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“It’s not very polite to kidnap someone and not even have the decency to stay awake to interrogate them afterwards,” drawled an irritable voice from the other side of the dark room.

Harry blinked into consciousness. He couldn’t tell if his vision was blurry or if he had lost his glasses. The back of his head ached, and when he reached back to prod at his scalp, his fingers came away wet with what he hoped wasn’t blood. His mouth tasted like something had died in it. 

His whole body hurt. From what he could tell, he was lying on a wet stone floor. Harry wasn’t sure if he was somewhere in the castle – he couldn’t remember going to sleep – or if he had been knocked out, which was a far more likely explanation for the dull pain in the back of his head. 

“Excuse me,” said the voice petulantly. “Are you deaf as well as ill-mannered?”

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Harry made out the silhouette of a hunched figure crumpled against the wall on the other side of the room. He couldn’t see the details of the face at this distance, but the shock of white-blond hair was strangely familiar.

“Oh, it’s you,” the voice said. “Well isn’t this just great?”

Harry tried to stay as still as he could. Finding himself trapped in a mysterious dungeon was bad enough. It was not fair that he had to deal with Malfoy too. Harry surreptitiously felt around on the ground, searching for his wand or his glasses, or at least a stone to throw. His knuckles brushed against a twisted piece of metal he thought could be his glasses. He hoped the lenses hadn’t broken.

“Potter,” Malfoy hissed. “I know you’re awake. I can hear you pretending to stay asleep. What in Merlin’s name have you got us into?”

Harry sat up, offended, and immediately regretted it as the dull throb in his head intensified to pounding pain. He clumsily shoved his glasses onto his face and noticed with relief that one of the lenses was still whole enough to see through. 

They weren’t actually in a dungeon – it was more like an unfinished basement. He and Malfoy were lying on a bare stone floor, opposite a rickety set of wooden stairs that led to an equally rickety wooden door. Some light filtered in through a grimy window set high into one of the walls. Both the door and window smelled rotten with what Harry recognised as warding, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would be lucky to keep his hand if he tried to touch them.

Harry looked over warily at Malfoy, who was glaring right back at him. Malfoy was bleeding from the lip and had an impressive black eye. He was wearing tightly buttoned red robes that Harry had never seen him wear before. The robes looked familiar. Malfoy looked furious.

“What do you mean ‘got us into’,” Harry asked, bemused. He pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall as he did so. Malfoy levered himself up against the other wall with some degree of effort. Harry was gratified to see him stagger slightly.

“I can assure you this was nothing to do with me,” said Malfoy haughtily. “I don’t know how you got me out of the Manor but I expect you to take me back there at once.” Malfoy staggered across the room on legs that looked as wobbly as Harry’s felt, and poked Harry hard in the chest with a bony finger. “I’ll have you know my father won’t take very kindly to kidnapping! I don’t care if you’re the Boy Who Lived or Merlin himself, he’ll have you expelled.”

Malfoy poked him in the chest again, wild around the eyes. Harry tried his best not to laugh. 

“And you’re wearing Auror robes without an Auror licence!” cried Malfoy, throwing up his hands. “And you’ve taken my wand! A crime spree!”

“Oh leave off,” said Harry, rolling his eyes.  “I don’t have your sodding wand. I don’t think I have mine either, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Oh yes,” said Malfoy derisively, “That makes me feel loads better, I have been kidnapped by an absolute incompetent, how embarrassing –”

“Hang on, what do you mean, ‘Auror robes’?” 

Harry looked down at himself. He could see that he was wearing sturdy robes in a deep red, half unbuttoned over a t-shirt he didn’t recognise. “HOLYHEAD HARPIES DO IT BETTER”, the shirt told him. He looked up at Malfoy, and realised where he’d seen those robes before. “You’re wearing the same robes as me, Malfoy,” he said, “So either we’re both impersonating Aurors together, or someone else is having a laugh, but I don’t know which because I can’t remember anything!”

“Excuse me?” Malfoy puffed himself up and looked as if he was going to start yelling again, but then looked down at his own chest and faltered. He glanced up at Harry, and then back down at his chest as if it might have changed colour since he last looked.

“Still red,” said Harry helpfully. Malfoy threw him a withering glare, which might have been more intimidating if Malfoy’s eye hadn’t swollen shut. Harry pushed himself more upright against the wall, and felt something prod him in the side of the leg. He reached down, and his hand was met with the handle of his wand. He pulled it out, and Malfoy stumbled backwards. Harry pointed the wand upwards, away from him.

“Lumos.”

A warm glow lit the air between them. Malfoy pushed his hair back from his eyes with a shaking hand and Harry finally got a clear look at his face. He looked – older than Harry remembered. Less pointy. Taller. His hair was long enough to fall in his face, and there were tiny laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. Harry hadn’t thought Malfoy was the kind of person who laughed a lot.

“What’s happened to your face Potter, you look –”

“– Old?” Harry interrupted. “I know. So do you.” Malfoy’s eyes widened and he made a furtive gesture as if to pat at his face. 

“Forget that,” said Harry impatiently, “Check your leg – I had a wand holster I don’t remember putting on. You might too.”

Malfoy patted at his legs and stopped with his hands on his left thigh. He gingerly reached into his robes and extracted a long thin wand with the tips of his fingers. “This is not my wand, Potter,” he said. He waved it, and a stream of fragrant bubbles erupted from the tip. “I mean, it feels like mine, but it’s not mine.” Malfoy frowned. “Let me just –” He pointed the wand squarely at his own face. “Episkey.” There was a loud crack, and Malfoy yelped and fell over backward. He blinked up at Harry out of two fully open eyes, the bruising fading from his face like ink on wet paper. He looked like an offended Crup. His eyes were silver in the dim light. 

Harry decided he needed to stop looking at Malfoy and start figuring out how to escape. 

“We need to get out of here,” he said to Malfoy. 

“How do you propose we do that, oh fearless leader,” said Malfoy, rolling his silver eyes. 

“I don’t know. Check your pockets, have a look at the wards, do star jumps for all I care.” Harry turned away and patted down his pockets. He came up with a Fizzing Whizzbee wrapper, two Sickles and a folded photograph. He discarded the sweet wrapper and the photo and turned over the Sickles in his hands. He vaguely remembered Hermione talking about the uses of silver in minor ward breaking, but was not entirely sure if the result would dissolve the ward or explode it. 

Harry reached down and picked up the picture he had dropped, with half a mind to use it as a fire-starter. He noticed that it had come unfolded. It seemed to be a Muggle photo. He brought it closer to his face to see it better in the dimness. The photo looked like it had been taken in Grimmauld Place. Harry recognised the kitchen from the ugly light fitting that looked like a Kneazle’s head, but the room was warmer and brighter than he had ever seen it before. He was crowded around the end of the kitchen table with Ron and Hermione and… Goyle? And Malfoy? 

“What the fuck”, said Harry. He kept looking at it. The room fell away. Hermione had buzzed her hair very close to her scalp and had an arm looped around both Ron and Goyle. Ron’s hair was long and pulled back from his face, and Goyle’s head was bald and shiny. All three of them had their mouths open, frozen halfway through a laugh. They were turned to look at Malfoy, who was wearing the smirk of someone who had just said something really funny and knew it. Malfoy was also wearing the same red robes that he had on now, but they looked a little less like they had been rolled around in the dirt and a little more like the man wearing them knew a very expensive dry-cleaner. Harry was sitting next to him and smiling straight at the camera. His eyes were crinkled at the corners like they did when he was truly happy. 

Harry turned the picture over. The message “JULY 31 2006 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY, TRY NOT TO DIE THIS YEAR!” was written in a looping cursive that he did not recognise.

On the other side of the room, Malfoy was busy taking absolutely no notice of Harry’s silent panic. “Look, Potter,” he said, “I am sure this fetid little dungeon makes you feel all warm and tingly inside, but I would rather be anywhere but here, so if you don’t mind –” 

Harry wordlessly held the photograph up to Malfoy’s face. Malfoy glanced at it. The glance became a stare. Harry’s outstretched arm was starting to hurt – he thought he must have fallen on it at some point. He wiggled the photo at Malfoy awkwardly until Malfoy took it from him with some reluctance. He held it between two fingers as if it might bite him. Harry dropped his arm with relief.  

Malfoy inspected the photograph with some trepidation, front and back. “Is that Pansy’s handwriting on the back of this?” he asked incredulously. Harry shrugged. He had never seen Pansy Parkinson’s writing in his life.

“What the fuck is this,” said Malfoy. The comment came out as a statement, not a question.

Harry shrugged again. “I have no clue. I mean, I thought it was 1996?” he asked, poking cautiously at his shoulder. “The last thing I remember was a very weird meeting with Dumbledore, and this professor who was also a couch? I think?”

Malfoy finally tore his gaze away from the photograph, his eyes blazing. “The last thing I remember was trying to avoid being presented to the Dark Lord,” he hissed. “Forgive me if I don’t want to hear about you and the Headmaster picking out household furnishings!”

Harry raised his hands in surrender. “Let’s wait to argue about this until after we get out of here,” he suggested. “I’d prefer it if that happens before whoever put us here figures out we’ve woken up, personally.”

Malfoy frowned. “I have – had –  a Portkey that Mother gave me when I was young. She said that it would take me to St Mungo’s if I needed it.”  He looked down at his left hand. A silver ring shaped like a snake was looped delicately around his index finger. Harry craned forward to get a better look at it, and Malfoy dropped his hand away abruptly. “Apparently that was ten years ago though,” he said, turning away. “Who knows where it goes now, if it even works at all.”

“How did it work?”

Malfoy held his hand up to the sliver of light that shone through the grubby window. The silver ring flashed against the dark room. “She told me to activate it by saying ‘Nightingale’ and twisting it,” he said.

“Great,” said Harry, “Let’s do that then.” He stepped forward and grabbed Malfoy by the hand.

“Wait, let go of me–”

“Nightingale!”

Harry felt the familiar pull and twist behind his stomach as the room faded away into a swirl of colour. He still had Malfoy’s hand in both of his. It was warmer than he expected. Not that he had been thinking about Malfoy’s hands, or the temperature that those hands might be.

He barely had time to regret the impulsiveness of his decision, or to think about how a Portkey could have been modified over the past ten years (ten years, TEN YEARS) before he landed in an undignified heap of limbs in the middle of the St Mungo’s waiting area. Some of the limbs were Malfoy’s. Harry was still holding his hand. Harry tried to stand up, but couldn’t quite do it. He leaned heavily against Malfoy’s side and settled for an awkward sort of crouch on one knee.

“Can I… help you?” asked a very startled mediwitch in violently green robes. Harry dropped Malfoy’s hand like it had burnt him.

“Hi, yes, we’re sorry to bother you,” Harry said. “I’m Harry, er, Harry Potter,”

“Yes you are,” said Malfoy, under his breath and unimpressed. “Well spotted.”

Harry elbowed him. “And this is, um, Draco Malfoy, and we would very much like some medical attention please.”

The mediwitch blinked at them. Harry blinked back. He saw her open her mouth to respond, but he couldn’t quite hear what she was saying over the ringing in his ears, which was getting louder. The floor was also getting closer to his face, and Harry realised he was falling over. He hadn’t very far to fall from where he had managed to pull himself up against Malfoy’s hip, but hitting his already bruised head against the ground was not high on his list of preferred outcomes. “Ow,” he told the beige carpet in front of him. The beige carpet did not respond.

The last thing Harry saw before he drifted out of consciousness was the hospital’s bulletin board, dominated by a large poster of him and Malfoy together. Malfoy’s white hair was slicked back, and he had a smirk on his face. Harry was staring straight at the camera with an easy grin. The poster was titled – HAVE YOU SEEN THESE AURORS – MISSING SINCE 20 JULY 2006.

Fuck, thought Harry, before finally, blissfully, blacking out.

XXXXXXX

Harry woke up in a hospital bed. He no longer felt like death, which was good, but he also couldn’t see, which was bad. He scrabbled around on the bedside table until he found his glasses and immediately jammed them on his face. It was bad enough being stuck in the future without blinking about helplessly like a myopic twit.

He craned his neck to the side and saw that Malfoy was in the bed next to him. Harry did not know why he felt relieved by that, and did not want to think about it too closely. Malfoy’s pointy face was slack with sleep. His mouth looked uncharacteristically soft when it wasn’t curled in a sneer. Harry tried not to think about that too closely either.

“Ah good, you’re awake,” rumbled a soothing voice. “We are just running some tests, and it looks like you are both going to make a full recovery.” 

Harry looked up at the soothing voice, which was attached to a large man that Harry assumed was the Healer.

“I assume you are the Healer,” said Harry, cleverly.

The Healer smiled. “You assume correctly,” he said. A small gold ribbon traced shapes in the air between his face and Harry’s. Each time one end of the ribbon touched the other, the spell let out a tiny puff of coloured smoke. As Harry watched, the ribbon puffed yellow, then white, and then let out three puffs of a bilious green in quick succession. The Healer frowned. Harry deduced that the green puffs were not a good sign.

“You have some spell damage, a concussion, and what looks like traces of a contact poison,” the Healer said. He flicked his wand at the gold ribbon, which rolled itself up and slotted away neatly into a small groove at the head of Harry’s bed. 

Harry looked up, startled. “I don’t think I’m concussed,” he said. “I mean, yes, my head hurts, and these lights are really bright, and I feel a bit sick, but I don’t really feel as bad as all that, honestly –”

“Mr Potter,” said the Healer, “Harry. What is the last thing you remember?”

Harry thought hard. “Er,” he said.

“Oh for Marlin’s sake,” said Malfoy, clearly woken by this display of brilliance. “We both woke up in a dungeon thinking it was 1996, and apparently it is no longer 1996 because we are now ten years in the future!” 

Harry slowly nodded. “I remember – I met Dumbledore and we went to see Slughorn, I mean, Professor Slughorn, to ask if he wanted to be Potions Professor…” He trailed off at the look on the Healer’s face. The look said, oh dear, this is really quite bad, but I have to look professional about it so that no one else panics. It was a look that Harry was very familiar with.

“Yes,” drawled Malfoy, impatience barely restrained. “We have gathered that we might be somewhat behind the times.”

The Healer swallowed. “I think you have the general gist of it, Mr Malfoy,” he said. “But you haven’t time-travelled – this is memory loss.” He reached under the bedside table between Harry and Malfoy’s beds, and pulled a folded copy of the Daily Prophet out of the wastebin. 

POTTER FOUND screamed the headline, above the same photo that Harry recognised from the bulletin board in the lobby. The paper was dated 2 August 2006. 

“Well, I’ve been found too,” he heard Malfoy say crossly.

Harry ignored him. Everything felt a lot more real. He had been too focussed on getting out of that dungeon to really think too hard about that weird photo – which could have been a prank, or a hallucination, or anything other than a black and white confirmation that he seemed to have bumped his head and fallen ten years into the future.

He turned the paper over with a final, fading hope that he had the wrong end of the wand, or was maybe too concussed to read. WEIRD SISTERS RELEASE FIRST ALBUM IN TEN YEARS, read the next headline, promptly putting an end to his dreams of a serious head injury. He kept reading. A society announcement that Ms Lovegood and Ms Parkinson were celebrating their engagement, and would be delighted if the reader made a donation in their name to the Fund for the Protection and Preservation of Orphaned Thestrals had Harry seriously reconsidering the concussion question. 

Harry went to turn another page, and was badly startled by the sight of his own hand. He dropped the paper in a heap on the floor and squinted down at his skin. I must not tell lies was picked out in shaky silver scar-tissue across the back of his hand, in what he recognised as his own handwriting.  

He glanced up and saw Malfoy looking between him and the paper on the ground, bewildered. Harry wordlessly held up his hand. Malfoy recoiled, eyes wide. “That’s a curse scar,” he said. “I don’t think this Auror business is exactly good for the constitution. I’ve got one too, look.” Malfoy pulled the loose collar of his hospital gown further down, exposing crabbed silver lines criss-crossing his throat and chest. They were smooth and faded with time. Harry couldn’t imagine the kind of curse that would have caused damage like that without killing.

“Does yours hurt?” Harry asked. 

Malfoy looked down at his own chest contemplatively. He poked at one of the scars. “I don’t think so,” he said. His sleeve slipped down his arm as he moved, revealing a shape that looked like a faded bruise. Malfoy turned his arm over for a better look. It was the Dark Mark. Malfoy yelped and made an aborted movement as if he was trying to jump away from his own arm.

Harry took comfort from the fact that Malfoy seemed more horrified by this development than he himself was.

The door to the room opened and a large man in red robes strode in. He had close cropped hair and deep frown lines scored into his forehead. “Aurors Potter, Malfoy,” he said with a brusque nod.

Harry nodded back, doing his best to imitate what he thought an Auror nod ought to look like. Malfoy hastily shook his sleeve back down over his arm, and dipped his chin in his own approximation of a nod.

The man looked between Harry and Malfoy. He raised his eyebrows. “Well?” he asked. “Your report?” He did not seem impressed that he had needed to use more words than necessary.

“If I could just interject, Auror Robards,” said the Healer apologetically. 

Auror Robards lowered his eyebrows in acceptance.

The Healer drew his wand from his sleeve and flicked it and the head of Harry’s bed, then Malfoy’s. The little gold ribbons unwound from their slots and trailed merrily through the air, puffing here and there as they went. “Mr Potter and Mr Malfoy are still suffering from the aftereffects of complex physical trauma, compounded by potion poisoning,” he said, gesturing to the ribbons. “This means that they are in a unique position in terms of their recollection and ability to recount that recollection in any meaningful way.”

The eyebrows went back up. 

“Neither of us remember anything past 1996, sir,” said Harry, helpfully. “Nice to, er, re-meet you by the way,” he added.  

There was a charged silence.

“Hang on,” said Malfoy, sitting up in bed, “If we’re both Aurors, was it some case we were working on that landed us here?” 

“Excellent detective work, Malfoy,” intoned Auror Robards. “You are a credit to the profession.”

Malfoy flushed pink across the crests of his cheekbones. Personally Harry thought that comment was a bit unfair.

“Let me catch you both up to speed, then,” said Robards briskly. “The war is over, Voldemort is dead, you two have been partners since training since no one else can deal with either of you, and you are responsible for at least half of my gray hairs from the last ten years.”

Harry looked up at Auror Robards’ shining silver hair, and hastily looked back down again. Auror Robards caught him doing it. Harry thought Robards might have smiled if his face were able to move like that.

“Healer Osman has contacted your next of kin to come and get you,” Robards continued. “You should both come into the office to debrief tomorrow if your Healer approves it, but from then on you are on medical leave until he gives you clearance to come back into the office, or until your memories return – if they return.” 

Harry’s blood ran cold. If.

Robards nodded at them again, this time in farewell as he moved back towards the door. “Get some rest and recover quickly,” Robards said. “Memories or not, it will be good to have you both up and working again.” He left the room in a swirl of red robes.

The Healer – Healer Osman, apparently – banished the gold ribbons back to storage again with a wave.  “Mr Potter,” he said, “Your next of kin is listed as Ms Granger and she is on her way.”

Harry let out a shaky exhale of relief.

Malfoy sat up in bed indignantly. “And me?” he asked, stung. “Are my parents on their way?”  Malfoy’s face was white to the lips. Harry wondered if Malfoy was as badly thrown by the if as he was.

Healer Osman shifted his weight. “Mr Malfoy, as you seem to have listed Mr Potter as your next of kin, I can discharge you both to Ms Granger together if you would prefer.”

Malfoy’s eyes widened. “Granger?” he scoffed. “What about my parents? Why haven’t I listed them?” 

The Healer consulted a chart hung on a clipboard at the end of Malfoy’s bed. “There’s a note here that says you changed your next of kin notification from Narcissa Malfoy to Harry Potter in 2005, after she relocated to France.”

“Well that was stupid,” said Malfoy immediately. “If Potter and I are –” He paused, and said “–  partners –” with some difficulty, “–and if we work together doing this incredibly dangerous and foolhardy job, isn’t it far more likely that we will usually end up here at the same time?”

The Healer consulted the chart again. He flipped back through several densely written pages. “That does seem to often be the case, yes,” he allowed.

Harry tried to read the chart upside down from where he was sat in bed but could not make out much of the sprawling handwriting, except for a sentence printed in large block capitals at the bottom of one page that read, “CHECKED OUT AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE YET AGAIN, SOMEONE SEDATE THEM NEXT TIME FOR MERLIN’S SAKE.” 

The room’s door was suddenly flung open, interrupting Harry’s unsuccessful attempts to continue reading the chart upside down and Malfoy’s equally unsuccessful attempts to have himself discharged into his own care, thank you very much.

“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione, rushing into the room in a whirl of robes. “I came as soon as I heard!” She threw her arms around him, enveloping him in a familiar cloud of parchment-smell and cat hair. “And Draco,” she cried, turning to hug him as well. “I’m so glad you’re both safe! I’ve owled your mother and you can Floo her once we get home, and you really should change it so she’s your next of kin again, I know you feel like she has too much going on with your father to worry about one more thing, but really, it’s ridiculous for it to be Harry when you’re always here at the same time!”

Harry stared, startled by the frankly bizarre sound of Hermione agreeing with anything Malfoy said. He met Malfoy’s eyes over the top of Hermione’s head. 'Help me!' the eyes said. 

“Thank you Miss Granger,” said Healer Osman with an amused smile. “If you could just avoid asphyxiating my patients so soon after their recovery…”

Hermione leapt back from Malfoy’s bed immediately, flustered. “Of course!” she said, smoothing down her robes. “Is there anything they need to bring home with them? Potions, wound care?” 

“Not at this stage, Ms Granger,” said the Healer. “Both Mr Malfoy and Mr Potter should physically recover without any further treatment, provided they take it easy for the next few days.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “Physically recover, you said?” she asked.

The Healer sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he said. He paused, considering his words.

“Potter and I don’t remember anything after August 1996, you – Granger,” said Malfoy, achingly polite. “Apparently the Dark Lord is dead and Potter and I are Aurors, but we don’t know anything else.”

Hermione covered her mouth with a shaking hand, her eyes wide. “Oh, Draco,” she whispered. She turned to Harry. “Is this true?”

“I mean, kind of, yeah,” said Harry. “That’s the important stuff, really, isn’t it?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rested his feet on the floor. Now that Hermione was here, he did not want to spend a second longer in St Mungo’s than he absolutely had to.

“Oh I don’t know, Potter,” said Malfoy scathingly, mirroring his motions. “Maybe it would be nice to know why my mother has moved to France, and what she has going on that means I decided that she wouldn’t have time to come pick up her only son from St Mungo’s!”

Fair point, thought Harry. 

“I know it’s frustrating, Mr Malfoy,” said the Healer gently, “But it is better for your recovery, to not give you too much information about your memories so that your brains have space to recover them in their own time.” He turned to Hermione. “It is fine to discuss incidental matters from the past, but try not to go into too much detail, especially about any particularly traumatic memories at this stage.”

Hermione nodded. Harry saw her gaze flick between the silver scars on Malfoy’s collarbone to his own forehead – he belatedly noticed that his scar did not hurt at all, and had not since he had woken. 

The Healer turned to Harry and Malfoy to address them directly. “If neither of you have any questions for me, you can both leave now with Ms Granger,” he said. “You can attend your office to debrief with Auror Robards tomorrow if you wish, on the condition you do not push yourself too much.” For some reason he frowned directly at Harry as he said this. Harry did not meet his eyes, and looked innocently up at the ceiling.

“Don’t Apparate or use the Floo network for the next eight hours in case it interacts with any of the ambient magic we found on you when you arrived,” continued Healer Osman. “Please contact me if your memories begin to return, or if any new symptoms develop.”

“Thank you for all your work, Healer Osman,” said Harry. He tried to stand to shake the Healer’s hand, but found his legs were less able to support him than he had expected, and half-fell awkwardly against the wall beside the bed. 

“No trouble at all, Harry,” said the Healer with a warm smile. “I’d say it was good to see you both again, but it’s been too soon – I do hope you won’t be insulted if I say that I’d prefer not to see either of you again for a good long while if you can help it.”

“Of course, sir,” said Malfoy smoothly. “Thank you.” He stood and shook the Healer’s hand, and remained standing until the Healer had left the room, at which point he promptly collapsed back on the bed. 

Harry tried to smother a grin.

“What?” asked Malfoy.

Harry shook his head. “You are such a show off.” It was good to see that not everything had completely changed about the Malfoy he remembered.

“A show off?” repeated Malfoy, nettled. “That’s a bit rich coming from the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Make-Headlines–”

“All right, enough bickering,” interrupted Hermione goodnaturedly. She dug her arm into her handbag up to the shoulder and pulled out two sets of comfortable looking clothing. “Put these on and we can finally all go home.” She gently tossed a set of clothes at each of them and looked at them both expectantly.

Harry and Malfoy looked back. Malfoy glanced at Harry askance. Harry minutely shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know if future-him normally changed clothes in front of all and sundry, but honestly that was the least of the things he had to worry about. 

Hermione rolled her eyes at herself. “Oh of course, you wouldn’t remember how we usually –” she broke off and pointed her wand at the clothes in Malfoy’s lap. Malfoy flinched, badly. Hermione’s eyes softened. “It’s just a Switching Spell, Draco,” she said carefully. “I’ll do Harry first, look.” She pointed her wand at the clothes in Harry’s lap.

“Cambiare”

Harry was suddenly wearing a soft blue t-shirt and sweatpants. His hospital robe lay neatly folded on the bed beside him. He shifted uncomfortably. He did not want to think too hard about whether Hermione had switched his pants as well.

“Yes, fine then Granger, let’s hurry this along,” said Malfoy impatiently. “The sooner I am out of here and back at the Manor, the better.”

Hermione winced. “Ah, the Manor, of course, you would think –” she said. She took a breath. “You haven’t lived there since we finished school.”

Malfoy shook his head in disbelief. “Where am I living then?” he asked. “Surely Potter and I aren’t codependent enough that we live together too.”

Hermione winced again.

Harry and Malfoy shared a glance of mute horror.

“Perhaps it’s better if I just take you home and show you,” Hermione said, neatly avoiding the question. “Follow me, I’ve got a cab outside.”

She swept out of the room. Malfoy rose and went after her automatically, seemingly too thrown to question her further.  Harry carefully followed behind them both, one hand heavily braced against the wall as he walked. Home, he thought. That sounded nice. He wondered if home was in Diagon Alley, or Hogsmeade, or Muggle London.

XXXXXXX

The cab Hermione had waiting was not a Muggle cab. The outside looked similar to a black London cab, if that cab had been built by someone who had only ever encountered a vehicle briefly in passing. The seats inside were longer than the cab appeared to be wide, and the inside of the cab’s roof was Charmed to show the appearance of a sunny summer’s sky. There was no visible driver.

Hermione ushered Harry and Malfoy into the back, before sliding in next to them and closing the door behind the three of them. “Number twelve, Grimmauld Place, please,” she said loudly and clearly. There was a click, and a small panel opened above the door handle, revealing a coin slot. Hermione counted out some Knuts and Sickles into her hand and fed them into the slot. When she fed in the last coin, she closed the panel. There was a pause, and then the panel sprang open again with two insistent beeps. Hermione rolled her eyes. “Oh for heaven’s sake,” she muttered under her breath, .“ It’s daylight robbery, it really is, the way these prices keep going up.” She shook out two more Sickles into her hand and roughly pushed them into the slot before flipping the panel closed again. The panel clicked and smoothed back into the wood of the door. The car rumbled to life, revved in thanks and started to drive.

The journey passed in a blur. Harry accepted that maybe he was more concussed than he had wanted to admit. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and the next thing he knew, the cab had stopped and Hermione was ushering him and Malfoy out. She closed the door behind her and gave the cab a thank you pat on the roof. It tooted merrily in thanks and trundled off down the street. 

Harry looked up at the familiar looming shape of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t spent much time here since Sirius had – since Sirius – and last he knew it was being used as a headquarters for the Order. He was mildly surprised that he had chosen to live somewhere so depressing. 

As he followed Hermione up the steps, he noticed that the house wasn’t quite as terrible as he remembered. The brickwork was less threatening, the gate was less grimy – there were cheerfully coloured curtains in each of the windows. A welcome mat on the top step in front of the door read COME BACK WITH A WARRANT. 

Malfoy let out a snort of involuntary laughter and promptly looked horrified with himself. Hermione looked back with a grin. “That was your Auror graduation present from George,” she said. 

“My present?” said Malfoy faintly. “From a Weasley?”

Hermione’s grin widened. “That’s exactly what you said when he gave it to you,” she said. “You spent about six months testing it for jinxes before Ron finally told you that George just bought it from a Muggle gift shop.”

She unlocked the door with a wave of her wand and went inside. Harry made an after you motion to Malfoy and followed along behind them both. The hallway was far more warmly lit than he recalled. The wall where Walburga Black’s screaming portrait had been permanently stuck was gone entirely, replaced with an airy entryway that opened directly into the living room. The troll’s foot umbrella stand had its toenails brightly painted, and Harry noticed that there were a fair number of umbrellas in it – six black and utilitarian, one sleek and expensive looking, one collapsible Muggle one that looked as if it had been sat on and one violently orange that looked as if it would be the size of a parachute once unfurled.

“Granger,” Malfoy asked quietly, “Who lives here?”

Hermione followed his gaze to the umbrella stand and laughed. “Don’t worry, we don’t have an entire dormitory of people here – I keep bringing those home from work!” She opened her tiny bag and pulled yet another back umbrella out of the depths. She held it over the mouth of the umbrella stand, which obligingly widened enough for her to place the umbrella in amongst the rest.

“At the moment it’s just the three of us, and Ron and Greg,” she said over her shoulder, continuing down the hall to the kitchen. “Pansy lived here for a bit, but she’s in Japan for work at the moment. Neville and Ginny were here too until they got their own place.”

Harry followed Hermione into the kitchen. He assumed Greg was Gregory Goyle, and Pansy must be Pansy Parkinson. Neville and Ginny – he hadn’t seen that coming. He realised with a start that he had not thought once about Ginny since he’d woken up, or about any of his other friends. 

Malfoy seemed too keyed-up to settle in one place. He hovered by a large collage board that took up most of the back wall of the kitchen. The board was thick with overlapping photographs, both Muggle and magic. Harry glanced up at the board – there was him, Ron and Hermione in school robes with their arms thrown around each other; him and the Weasleys at a Christmas lunch all in matching sweaters; Malfoy and Ron at a Quidditch game, Malfoy in blue looking very pleased with himself and Ron in orange looking furious; Malfoy and Goyle in the middle of a Gobstones game; him and Malfoy at the beach, both ferociously sunburned; him and Malfoy in shiny red robes at their Auror graduation; him and Malfoy sightseeing at the Eiffel Tower; him and Malfoy, him and Malfoy, him and Malfoy –

Malfoy sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Hermione handed him a steaming mug of tea, and he took it automatically. He rolled it from side to side between the palms of his hands. WOMEN FEAR ME, FISH WANT ME, said the mug.  

“Greg and Ron are still at work,” Hermione said. “They wanted to be here when you got home, but I owled them both about the memory thing while you were getting discharged so they wouldn’t come and overwhelm you.”

“What do they do, Ron and, er, Greg,” said Harry. He felt very strange saying Goyle’s first name. His last memory of Goyle was on the train back from Hogwarts at the end of the year, where he and the DA had hexed him into slimy oblivion. Harry wondered how they had become civil enough to live together. 

“Greg works with Luna at the stables,” said Hermione, handing down a second cup of tea for Harry in a mug that read NUMBER ONE STEP-GRANDMA!. “Ron works with George at the shop.” She sat down at the table opposite Malfoy. “He was going to start out at Aurors with you, but then he decided he’d had enough of fighting with the war and everything, so he took a gap year to help George out and then never really left.” 

“The shop?” asked Harry with a grin. “So Fred and George really did start a joke shop after all?” 

“They really did,” said Hermione with a distant look on her face. “It’s bigger than Zonko’s now, I think – George is looking into international distribution next.”

“And you, Granger?” asked Malfoy, achingly politely. “Do you work?”

“I’ve been working in potion development,”  said Hermione, proudly. “I was doing advocacy work, but then thought my skills would be better suited to improving the lives of my clients in more immediate ways – last year we developed a formula for Wolfsbane that is stable enough to be sold over the counter at the apothecary.”

Malfoy’s head jerked up. He set his mug down on the kitchen table with a decisive click. “You did what,” he asked, leaning forward with bright eyes. “How? The aconite alone is usually volatile enough to destroy the whole batch if it’s left longer than –”

“– Than eight hours, I know!” said Hermione, animated. “It’s really very exciting, it turned out suspending it in an emulsion of dove’s tears was enough to keep it stable in the short term, and then from there it was a question of experimenting with the brewing until we found a process that could reliably extend the window.” 

Harry turned to look at her, startled. She shrugged. “Draco and I talk about brewing a lot,” she said, half to both of them. “No one else in the house really cares for it, so we’re stuck with each other.” She smiled ruefully. A corner of Malfoy’s mouth tentatively raised in reply.

A photograph had become unstuck from the cluttered board and had fallen face-side down on the kitchen floor. Harry picked it up and brought it over to the table. He took a sip of his tea as he looked at it. 

It was yet another photo of him and Malfoy, side by side in unfamiliar clothing. Malfoy was wearing a velvet robe in mint green with a paisley pattern picked out in swirls of mustard yellow. Harry had on blue jeans and a soft-looking black button up stamped with a pattern that he did not recognise. Malfoy had his arms crossed and was leaning against Harry’s shoulder, looking up into his face. As the picture moved, Malfoy bent down and whispered something in photo-Harry’s ear that made him throw back his head with laughter.  

For a split second, Harry felt weirdly jealous of the easy joy that was clearly written on his past self’s face. 

“Am I wearing eyeliner?” asked Malfoy faintly.

“Probably,” said Hermione. “You had a bit of a phase that year – Pansy really got you into it.”

Malfoy opened his mouth as if to say something, and then thought the better of it and closed it again. He took a sip of tea for something to do, and did an immediate double take between Hermione and the cup. 

“You’ve told me at length about how you take your tea,” Hermione said fondly. “Bag in for forty-five seconds, lemon, no sugar – and I think the exact words were, ‘wave the milk above the tea cup if you must, Hermione, but for Merlin’s sake don’t pour any in or it will be ruined.’ Does that sound about right?”

Malfoy took another grudging sip of the tea and stared into the mug as if it had betrayed him.

Harry thought it best to change the subject. “Look,” he said. He fell silent as both Hermione and Malfoy turned to him expectantly. He took a fortifying gulp of tea. “Look,” he said again. “Hermione, I know you can’t tell us everything we’ve forgotten because that might screw up the whole memory thing, but is there anything you can tell us? Anything we need to know about how we got here?”

Hermione sighed. “I knew you’d be asking that,” she said. She reached into her bag again and pulled out a pad of paper. The front page of the pad had a list written in orderly bullet points. “I wrote this out while you were sleeping in the cab. There’s not too much detail because I didn’t want to influence your memory formation, but I thought there is some stuff you need to know. Here.” She tore the page off the pad, alongside the second blank page. She tapped both with her wand, and the writing from the first page neatly lifted up and copied itself onto the second piece of paper. She handed one copy each to Harry and Draco.

Harry pulled the paper towards him and began to read. It said:

Harry and Draco – Important information re: 1996-2006!

• War ended in 1998; Voldemort dead (permanently dead);
• H + D took NEWTs by correspondence and went straight into Auror training;
• Narcissa and Lucius moved to France in 2005 – Lucius is unwell but stable, D moved into Grimmauld (Lucius spent 6 months in Azkaban after his trial at the end of the war – the Healers are researching to see if his illness could be related to that);
• Your current case is some sort of potions ring, but you don’t really talk about it at home;
• Yes, you really are quite good friends.

Harry turned the paper over in the hope there would be more information on the back. There was not. “Is that it?” he asked hopefully.

Hermione wrinkled her nose in apology. “I know it’s not much, but at least it’s something,” she said. 

“My father is sick?” asked Malfoy, still bent over the paper. 

“Yes – the Healers aren’t sure what it is, but he’s doing well I think,” Hermione said. “Narcissa asked if you would Floo them tonight to check in, I’m sure she can fill you in.”

Malfoy nodded jerkily.

Hermione sighed. “It’s late. Why don’t we all get some rest and deal with this tomorrow.”

As soon as the thought of bed entered Harry’s mind, a wave of exhaustion swept over him. “Rest sounds great,” he said. 

Harry and Malfoy simultaneously pushed back their chairs and stood up at the same time. “Night, Hermione,” said Harry.

“Goodnight Harry, Draco,” she said. “Sleep well. Your rooms are upstairs, you won’t be able to miss them. I’ll tell Greg and Ron to be in for dinner tomorrow if you can make it?”

Harry nodded. “Sounds good.” 

He left the kitchen and wandered back down the corridor. He wasn’t sure where his room was, so he headed up the stairs to Sirius’ room as a starting point. As soon as he opened the door, he knew this was where he lived. The room had been re-painted in soft blues and whites. There was a big wooden-framed bed under the window, and a section of the ceiling had been Charmed transparent as a skylight. A small painting of a black dog, and wolf, and a stag hung over a fireplace, which had a Charmed fire that was already merrily burning. The animals in the painting were sleeping, and Harry couldn’t tell if the painting was magical or not. Harry could see an old Gryffindor scarf flung over the back of a chair. A broom was propped up against the windowsill. Harry didn’t think he had ever had a space that was so clearly and wonderfully his own.

Harry heard a floorboard in the corridor creak. He looked back out of his room to check what had made the sound, and saw Malfoy arrested in the doorway of the room on the opposite side of the hall. He could see around the edge of the door frame that the room was the one that had belonged to Regulus. It was very clear that the room was now Malfoy’s. The walls were still painted in deep Slytherin green and silver, but the Black crest and decorations had been removed and replaced with a beautifully crafted wooden bed and matching dresser. A soft green rug carpeted the hardwood floor, an embroidered snake lazily slithered around the rug’s border.

“All right, Malfoy?” Harry asked warily.

“Yes, fine,” snapped Malfoy, turning around to face him. Harry raised his hands, palms up in surrender. Malfoy blew out a breath and thudded his head back against the wall in frustration. “I’m fine,” he said again, slowly. “I’m… I apologise. This has been a lot to take in.”

Harry smiled ruefully. “Tell me about it,” he said.

Malfoy let out a short humourless laugh. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure you can’t possibly imagine what it was like to wake up in a stinking basement with your worst enemy, only to then find out that you have both been kidnapped, and that you’ve both forgotten the last ten years, and that not only are you Aurors but that the two of you work together and live together and apparently do everything except piss together –”

“Hey, we might do that too,” said Harry, seriously, “I definitely don’t remember that bit though.”

Malfoy laughed again. It sounded more real this time.

“And I think ‘worst enemy’ is really a bit harsh,” Harry continued. “I mean, I only really had one of them and it sounds like he’s dead now, which is a bit of a relief if I’m being honest.”

“Point taken, Potter,” said Malfoy quietly. “I’m glad of that too, for what it’s worth.”

There was an almost companionable silence.

“Truce, then?” asked Harry, holding out his hand. Malfoy stared at it. For a terribly long moment, Harry thought he wouldn’t take it. A second before he decided to cut his losses and drop his hand, Malfoy’s pale fingers closed over his.

“I’m going to Floo Mother,” said Malfoy quietly, still grasping his hand. “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

“See you, Malfoy,” said Harry. This close, he could see flecks of blue in Malfoy’s grey eyes. He then realised that he and Malfoy were now effectively holding hands again, and he dropped Malfoy’s hand suddenly. “See you!” he said again as he retreated back into his own room and closed the door behind him. 

As Harry got into bed, he thought about the look on Malfoy’s face – as if he’d seen something he wasn’t expecting, and was pleasantly surprised. Before he could turn this over in his mind, the exhaustion of the day caught him and he slid into sleep.

XXXXXXX

Harry and Malfoy headed to the Ministry first thing the next afternoon. Harry had planned to leave as soon as he woke up in the morning, but it turned out that recovering from a concussion made him sleep like the dead. 

Harry thought it would be a great idea to catch the tube. It turned out that this was an exercise in frustration given Malfoy couldn’t remember ever using the tube before, and Harry’s knowledge was ten years out of date. 

After a confusing bit of back and forth with the official at the wand-weighing station (Malfoy’s wand appeared to have picked up on the fact that he didn’t recognise it, and seemed upset about it), they finally got in the lift and up to the floors that held the Auror offices.

The lift opened up on the Auror departments’ open foyer. An empty reception desk faced the lift’s entrance, and an enormous bullpen of desks piled high with various stacks of paper and miscellanea stretched out behind it. Harry assumed this must be where the trainees worked. A large door with a gold plaque that read HEAD AUROR was set into the wall at the back of the office, and a corridor lined with doors bearing smaller plaques continued out of sight on either side. 

Harry stepped out of the lift and glanced around. He was surprised that the office was entirely empty.

“No one’s here because it’s a Sunday,” said Malfoy, striding forward past the reception desk and towards Robards’ office. “Now come on, let’s get this over with.”

Harry followed, weaving between the desks in the bullpen. He took particular care to sidestep some slime that had dripped out of an envelope balanced on a filing cabinet and pooled in a small puddle on the ground. The puddle was smoking gently. Harry thought it might be corroding a hole in the carpet.

Malfoy reached the door first. It was ajar. He raised his hand to knock, but before his hand made contact with the door, it swung open, leaving Malfoy with his fist awkwardly lifted in the empty air.

“Malfoy, Potter,” said Auror Robards. “Come.”

Harry and Malfoy went.

Robards was sitting at his desk with an open file in front of him. Two chairs had been placed in front of the desk. Robards motioned for them to sit. As he did, Harry had a wave of deja vu so strong he had to hold on to the arms of the chair. Malfoy looked over at him in alarm and kicked him in the leg.

“Ow!”

Robards frowned at him from over the file.

“Sorry sir,” said Harry, hastily. “I just mean, is this – do we…” He trailed off and gestured at the chairs and the room in general.

Robards put the file down. “Yes, Potter,” he sighed. “This is not the first time you and your partner have needed to sit down with me in this office to discuss an issue with one of your  cases. The two of you have one of the highest solve rates, but everything you touch tends to turn to disaster one way or the other.”

He gave Harry a stern look. Harry tried to look appropriately contrite. Malfoy looked oddly pleased.

Robards flipped to the front of the file and turned it so that it was facing them. “This is the case you are working on,” he said, pushing the file towards them. “There has been a mystery illness striking victims at random. It has been hard to track because the symptoms are never exactly the same, and there is not a clear link between all the victims. Your working theory is that there is a potions ring behind this, but you have not got a solid suspect. You did have a recent lead –”

“Let me guess,” said Malfoy, head craned forward to read the file notes. “The lead was about memory loss.” 

“Got it in one, Malfoy,” said Robards. 

Malfoy didn’t reply, engrossed in the file. His brow was furrowed, and his hair had fallen into his eyes, which flickered back and forth as he continued to read. Harry peered over his shoulder. The densely printed writing was too small and far away for him to make out. He did notice a small animated doodle in the margin of a ferret pulling the finger. It was quite detailed. 

“Since you’re here you may as well look at the rest of your notes and see if any of it jogs your memories,” said Robards, pushing their file further towards the edge of the desk so that Malfoy had to grab it before it fell to the floor. “Your office is in the left corridor, they’re organised alphabetically.” Robards turned in his chair and picked up another file from a pile on the shelf behind him. He turned back to place it on his desk and saw that Harry and Malfoy were still watching him. “Well?” he asked. “Are you waiting for your engraved invitation? Dismissed!”

Harry stood and sketched out a small nod of a bow. He hauled Malfoy up by the back of his robes from where he was still hunched over reading the file and frog-marched him to the door. “Thank you, sir!” called Harry back over his shoulder as he hurried them out. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

Malfoy fell into step behind him as Harry walked down the corridor, checking name plates as he went. “What a thoroughly unpleasant man,” he said with a sniff.

Harry grinned. “I don’t know,” he said, “I think we must have joined the Aurors for his respect and mentorship.” He looked up at Malfoy from the corner of his eye and could have sworn he saw Malfoy hide a smirk.

About halfway down the corridor, Harry came to a sudden stop. Between JOHNSON & TURPIN and MCLAGGEN & PETERSON was MALFOY & POTTER. “I can’t believe we have an office,” he breathed.

“I can’t believe we have an office,” Malfoy replied. “Let’s take a look then.” He turned the handle of the door and pushed it open.

The office was divided into two very clear halves with two heavy wooden desks set against the back wall on either side of a window. Half of the office looked like a bomb had been dropped. Harry saw teetering piles of paperwork balanced on the desk on the left, more piles of parchment stacked haphazardly on the ground, and a large cork board on the wall covered in photos and pages of notes with small glittering threads moving between the pictures of their own accord. 

The other half of the office was cluttered but orderly. The desk held just as much paperwork as the one on the right, but it was organised into neat trays. A translucent filing cabinet was tucked away in the corner. A flock of small origami birds had perched on top of  the cabinet and were busy preening each other. One with “READ AND SIGN ASAP PLEASE” printed neatly along one wing flitted over towards Harry and helpfully nudged Harry’s hand towards a quill. 

Each desk had a small silver nameplate set into the right corner. Harry, who knew his organisational shortcomings, had a fair idea of which side of the office was his but bent forward to read the nameplates anyway. 

POINTY WANKER, proclaimed the nameplate on the neat desk in Harry’s own scrawled handwriting. He cracked a smile and looked at the other one. SPECCY GIT, it read, in flawless copperplate that Harry assumed belonged to Malfoy. 

Harry approached the desk to have a closer look at the papers. A stack in the middle of the desk had a cover sheet helpfully labelled ??????. He flipped over the first few pages. There were several photos of confused looking wizards, some of whom he recognised and some he didn’t. Each photo was followed by several pages of medical notes describing sudden-onset confusion, various types of  illness and in all cases, memory loss. “I think I’ve found my notes,” he told Malfoy, picking the papers up. As he did so, a news clipping fluttered out of the stack and drifted to the floor. It was an article reporting on former Minister Pius Thicknesse’s recent mental decline and admission to the long term Spell Damage ward at St Mungo’s. 

Malfoy bent to pick it up. “We must have thought he was one of the victims,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “But that doesn’t make any sense, he still works at the Ministry – he’d be having everything checked by the potion wards on his office.”

“Yeah, of course,” agreed Harry. Thankfully the next piece of paper in his stack had said Ministry potion wards? bypass?? He had no idea what kind of wards the Ministry had, and was vaguely surprised that Malfoy did – perhaps his father had mentioned it to him.

Harry winced as a stabbing pain lanced behind his eye, leaving him vaguely nauseous. He rubbed his forehead. Malfoy looked up at him warily. “That wasn’t your –?” he asked, tracing a lightning bolt on his own forehead. 

Harry shook his head. “Nah, that hasn’t hurt since we woke up,” he said. “I think it’s just the after-effects of whatever this was.”

Malfoy nodded decisively, and swept the file and Harry’s papers into a satchel that had been hung over the back of his desk. “Let’s take these and go back home then,” he said. “I for one do not want to be late for whatever Granger has planned for dinner.”

Harry, who had never seen either Hermione or Ron cook anything more complex than toast, was not entirely sure he agreed.

XXXXXXX

Dinner was terrible. 

“Can you pass the peas please, Weasley,” asked Malfoy.

“Ah – yes, of course,” said Ron. 

The peas were passed.

Malfoy took some with a painful scrape of cutlery on china. “Thank you,” he said.

“Y’welcome,” replied Ron through a mouthful of potato. He looked across the table to Greg desperately. Greg met his eyes and hastily shoved some potato in his own mouth. 

Hermione smiled at him. “This is lovely, thank you Greg,” she said.

“Yes, very good!” added Harry. “Er, yum yum.” 

Malfoy looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

“Thanks Harry,” said Goyle, clapping him on the back with an enormous hand. Harry coughed and nearly inhaled a pea. 

Ron threw down his cutlery and pushed back his seat.  Every head in the room turned to him as if attached on a swivel. He went to the kitchen cabinets and started rifling through them.

“This is more awkward than the last time we had your parents over for tea,” he said to Malfoy, discarding two bottles of cooking sherry and a pitcher of apple cider vinegar. “Aha!” He emerged from the cabinet triumphant with an enormous bottle of Firewhisky and five small glasses.

He sat back down at the table and poured out five measures. “We are going to drink this until you” – he pointed at Malfoy – “stop being so weirdly fucking nice, and until you” – he pointed at Harry – “stop looking at Greg like he’s going to bite you.”

Harry glanced guiltily over at Goyle, who was avoiding his eyes. Harry felt a bit sheepish.

“Cheers, then,” said Hermione, throwing back her drink. Ron followed suit. Greg picked his up and gave it a sip, large pinky finger extended delicately.

“Potter.” Malfoy held up his glass to Harry. 

“Malfoy,” replied Harry, clinking his own against it. They downed their drinks together. 

Ron poured them out another. Then several more.

Once the Firewhisky had been emptied until all that remained was a scant finger at the bottom of the bottle, Harry felt like he had let out a deep and painful breath he had not realised he was holding. The room had softened and gone fuzzy at the edges. He looked around at the others, warm with contentment.

Malfoy and Ron seemed to be having a great time yelling at each other about Quidditch. Every time it seemed as if they might be winding down, Hermione made a helpful comment that seemed to set them off again.

“THIS IS THE CANNONS’ YEAR” roared Ron, standing on the table with one foot in the butter dish. 

“I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW OLD I AM AND I KNOW IT’S NOT THE CANNONS’ YEAR,” Malfoy howled back at him, also standing on the table.

Hermione moved the peas out of his way. “I read that the Tutshill Tornadoes really need new talent next season though,” she said mildly. “Gosh, I wonder if anyone has any opinions about that?”

“DO I, FUCK,” bellowed Ron, before bodily tackling Malfoy off the table and onto the floor. Their landing was softened by a Cushioning Charm cast by Greg, who seemed completely unfazed by the ruckus unfolding in front of him.

Harry was not entirely sure whether this was a good-natured scuffle or if Ron and Malfoy were actually trying to kill each other. He was not sure if they could tell either. 

“It’s nice to have things a bit more back to normal,” said Hermione, fondly looking on. Ron had Malfoy by the back of his robes and was trying to stuff the rest of the mashed potatoes down his neck, while Malfoy looked like he was doing his level best to choke Ron out with the table cloth.

“This happens every time we all drink,” Goyle told Harry. “We have a running tally, look.” He pointed to a chart pinned to the bottom of the photo board that Harry had seen the day before. Malfoy and Ron’s columns both had an approximately even number of tally marks. “They did get a bit carried away once and we had to replace the table,” continued Goyle, “But really that was for the best. The old table was too big for the room anyway.”

Harry noticed that there was a smaller, third column on the chart labelled, “the Dining Table”. It had one bold mark, followed by “HAHAHA!” written in Harry’s handwriting. It was still a shock every time he had a reminder that past-him had lived ten years of a life that he couldn’t remember – jokes, traditions, dining table fight clubs. It was a lot.

“We really are all friends,” Harry said, wonderingly. 

Goyle smiled through a mouthful of peas. 

A thought occurred to Harry. “Hang on,” he said. “Do I call you ‘Greg’?”

“Usually,” Goyle – Greg – answered. “You still call Draco ‘Malfoy’ though.”

Hermione nodded from where she had slid down in her chair. “Yeah,” she said. “You called him Draco once, but it was really weird.”

Harry looked down at where Malfoy was lying on the floor next to Ron, covered in potato. Malfoy looked back at him. His eyes were very bright. “Draco,” Harry said, experimentally. 

“Harry,” Malfoy said in reply. 

They both winced.

“No, that’s just –”

“ – You’re ‘Potter’ in my head, I don’t think –”

Ron laughed delightedly. “This is how it went the first time!” he said. 

Harry grinned at Malfoy. After a beat, Malfoy smiled back at him. Harry realised this was the first time he had ever seen him genuinely smile. Malfoy’s whole face opened up in a way that Harry found it hard to look at directly. A strange feeling bubbled up in his stomach, but he resolved not to think about it too hard – it was probably just the Firewhisky. 

XXXXXXX

Harry spent the next week bored out of his mind. He could not remember a time in his life where he had not been frantically stressed about something – the Dursleys, Voldemort, exams, his own imminent death – he guessed the last one fit into the general ‘Voldemort’ category. He had owled Healer Osman on the second day to say that he really did feel much better, thanks, and could he please go back to work, and received the firm response that his letter was appreciated, but that it would be best for him to take the rest of the week to make sure he was fully recovered and to mitigate the risk that his brain could leak out of his ears. Harry did not send a follow up letter.

He spent most of his time exploring the house, trying to see if anything would jog a memory. It was far bigger than he remembered. The house was a maze of narrow corridors that led to nowhere in particular, and various doors that either didn’t open at all or opened into different parts of the house at random. One door in particular never seemed to open into the same room twice. 

On one of his ventures into the depths of the house, Harry found a cavernous room above the library that seemed to have been turned into a training room. Cloth dummies were fixed to the floor at one end of the room. An array of wooden staves and crash mats were propped up against one wall, and a display case of ancient-looking weapons were mounted on the other. Harry approached them to have a better look, and noticed that the heavy-looking mace at the center of the case was crusted with what was either rust or long-dried blood. 

Veering away from the creepy cabinet, Harry noticed another tally chart pinned to the wall. It was labelled “FIGHTS” and divided into two simple columns for “Potter” and “Malfoy”. There were so many marks in each column that a second sheet of paper had been tacked up underneath the first. Each column had an identical number of tally marks. The final mark in Harry’s column glowed green.

It seemed to Harry that this was the perfect test to see if he and Malfoy should be cleared to go back to work before he died of boredom. 

He hunted through the house, and finally found Malfoy in the sitting room on his knees in front of the fire. It was flickering with the characteristic green of a Floo call, and Harry recognised Mrs Malfoy’s face in the flames. He realised to his shame that he had forgotten about Malfoy’s parents completely.

Malfoy turned and saw him as he entered the room. “Mother, this is Harry Potter,” he said. “I don’t know that you have been formally introduced.” 

“Er, nice to meet you, ma’am,” said Harry to the regal face in the flames.

Mrs Malfoy gave him a speaking look. Harry could tell there was a subtext that he was absolutely missing. “And you, Mr Potter,” she murmured. “We have been reacquainted already, but I understand that you are not currently in possession of your full faculties.”

Harry shifted his weight on his feet. “That’s one way to put it,” he allowed. “And how is, er, Mr Malfoy?”

Mrs Malfoy’s face kept its cool expression. “He is – not well, but I thank you for asking,” she said smoothly. “He is not himself at present.” 

Harry saw Malfoy’s shoulders drop as if pressed down by a great weight.

“Draco, please do not lose hope,” Mrs Malfoy said quietly, her eyes fixed on her son. “Today was a good day for your father. He recognised me and I was able to show him photos of you without upsetting him further. The Healers think that is a good sign for an eventual recovery.”

Harry did not know what to say. He did not know if either Malfoy remembered he was in the room. 

“I’ll let you know if there is any change, Draco,” Mrs Malfoy said. She reached out one hand as if to touch Malfoy through the fire, but let it drop. “We’ll talk soon.”

Malfoy bowed his head. “Thank you, Mother,” he said. “Goodbye.” 

Mrs Malfoy’s face disappeared in a fall of sparks. The fire dimmed to emerald embers.  

Malfoy cleared his throat and rose to his feet, brushing off his robes as he did so. “Well, Potter,” he said briskly. “Not that it has not been wonderful to have you hear all about my family’s affairs, but there must have been some deeply important reason for you to interrupt a private Floo call.” There were two spots of colour high on his cheeks. He would not meet Harry’s eyes. 

“Well, yes, actually,” said Harry awkwardly. “I found some kind of sparring room up by the attic, and it looks like we use it to fight, a lot, and so I was wondering if you wanted to have a go at it with me so that we can go back to work if our brains don’t explode while we’re at it?” He finished his sentence all in a rush. Privately, Harry thought it might also cheer Malfoy up if he got to punch Harry in the face a little.

Malfoy bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Oh yes,” he said. “By all means, show the way.” He bowed from the waist and gestured for Harry to lead on.

Harry obliged, and led Malfoy back up the staircase in silence until they reached the cavernous training room. Malfoy prowled around the edges of the room, inspecting the weapons cabinet with obvious delight. 

Harry waited for him in the center of the room. Malfoy came to a stop two feet in front of him.

“Remember the last time we duelled, Potter?” he asked. “I think I won that one.”

Harry grinned. “Not according to that chart you didn’t,” he said, pointing over at the tally chart on the wall.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Those don’t count if neither of us remember them.”

Harry and Malfoy began to circle each other. 

“Rules?” asked Harry.

“I did read our Auror handbook,” Malfoy offered.

“Anything important?”

Malfoy grinned a wolfish grin. “Not really.” He whipped his wand at Harry without warning and a jet of red light shot towards him. Harry deflected it and it hit the wall with a loud bang. 

“If that’s how you want it,” Harry agreed, advancing on Malfoy slowly.

Malfoy feinted to the left, and Harry threw a curse at him without thinking. It boiled out of his wand in a yellow cloud that he did not recognise and Malfoy barely managed to roll under it. 

“Where did you learn that one,” Malfoy panted with delight. “Well done, Potter!” He twisted his wand in a strange figure-eight shape, and a thick chain fountained out of the end of it. Harry tried to dodge but it caught him around the ankle and pulled him over. He managed to sever the end of the chain before it dragged him back over to Malfoy, but the end wrapped around his ankle still tugged at him gently before it finally fell limp. Harry shook it off and rolled back to his feet fluidly. 

It was strange. He didn’t know how to fight, how to really fight beyond schoolbook jinxes or easy shields, but it was clear that his body hadn’t forgotten. He consciously let his body relax, and found himself settling into what was clearly a familiar stance.

Malfoy stalked towards him. Harry tracked him with his eyes and didn’t move. 

“According to the rulebook, you should never cast a curse in the field if you don’t know exactly what it does,” Malfoy said, in the prim tones of a professor.

Harry laughed without taking his eyes off him. “When has that ever stopped you?”

“Exactly never,” said Malfoy. He threw three quick spells at Harry in swift succession. Harry dove underneath them and tackled Malfoy to the ground. Malfoy’s wand clattered to the floor. Harry kicked it away from them and got his arm around Malfoy’s neck.

“The Auror rulebook also says you should never physically restrain an opponent if you have the option of non-violently using your wand,” gasped Malfoy from where Harry had him in a headlock.

“Sod the rulebook,” said Harry, elbowing him in the throat. Malfoy gasped out a laugh and bit him on the harm hard enough that Harry yelped and let go. Malfoy rolled them over and tried to punch Harry in the face, but Harry blocked it with the clear ease of practice. It seemed like their bodies remembered each other even if their waking minds could not.

Malfoy scrambled away from him and staggered to his feet. He reached out a hand and wandlessly Summoned his wand. It smacked into his palm and he stared at it, nonplussed. “Did you know I could do that?” he asked.

Harry shook his head. He hadn’t known they could do any of this.

With a loud clang, both he and Malfoy were knocked off their feet as a solid-looking transparent shield sprang into existence between them. Harry couldn’t tell where it had come from, or if it was an automatic function of the room. 

“What do you both think you are doing,” cried Hermione from the doorway in answer to his silent question, wand out and arms akimbo. “What happened to taking it easy while you recovered your memories!”

Harry looked at Malfoy, who had propped himself up on his elbows. There was sweat gleaming in the hollow of his throat. Harry absentmindedly wondered what it would be like to lick it off. 

His thoughts juddered to a screeching halt.

He ran the thought back again. Where had that come from? It did not feel new or particularly sudden – in fact, the part of this that was the most surprising was how unsurprised he actually felt.

“Well, I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything else,” drawled Malfoy. “You, Potter?”

Harry shook his head mutely. His thoughts were entirely blank. Several things resettled in his mind along these new lines. It was as if he had been looking at one of those optical illusion paintings where you tilted a picture of a skull upside down and suddenly saw a duck. Harry was not sure if he was the skull or the duck. 

“Oh you two are just the worst,” huffed Hermione, completely oblivious to Harry’s crisis of identity. “I thought you might stop egging each other on if you couldn’t remember how to talk to each other, but no, of course I could never be so lucky!” She banished the shield wall with a flick of her wand and stomped off down the corridor, still complaining as she went. “On your own heads be it,” she threw back at them over her shoulder, “And since we’re talking about possible brain damage, I mean that literally!” 

The quiet of the room was broken only by the sounds of their harsh panting, which slowed as they caught their breath. A quiet “ping” sounded from over by the weapons case, and Harry looked up in time to see half a tally mark etch itself on each side of their score chart. 

“A draw, then,” said Malfoy. “Well, there’s always next time.”

Harry murmured an assent. He wondered if this was just an aftereffect of the concussion. Did he even like blokes? He thought about it for a second, just hypothetically, if he would even want to – oh yes he would. He cut the thought off and flushed a dull red. 

Malfoy levered himself to his feet and limped over to Harry. Harry looked up at him. He was horrified to realise that he still thought Malfoy was handsome even when he was staring up his nostrils. 

It took him a moment to notice that Malfoy was holding down a hand for him. He shook his head to banish the confusing thoughts and let Malfoy pull him to his feet. 

“Back into the office tomorrow, then?” he said, resolving to ignore past-Harry’s unhelpful feelings for as long as he possibly could.

Malfoy smiled. 

Harry felt his resolve wither. 

“I thought you’d never ask, Potter,” he said. Malfoy turned on his heel and strode out of the room. 

Harry promptly sat back down on the floor and valiantly pretended not to watch him go. 

XXXXXXX

Malfoy and Harry strode into the Auror office like they meant it, shoulder to shoulder with their crisp Auror robes billowing.

Harry nodded at the witch at the reception desk, who gave him a startled nod in response. It was early enough that the office was still mostly empty.

They made straight for their office. 

“If we were close enough to the answer that someone thought they had to take us out of commission, we can solve it again,” said Harry decisively. He stopped in front of the board at the back of the office that mapped out their picture of the case, and Engorged it with a poke of his wand until it covered the wall. 

Malfoy scanned the board, his eyes focussing on the connections being made and remade by the moving golden threads. “It looks like we were tracking something,” he murmured. “If we can just find it again…” he trailed off as he traced the path of one golden thread with a long finger.

Harry flicked through the notes he had taken about potential suspects. They had narrowed it down to someone with considerable skill in potions, likely with a lot of money and the connections to use that money to obtain highly illegal ingredients. It looked like it had been tricky to figure out a motive – the victims were a mixture of suspected former Death Eaters, Ministry officials and everyday civilians, both pure-blood and otherwise. The one clear thread of correlation was that every victim had been connected to the war in some way, and at some point. Harry wasn’t sure where that left them in terms of a suspect, though. 

“Hey, Harry!”

A head of golden curls poked through the door. Harry vaguely recognised it as belonging to an upper-year Gryffindor, but he could not quite put a face to the name. The face belonged to a man who was tall and broad and slightly sweaty.

“Good to see you back in the office,” he said. “You both have your memories back then?”

Harry smiled regretfully. “Not quite, er–?”

“Oh yes, Cormac McLaggen – sorry, I thought you would have remembered me from school.”

Malfoy turned and raised his eyebrows. “Of course we do,” he lied smoothly. “The rest of the memories should come back in time, but the Healers have cleared us to come back into the office while we wait.”

McLaggen nodded. “Very good, very good, that’s great news.” He knocked his hand against the doorframe. “Well, let me know if you figure anything out, or if I can give you a hand with anything – everyone’s keen for you to catch this guy.”

“Will do,” said Harry, raising his hand in farewell as McLaggen backed out of the doorway and headed back to his own office. Harry turned back to the bulletin board.

Malfoy was inspecting an address that had been circled in red ink. “They traced back the Portkey at St Mungo’s, and our origin point matches this address,” he said. 

“We could go and scout it out?” offered Harry. “See if there’s anything left behind that shows how we ended up in the basement?”

Malfoy smiled. “Apparently it’s not Auror protocol to inspect a possible crime scene without the appropriate paperwork,” he said. 

“Do you think that’s ever stopped us before?” Harry asked.

“Frankly, no.” said Malfoy. 

“Good thing we haven’t taken off our cloaks yet.” 

He and Malfoy turned as one and headed back out the door of their office. 

“Going so soon?” asked McLaggen as they passed him in the corridor.

“We just have some leads to follow up on,” said Harry without breaking stride. “We’ll fill you in on anything important when we get back.” 

Harry and Malfoy arrived at the Portkey counter in the main Atrium. A wizard with bushy white hair and a bushier moustache looked up at them. He raised his moustache in greeting.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked, peering over half-moon spectacles.

Harry handed him the paper with the address printed on it. “Can we please have a Portkey to the street outside this address?” he asked. 

“Certainly,” said the man. He dug through the drawer under the counter and pulled out a small china poodle with a cracked tail. He tapped it with his wand and said “Portus.”

Malfoy nodded his thanks and reached forward to take it. Harry hastily grabbed him by the arm. The hem of his robe caught against something behind him and he tugged it free.

“Er, thanks,” he said. “Bye!”

With a jerk, the Portkey carried them away and out of the Ministry. Harry landed gracelessly half on the curb and half in the gutter outside an old building made of stone. He staggered to keep his feet. Malfoy spun into existence beside him and effortlessly kept his balance, the bastard.

Harry looked up at the structure in front of them. It looked like an old wizarding family’s house that had not been occupied in some years. It was at the end of a winding country lane, and the Portkey had helpfully deposited them right in front of the open gate. No other dwellings were in sight. 

Harry took a careful step forward to get a better look. The house’s windows were shuttered. The garden looked neat, but Harry could smell the staleness of the long-term stasis spell that was keeping it in check. The words ADOCAN HOUSE were set into the lintel above the door in letters of black stone. Harry did not recognise the name.

“I’ve never been here before,” he said to Malfoy in a hushed voice.

Malfoy was frowning. “I have, when I was a child,” he said. He paced forward. “Adocan House,” he said slowly. “Why is that name familiar?”

“Is that an old wizarding family?” Harry asked.

“Yes and no,” said Malfoy. He was still looking up at the house, deep in thought. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” he said. “Adocan was one of the ancient families – they’re all long gone now though, and I think their holdings were passed on to –” He broke off suddenly with a look of horror on his face. “Duck!” he hissed.

Harry threw himself to the ground without any hesitation. An ominous bolt of purple light split the air where his head had been and melted the gate-post in front of him.

“McLaggen,” spat Malfoy furiously, going for his wand.

“Malfoy,” replied McLaggen, shrugging off an invisibility cloak. “I should have expected that the Aurors’ golden pair would crack the case twice.” His eyes were wide and wild, and his teeth were bared in a snarl. “I was hoping you’d kill each other when you woke up down there.” McLaggen cast a shred of red fabric to the side – Harry recognised it as the torn corner of his robe. 

Harry stayed down, reaching for his wand infinitesimally slowly, his movements hidden by the fall of his robes.

“Cormac,” he said. “Why are you doing this? What’s the plan here?”

“Yes, Cormac,” sneered Malfoy, levelling his wand at him. “Give us a good old-fashioned villain monologue, why don’t you.”

McLaggen let out a bark of mad laughter. “Villain,” he spat, “I’m not the villain here!” His eyes were laser focused on Malfoy’s wand. He had not noticed that Harry nearly had his own wand shimmied out of its holster – Harry just needed a few more seconds.

Suddenly, McLaggen cut his eyes over to Harry. Harry froze.

“You don’t remember what it was like,” McLaggen implored. “The war was over, but so many of them got away with it.” He advanced on Harry, a feverish light in his eyes. “Death Eaters and their accomplices – anyone and everyone could just claim the Imperius and get away with murder.” He came to a stop and stooped down in front of Harry. “Followers of Voldemort who never took the Mark – and even some that did –” He cut his eyes up at Malfoy, who stood transfixed. 

“Go on,” said Harry, quietly. He wanted to keep him talking until he could think of what to do next, until he had a chance to do something, anything.

“I wanted to tell you, I was sure you of all people would understand,” McLaggen whispered to him. “But fucking Malfoy was always around and I could never get you alone – you even live with him for Merlin’s sake!”

“There were trials,” said Malfoy, looking beautiful and furious. “The guilty got what they deserved according to our law.”

“I don’t care about what the law said, I care about justice,” hissed McLaggen, whirling up from his crouched position. “They said they couldn’t remember what they did, did they? Then let them forget! Let them forget that and everything else!”

“Cormac, a lot of the people you’ve hurt really were under the Imperius,” Harry said. His wand was nearly in his hand now. 

McLaggen didn’t seem to have heard him. He turned on Malfoy, who smoothly stepped back. “You started to notice something about your father’s condition, so I thought I’d hit you too,” he spat. He spun back to Harry furiously. “If you really think the Malfoys don’t deserve what’s coming to them, then you deserve the same!”

“How did you get the potions in past the Ministry wards, then?” Malfoy asked conversationally. “That was quite clever.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” said McLaggen, distracted. “I didn’t bring it into the Ministry itself, I just spelled it to the Floo connection. As soon as someone left the Ministry, if I knew where they were going, I could just – poof!” He twirled his fingers beside his ear. “No more memories!”

Harry finally had a grip on his wand. He looked up at Malfoy. One he mouthed. Malfoy quirked an eyebrow in wordless understanding.

– Two –

“This time I think I’ll need to do something more long term – maybe ten years just wasn’t long enough,” said McLaggen. “I hear the Spell Damage beds at St Mungo’s are nice and comfortable, maybe they’ll give you the bed next to old Thicknesse–”

– Three! – 

Harry leapt to his feet and threw a curse at McLaggen as Malfoy did the same. Somehow McLaggen managed to duck out of the way, and the curses collided with a deafening crack. 

McLaggen leapt backwards. “Oh, tricky!” he cried. “Here, I’ve got one you won’t remember!” He swung his wand around his head and a jet of light shot out, headed straight for Malfoy before forking out and streaking towards Harry too.

Harry dove back behind the melted gate. The curse bounced back off the gate and snapped back into a single bolt of light. Malfoy spun out of its way and set McLaggen’s cloak on fire. 

McLaggen swore and dissipated the curse with a jerk of his wand. “Aguamenti!” he hissed, furiously trying to wriggle out of his burning cloak and extinguish it with the water jetting from his wand at the same time. 

Harry pointed his wand at his back while he was distracted “Incarcerous!” Thick ropes wound their way around McLaggen, binding his arms to his sides and forcing him to drop his wand. His cloak smouldered in a sad, wet pile at his feet. 

McLaggen began to laugh. “You can’t arrest me, you know,” he said gleefully. “If you take me in, I’ll never tell you how to get your memories back!” 

Harry came to stand beside Malfoy in front of their bound prisoner. McLaggen swayed slightly, held up by the ropes. “Of course, if you let me go, I’ll give you everything you want,” he said. “I’ll even help you get your father’s memory back.” His wide eyes bored into Malfoy’s. “But if I’m rotting away in Azkaban, what use is it to me to help a Death Eater?”

Malfoy let out a gusty sigh. Harry glanced at him in alarm. There was something in that sigh that raised a prickle of memory in his hindbrain.

“I guess there’s nothing for it then,” said Malfoy, dramatically. McLaggen grinned in triumph. Harry took a large step back without really thinking about why.

“I’m very sorry Potter, but we’ll have to make some new memories,” Malfoy continued, before punching McLaggen hard in the face. 

McLaggen dropped like a stone. 

Harry looked at Malfoy. Malfoy looked back. Harry started to laugh helplessly. 

“I know that looked really cool,” said Malfoy, cradling his arm to his chest, “but I think I’ve broken my hand. Can we go to St Mungo’s now?” He gestured to the silver ring that he was still wearing. “Shall we?”

“Of course,” said Harry. He grasped the still bound form of McLaggen firmly by the ropes around his chest, and held on to Malfoy’s robes with his free hand. He hid a smile. New memories. He liked the sound of that.

XXXXXXX

ONE MONTH LATER

XXXXXXX

“I think I’ve got it!” said Hermione, bursting into the kitchen with two steaming flasks cradled in her hands. 

Harry and Malfoy were eating breakfast together, a routine that had become almost normal in a house where they were the only two people who kept regular hours.

“Got what,” asked Harry, taking a bite of toast. 

Malfoy saw what Hermione was holding and froze. His spoon dripped a glob of porridge onto the table. 

“I used the notes that got seized from McLaggen’s operation and I think I’ve finally reverse engineered his memory potion,” Hermione said in a rush. “It’s worked on the mice and I got approval from the Ministry to start using it on the suspected victims – Pius Thicknesse woke up this morning and recognised his wife!”

Malfoy dropped his spoon. Harry dropped his toast.

Hermione placed the flasks down on the table between them. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case something went wrong, but – here!”

Harry slid one of the flasks towards himself. It held a slate grey liquid that slid smoothly against the sides of the flask. He sniffed it. The smell reminded him of something he remembered as a young child, but he could not quite put a name to it.

“This will give us our memories back?” asked Malfoy sharply, picking up the other flask and examining it. “Side effects?”

“Nothing significant,” Hermione assured him. “I think taking the potion itself is not entirely pleasant, and Pius reported pins and needles in his extremities for about fifteen minutes, but that’s about it.”

Hope swelled inside Harry’s chest. He held out his flask towards Malfoy. Malfoy clinked his own against it. 

“Scared, Malfoy?” Harry asked with a grin. 

Malfoy smirked. “You wish.” He tipped back his head and swallowed his potion.

Harry hastily raised his beaker to his lips and gulped his down as well. It tasted like river water and dirt. For a second, nothing felt different. Then an itching started to build behind his eyes. It grew to a sharp ache, and there was a feeling of pressure that he almost couldn’t stand, until it felt like a bubble inside his head popped and a wave of magic flowed over him – and with it, his memories. Memories from school, from the war – everything came flooding back in a relentless wave until Harry thought he might drown under it.

– “Harry, look who’s signed up!” – the sinking feeling in his stomach as he sees Malfoy’s name on the list of new trainees – 

– wariness as he watches him during training  “Merlin, this is like fifth year all over again” says Ron in exasperation –  “He really was up to something though!” says Harry indignantly –

– Narcissa breaking it to Malfoy over dinner that she was moving to France and really she didn’t think it would be the best idea if he came too – Harry immediately offering a room at Grimmauld, anything to get that awful stricken look off Malfoy’s pointy face –

Harry sneezed twice and shook his head. He gripped the table hard to keep himself upright. He saw that Malfoy was similarly braced, trying to keep himself from falling to the floor under the onslaught of the past ten years.

The flashbacks were coming in thick and fast now, slotting into his head like pieces of a puzzle. He remembered dozens of cases solved together, hundreds of breakfasts eaten together, Malfoy moving in, Malfoy at the pub, Malfoy, Malfoy, Malfoy –

“Oh,” said Harry in a strangled voice. He reached a hand out to Malfoy, and Malfoy grabbed on. Malfoy was staring at him with a wondering look in his eyes.

“Excellent, I’ll just leave you to it then!” he half-heard Hermione say. He didn’t even notice her leave the room. Malfoy’s eyes were so bright.

He remembered a thousand almosts – eyes meeting, hands touching, trying to find the right words again and again – and finally, getting hit with a curse and tumbling down some stairs into a dark and familiar basement. 

“If we don’t get out of this,” he remembered saying to Malfoy, desperately. “There’s something I need to say.” He clumsily reached up and brushed Malfoy’s hair out of his eyes with a trembling hand. Malfoy caught his hand as he went to lower it and held it against his cheek.

“Don’t you dare do this now, Potter,” Malfoy hissed, gripping his fingers so tight he thought they might break. “You can tell me anything we like as soon as we get out of this fucking dungeon.”

Before Harry could do more than open his mouth to reply, there was a pop and he and Malfoy were covered head to toe in a strange grey potion. Malfoy inhaled some and coughed to try and spit it out. Harry tried to stop it from getting in his mouth too, but he could taste it already coating his tongue. The potion melted away into their skin and robes as abruptly as it had appeared. 

A strange pressure began to build in his head, and he sank to the floor, dizzy. Malfoy staggered back against the wall. Harry opened his mouth again to say something, anything, but the dizziness overcame him and he knew no more.

Harry blinked back into the present, every moment of the last ten years of his life present and accounted for.

“Oh,” said Harry again, foolishly. “I thought it was just me.”

Malfoy laughed. “I didn’t realise you were stupid as well as blind, Scarhead,” he said in a voice that Harry now knew as fond. “It doesn’t take a Legilimens to realise I am completely arse over tit about you.” He reached out and took Harry’s hand. Harry felt the crooked set of Malfoy’s ring finger, and remembered a mission four years ago where Malfoy had fallen off a broom and broken every bone in this hand. He knew this hand.

“Go on, then,” Harry said in a hoarse voice he didn’t recognise as his own.

Malfoy leaned forward until their faces were nearly touching. His nose brushed Harry’s cheek. Harry closed his eyes. 

“Wasn’t there something you needed to say, Potter?” Malfoy whispered.

Harry swallowed. “It can wait,” he said against Malfoy’s mouth, before surging forward and kissing him like they would both die if he didn’t. He felt Malfoy smile against his mouth and kiss him back, his lips soft and laughing. His other hand came up to palm the side of Harry’s neck, and Harry thought he really might die, this was it, this was what was going to kill him.

After some time, Malfoy finally broke away and came up for air. “I don’t have to call you Harry now, do I?” he asked wickedly, his mouth red and tender.

Harry just grinned at him. 

“We’ll need to send McLaggen a thank you card,” Malfoy continued. “Do you think we could get an owl to deliver it to Azkaban?”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” said Harry fondly, drawing him in for another kiss. Malfoy went easily.