket: ward-adaptive, resistant to standard lifting charms, runic formation more like oath-binding theory than cursecraft. The card, the handwriting. He did not say serpent shapes brought back other rooms, other faces, other nights. He kept to the facts.

Robards listened without interrupting, his mouth flattening once, his gaze sharpening when Harry mentioned the way the locket’s magic had acknowledged his Revelio. When Harry finished, there was a short silence filled only by the distant clatter of filing charms in the bullpen.

“So,” Robards said, sighing through his nose, “we’re out of our depth.”

Harry bristled, before he caught himself. “Our curse-breakers are competent.”

“They are,” Robards said, unruffled. “But this isn’t Gringotts-issue vault magic. And it isn’t the Dark Arts we learned to recognize and dismantle during the war. This… is older. Subtler. It has the smell of a family library on it.”

Harry looked away. He’d thought the same. “You think it’s pure-blood oath magic.”

Robards nodded once. “Obscure. The kind that never made it into shared texts because no one ever shared. Old families kept their real tools behind tapestries and sugarcoated histories. The hallmarks are there—the adaptability, the way it ties to intent instead of the act.”

Harry cleared his throat. “We can reach out to the Unspeakables, cross-reference old trials. Someone has records.”

“Someone does,” Robards agreed mildly. “But the Department of Mysteries won’t touch this unless we can promise a political clean line, and we can’t. We’re already getting owls. Thistlewhite’s friends want answers. International Magical Cooperation wants discretion. And if this is as specific as it feels, we need someone who can read it before it reads us.”

A coil of unease slid down Harry’s spine. He knew where Robards was going. He hated that he knew.

“No,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Robards’ brows rose a fraction. “That would be a first, Potter, you objecting before you know the plan.”

Harry held his gaze. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?” Robards leaned back, chair creaking. “Because I’m going to say that we bring in an outside consultant who has a documented expertise in antique magical heirlooms, with a specialty in oath-binding constructs and soul-adjacent artifacts. I’m going to say that this consultant has a ninety-three percent success rate in neutralizing or decanting problematic enchantments without damage to the host. I’m going to say that we have used him before in property cases, quietly, and that he has never leaked a case file or violated an Auror NDA.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. “You’re going to say Malfoy.”

Robards didn’t look away. “I am.”

The office seemed to narrow, the air staler, the walls closer. Harry’s hands curled on his knees.

“He can’t be the only option,” he said. “Rowena Flint could—”

“Rowena Flint trained as a curse-breaker for six years and has never set foot in a pure-blood marriage hall to see how vows are sealed at the marrow,” Robards cut in, not unkind. “Mbatha is brilliant and will be Rowena in five years, if she doesn’t burn out. The Unspeakables will take three months to give us a sanitized maybe. And Thistlewhite does not have three months.”

Harry stared at a nick in Robards’ desk, the wood cut by something sharper than he wanted to think about. “Malfoy’s knowledge came by way of… you know how.”

“Some of it,” Robards said. “And some of it because after the war he had to inventory every cursed object left rotting in his family’s vaults under supervision. He learned more because we made him. Reparations aren’t only about gold. He took that and made a business out of not letting other people die from the same nonsense.”

“He made a business,” Harry repeated, flat.

“He did,” Robards said. “Malfoy’s Curios & Appraisals. Discreetly. He consults for museums, private collectors, occasionally for estates that want to know whether great-aunt Euphemia’s ring is going to strangle her grandchildren. He has the books your curse-breakers don’t. He has the context you don’t.”

Harry swallowed. Draco Malfoy in a shop with a brass placard, cataloguing history with those careful hands. He pushed the image away. It felt too tidy, too easy. “And you want me to… what? Ask him nicely?”

“I want you to take the case file and the locket to him,” Robards said. “Brief him. Keep it professional. Keep it contained. You will work according to his facility’s protocols where necessary and our security protocols always. You will mind your temper. He will mind his.”

Heat flared in Harry’s chest, sharp and childish. “He and I—”

“I am aware,” Robards said, and there was a flicker of steel in his voice that brooked no further interruption. “I am also aware that you are not seventeen. Neither is he. The Ministry’s priority is the victim, the artifact, and the prevention of escalation. If Malfoy’s grudging cooperation gets us there, then we endure grudging cooperation.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment. He had argued before, hard enough to bruise. He could keep arguing. It wouldn’t change the fact that the image of the locket’s runes burned in his mind, written in a language that had shaped his life without his consent. He wanted it undone. He wanted the man on the carpet to breathe like a man again.

“Fine,” he said, the word rough. “But if he so much as hints at—”

“Potter.” Robards’ mouth softened at the edges, not a smile. “He will do the work. You will do yours. That is all.”

Harry pushed to his feet. The chair legs scraped. He picked up the slim case with the file and the authorization parchments, the seal still warm from Robards’ wand. His fingers tightened around the handle until it ached.

“Anything else?” he asked, because it felt necessary to say something banal, to make this sound like just another assignment.

Robards nodded to the door. “Yes. Eat something before you go. And take a second with you. Hestia, if she’s free. Malfoy respects order. Show him that we have one.”

Harry nodded once. He turned to leave, then paused, hand on the doorknob. “Sir,” he said, without looking back, “if this goes wrong—”

“It won’t,” Robards said, quiet and certain in the way of a man who had learned to make certainty out of air. “And if it does, you will handle it. Because that’s why you’re here.”

Harry shut his eyes for a beat. When he opened them, the corridor beyond the office stretched long and bright and unavoidable. He stepped into it, the case heavy in his hand, the path laid out whether he chose it or not.

He didn’t go to the canteen. He walked directly back to his desk, set the case file down with more force than necessary, and stared at it as if he could will it to be something else. Hestia’s chair was empty. The bullpen’s noise brushed over him—quills, murmurs, the hiss of the kettle—and none of it steadied him. He turned on his heel and went back to Robards’ office before the door had finished swinging shut.

Robards didn’t look surprised. He set down his quill and leaned back, hands steepled, as if he had been timing the seconds it would take Harry to return.

“You can’t be serious,” Harry said. The words came out clipped, too fast. “You can’t ask me to work with him.”

“I’m not asking,” Robards said evenly. “I’m instructing.”

“Then I’m saying no.” Harry heard the stubbornness in his own voice and hated it even as he clung to it. “Find someone else. There has to be—”

“I listed them,” Robards said. “You heard me.”

Harry stepped closer. He wasn’t looming, not over Robards, but he needed the space between them smaller. “You didn’t list the part where Malfoy once wished me dead. Where he stood in rooms where I was hunted. Where he—”

“Where he was a boy in a war none of us chose?” Robards’ gaze hardened. “I’m not minimizing it. But we don’t adjudicate old battles here. We end new ones. The locket doesn’t care how you feel about Malfoy.”

Harry’s jaw worked. “It matters that I can’t trust him.”

“And yet you trusted him to save lives when you dragged him out of that manor and testified on his behalf.” Robards’ tone softened without losing weight. “You stood up for his capacity to change because you saw it. Did you see wrong?”

Harry flinched at the memory he hadn’t wanted. The cold marble floor. Draco’s terrified face as the chandelier fell. He swallowed. “That was war. This is—” He shook his head. “This is not about forgiving him. It’s about putting a case in the hands of someone whose first instinct is self-preservation. He’ll bolt the first time it costs him.”

Robards’ mouth quirked, humorless. “He didn’t bolt when we put a ledger under his nose and told him to open every cursed drawer his family ever locked. He didn’t bolt when he had to sit in our office and translate things his mother never meant him to read. He shows up. He does the work.”

Harry looked down at his hands. The faint silver lines on his knuckles were small things after everything else, but they were there. “You didn’t grow up with him breathing down your neck, Robards. You didn’t spend six years waiting for the next hex. He doesn’t think like we do.”

“Thank Merlin for that,” Robards said, and the words were so dry that Harry almost laughed in spite of himself. “We’ve been thinking like Aurors and we got nowhere. I need someone who thinks like a man taught to make magic obey him in a drawing room. We have the law. He has the language.”

Harry dragged a hand over his face. “And if I say I can’t do it? If I say you can fire me but I’m not walking into his shop?”

Robards was silent long enough for Harry to hear the whirr of a dictation quill outside. “I’m not firing you,” he said finally. “And you can do it. You don’t want to. I respect that. I’m not interested in putting you in a position that hurts you. I am interested in waking Thistlewhite up. Those are my priorities. I believe yours are the same.”

Harry’s anger broke against that with nowhere to go. He stood there, breathing too shallowly, feeling ridiculous and still furious. “He’ll use it,” he said, lower. “He’ll enjoy it. He’ll like having me walk in and ask.”

“Perhaps,” Robards said. “If he does, it will last for five minutes. Then it will be work. You’ll set terms. You’ll take Hestia. You will not be alone with him unless necessary. You will keep it professional.”

Harry stared over Robards’ shoulder at the framed map of London, dots of light moving slowly along the river where wards pricked. “I don’t want him in this case.”

“And I don’t want people playing with magic they don’t understand,” Robards said. “I don’t want to write letters to families. I don’t want to explain why my best Auror let a grudge put a man in the ground. Pick which you want less.”

Harry absorbed that. The word best lodged somewhere he refused to examine. He thought of Thistlewhite’s gray face, the barely-there rise and fall of his chest. He thought of the runes that had looked back at him like an answer he didn’t want.

He let out a breath. “You put this under his reparations, didn’t you,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You’ve had him on contract.”

Robards nodded. “We did. Quietly. He wanted it that way. He won’t advertise that he works with us, and we won’t use him as a shield in a press release. But yes. It’s part of how he pays what he can pay. Knowledge. Time. Results.”

Harry grimaced. The word tasted sour and necessary. “Fine,” he said again, this time without heat. “We keep it contained. We follow our protocol. If he tries anything, I pull us.”

“You do,” Robards said. “And you write everything down. You keep his assessments separate from ours until they overlap. You protect the chain of custody on the locket like it’s evidence in a murder trial.”

Harry’s mouth tipped, a humorless line. “All right.”

Robards studied him for a beat. “You need a minute.”

“I need a day,” Harry said, honest. “I’ll take five.”

“Take ten,” Robards said. “Then go. Hestia’s back in ten as well. She’ll meet you in the atrium.”

Harry nodded, turned to the door, then paused again. The stubborn part of him lifted its head one last time. “If he throws Hogwarts back at me, I’m not promising I won’t throw it back harder.”

Robards’ eyes, unexpectedly, warmed. “You can spar with words all you like. But remember why you’re there.”

The handle was cool under Harry’s palm. He opened the door, stepped into the corridor, and let it latch softly behind him. The resentment was still there, a knot beneath his breastbone, tight and familiar. But under it, something steadier had started to set—a resolve he knew better than anything. He would do the job. He would stand in front of what needed standing in front of. Even if it meant walking into a shop with a polished brass placard and watching Draco Malfoy look up, recognize him, and smile that sharp, cool smile he remembered.

He could do ten minutes of pride for a man’s life. He could do a week.

He picked up the case, checked that the seal was unbroken, and headed for the lifts. Hestia would be waiting. And beyond that, a bell that would chime when he pushed a door open. He could already hear it.

Hestia was already by the fountain in the atrium when the lift doors slid open. She didn’t ask questions—just took one look at his face and fell into step beside him, sleeves rolled to the elbow, her dark hair pulled back and pinned with a plain clasp. When they reached the fireplaces she spoke, not unkindly.

“Orders?”

“We go to Diagon Alley,” Harry said. “Malfoy’s shop. We keep it professional.”

Her gaze flicked to the sealed case in his hand. “Understood.”

They used the public Floo and stepped out into the bustle of the afternoon crowd. The air was damp with the tail end of a brief shower, stone gleaming under boot heels. Harry’s feet seemed to know the way through the press of robes and bags and chatter. He kept his focus fixed ahead, and still the corners of his vision crowded with ghosts. The corner where he’d seen Malfoy as a boy with a new cane. The wand shop rebuilt with immaculate glass. Trust me, he had said to himself so many times. Trust that you can stand here.

The shop front appeared before he was ready for it, a slice of quiet amid the noise. Its windows were clear and bright, the brass letters on the placard precise: Malfoy’s Curios & Appraisals. The door was painted a soft grey with a gleam to it that said someone cared about upkeep. Inside, he could make out shelves and a counter, a haze of light catching dust like a veil.

Hestia stopped with him. “You want me to lead?” she asked. It was an offer, not a challenge.

“No,” Harry said, and made himself meet her eyes. “But stay close. Keep records. We don’t give him the locket. He examines it in containment.”

“Of course.” She tipped her chin toward the door. “After you.”

His pulse ticked in his wrists. He thought of Robards’ voice, level and steady. He thought of the locket. He thought of what he owed to the job and to himself. He flexed his fingers once to loosen them on the handle of the case, then reached for the door.

The handle was cool and smooth. He pushed.

The bell chimed—clear, controlled, not ominous at all, which somehow made the sound worse. The air inside was warmer than the street, and scented faintly with old paper and something herbal. The floorboards were worn to a soft shine. On the left, a glass case held an array of small objects on velvet trays: rings with sigils, a clasp knife with a mother-of-pearl handle, a brooch shaped like a laurel wreath. On the right, narrow shelves reached up toward the ceiling, each shelf labeled with understated plaques: Georgian Wards; Ritual Implements; Binding Theory. A long counter cut the room in half like a boundary line.

Behind it sat Draco Malfoy.

He didn’t look up at once. He was writing in a glossy green ledger with a black-nibbed quill, his hair a pale sweep, his sleeves neat, cuffs buttoned. He wore charcoal and white, and the cut of his waistcoat was precise. The years had changed him, even to Harry’s unwilling eye. The boy’s sharpness had settled into something finer. His shoulders were a fraction broader. His face had lost its thinness and kept its angles.

Harry took three steps forward, Hestia a half step behind his left shoulder. He set the case on the counter with a quiet, deliberate sound.

Malfoy’s quill paused. He lifted his head slowly, not a flinch, not a start, just a measured acknowledgment. His eyes landed on the case, then traveled up to Harry’s face.

Polite indifference slid into place like a mask. “We’re closed,” he said, not looking at Hestia yet. “By appointment only.”

Harry didn’t smile. “Consider this an appointment.”

A beat passed. Malfoy’s attention cut to the Ministry seal on the case, then flicked to Hestia’s badge where it sat at her hip, its charm glinting in the lamplight. He closed the ledger with controlled care and set the quill down in its stand. His expression shifted—subtle, but Harry saw it—cool recognition slotting into the lines of his mouth, the angle of his brows.

“Potter,” Malfoy said, the name flat and entirely unsurprised.

“Hestia Jones,” Hestia supplied, crisp. “Acting as second.”

Malfoy’s gaze touched her and returned to Harry as if pulled there. He straightened, one hand braced lightly on the edge of the ledger. “To what do I owe the pleasure,” he asked, the civility held like a blade, “or shall I assume the Ministry’s idea of discretion has decayed along with its décor?”

“We have a case,” Harry said, intent on refusing the bait. “We were told you’re required to consult.”

“Required,” Malfoy repeated. The corner of his mouth tilted, not quite a smile, not quite anything else. “How fortunate that compulsion is the mother of cooperation.”

Hestia took out a folio and a dictation quill, setting them on the counter beside the case. “Mr. Malfoy, our terms are straightforward. You examine the artifact on site. All notes are recorded and retained by the Auror Office. No removal from containment without authorization.”

“And in return?” Malfoy asked, eyes still on Harry.

“In return,” Harry said, “you get to do your job.”

For a moment, something like annoyance flashed through Malfoy’s calm. It vanished quickly. He inclined his head. “Very well. Show me what disaster you’ve brought to my doorstep.”

Harry loosened the clasps of the case and folded it open just far enough for Malfoy to see the locket through the layered protective charms. The metal gleamed dull gold, runes crawling like a memory across its surface. The faint hum of its magic raised the hairs along Harry’s arms.

Malfoy’s breath caught, almost inaudible. His eyes sharpened. Gone was the posture of a man indulging a nuisance; this was a craftsman focusing, a scholar drawing a thread from a knot. He reached out and stopped himself before his fingers touched the outer layer of containment, only a few inches away.

“Who else has seen this?” he asked, quietly now.

“Three curse-breakers,” Hestia said. “Two in-house, one external. None could identify the primary structure.”

Malfoy’s gaze didn’t move from the locket. “Of course they couldn’t,” he murmured, more to himself than to them. He shot a glance at Harry, and the old recognition in it built a bridge Harry hadn’t consented to walk. “You came to me because you had to.”

Harry held his eyes. “We came to you because you know what this is.”

Malfoy’s mouth pressed into a thin line. He nodded once. “Close it,” he said. “You shouldn’t even have opened the case in the front room.”

“We’re not moving it to the back until we have your agreement to terms,” Hestia said, unwavering. “You’ll sign receipt of consultation, and you’ll sign that your notes are on record.”

Malfoy glanced at her again, this time with a degree of respect. “Efficient,” he said. Then to Harry, quieter, “You brought someone to mind the ledger while you glare. Progress.”

Harry exhaled through his nose, a thread away from laughing or snapping. “We can stand here all afternoon and see who flinches first,” he said, calm, “or we can do the work.”

Malfoy didn’t flinch. He reached under the counter, brought up a slate and a chalk pencil, and set them down. “You’ll find, Potter, that I’ve no interest in wasting time. Back room. And if you’ve jinxed that containment in any of your charming Auror fashions, say so now before my wards have opinions.”

“We followed protocol,” Hestia said, sliding the agreement forward. “Sign, please.”

Malfoy took the quill she offered, the same black-nibbed one, and signed with a quick, elegant hand. He pushed the parchment back, then lifted the hinge of the counter and gestured them through.

Harry closed the case, the click of the clasps steady despite the jump of his pulse. He lifted it and stepped forward, close enough to catch the faint cologne Malfoy wore, something pared back and clean. Malfoy’s sleeve brushed his as he passed. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t anything more than proximity. Still, Harry felt it.

They crossed the threshold into the back, the front room’s light narrowing behind them. Harry didn’t look back. He kept his focus forward, on the table Malfoy indicated, on the work to be done. On the fact that he had walked into this shop and the world had not come apart.

He set the case down on the cleared table. Malfoy circled to the other side and looked up at Harry fully, the polite mask settled, the recognition cold and bright beneath.

“Let’s begin,” Malfoy said.