Do You Still Believe?

A last fire will rise behind those eyes
Black house will rock, blind boys don't lie
Immortal fear, that voice so clear
Through broken walls, that scream I hear
-- Gerard McMann - Cry Little Sister
-o0o-

"Potter," Draco began, intending to inform him of the raid on Littlewood's house. He was interrupted before Potter could do so much as look up from the dwindling stack of papers he was completing, by a tiny brunette woman poking her head in the door.

"Oh," she said. "Harry, I'm so glad you're alright." Her voice was almost breathy with hero-worship, and Potter shot her a dirty look for it. "I was so worried when you didn't come in, you see, and then Malfoy said you were ill."

"Thank you, Silena," Potter said, his voice just shy of a growl. "Now if you don't mind, I'm busy."

Her eyes dipped invitingly over his body, and her tongue snaked over her lips. "Oh, I don't mind," she all but drooled, and Draco had had enough. He rose to his feet.

"We're busy," he announced, and all but shoved her bodily out of the hole that passed for a door to the cubicle. "Fancy a bit of cof-er, tea, Potter?" He didn't wait for Potter to reply, instead moving the girl a little bit further down the hall to her own cubicle with a hand on her shoulder.

She glowered at him. "That was incredibly rude," she informed him, the breathless quality gone from her voice and replaced with a shrewish tone.

"My heart aches," Draco said facetiously. "Leave him alone, he's had a rough weekend." He continued past her cubicle towards the break room where the coffee pot and kettle were stationed.

"Malfoy the Hero," she drawled to his back. Draco told himself to keep moving, but she'd apparently taken it upon herself to be the scourge of the day. "Is that what you're thinking of yourself? Going to try and drag your name out of the mud, are you?"

It hit harder than he'd expected it to, and he stopped so suddenly that she nearly ran into him. "It just so happens," he drawled right back, the old Slytherin ways coming right back to him. "That I had genuine interest in the Aurors. If the standing of my family happens to be a side effect of my tenure with the MLE, then so be it."

"I heard you bought your way in," the girl - Silena, Potter had called her, but Draco didn't know her last name and it bothered him. "Just like you bought your way onto the Slytherin team in school, and you still weren't good enough to beat Harry then. You're still not good enough."

"Fancy yourself an expert, do you?" He arched an eyebrow at her, but before he could think of something suitably sharp to say to her, they were interrupted by her partner, a man so tall he made Draco feel short.

"Sinder, come on now, no antagonising the Death Eaters in the building." He put an arm around Sinder's shoulders and redirected her towards their cubicle. Draco was so stunned by the dig that he was left standing in the middle of the hallway gaping like a stranded fish. After a few moments, he got his expression under control, and continued on his mission to get drinks. They were technically not allowed to take food or liquid away from the break room, but considering the more important rules Potter was constantly breaking, he didn't think that this one little breach would be cause for alarm.

On the return trip, he noticed a paper bird flutter into Sinder's cubicle, followed by a small explosion. Immediately, Draco found himself at the center of a large crowd, as nearly the entire Auror corps gathered at her space to gape. He could make out Sinder's screeching over the din, but nothing else, and when she appeared at the entrance with a soot-blackened face and turquoise hair, the entire room dissolved into laughter.

"You!" She shouted, advancing on Draco. He backed up, holding his hands up defensively. It would have worked better if he didn't have two mugs full of steaming liquid occupying them, but she noted them, and stopped. "Whoever did this it wasn't funny!" she announced to the room at large, and the crowd dispersed, not wanting to draw Sinder's wrath.

Draco returned to his cubicle to find Potter hunched over his knees, shoulders shaking. He hurriedly put the mugs down and knelt down at his partner's side, afraid for a moment that his fever was making a come-back. "Potter?"

"Did you see her face?"

Draco squawked. "You did that?" he hissed, incredulous. After a moment he realised that Potter's sudden attack wasn't the return of his brief bout with the flu, but an attack of humor. Potter flashed him a grin, and it nearly took Draco's breath away with the sheer, unfettered joy. It utterly lit up Potter's face, and for a moment he seemed like a completely different person.

"I learned it to use on you, originally. Ron taught that spell to me in sixth -" The smile dropped off his face so suddenly it was as if he'd put a mask on. "Year," he finished flatly. "Thank you for the tea, Malfoy," He returned to his paperwork, all traces of laughter gone from his face.

"Potter," Draco started, unsure of what exactly he was going to say. Before he'd even gotten the proper words straight in his head, his mouth was running on ahead of his brain. "Why did you do that?"

Potter glanced up at him, an inscrutable look in his eyes. "She insulted you." He shrugged it off a moment later, reaching for a sip of his tea only to realise as he tipped it up that it was empty. He rose to his feet and stretched, bones popping lightly. "Don't worry about it," Potter advised, and went to get himself another cup of tea.

Draco remained where he was, unable to move even if he'd wanted to. He did that for me, he thought. It looped through his brain on repeat, stalling out the rest of his thought processes.

-o0o-

Harry swore quietly to himself as he waited for the kettle to boil. The coffee pot beeped its readiness to serve, and Harry looked between the icy cold kettle and the piping hot coffee. Swearing bitterly, he took the kettle off the heat and poured himself a cup of coffee.



Bloody filthy stuff, he told himself, even as he poured some of it into his mug. He stood there nearly five minutes, adding sugar and tasting it until he'd gotten it to the point where he thought he might be able to stomach it.

Settling at the table, he stared moodily into the steam swirling off the tan liquid, so deceptively tea-like, brewed with milk and sugar, and why the fuck had he admitted to hexing Sinder in defense of Malfoy? Wasn't he above and beyond minor schoolyard pranks like that? And for Malfoy?

He took a long pull on the coffee, and the drink made it down his throat and into his stomach before the taste really kicked in and he realised that it wasn't his usual tea. But for all that he'd needled Malfoy about it, it really... wasn't all that bad. He finished the mug, and left it in the sink, then dropped by Kingsley's office.

"I'm going home," he informed his superior. The walls were beginning to close in - Ron's laughter was filling his mind, reminding him that he should have been here with the youngest Weasley son, they should have been partners from the first, and it should have been Hermione in the Unspeakables while Luna went on to work for that godawful paper, and they should have been there but now they weren't - just like he hadn't been there for either of them when they'd needed him.

"At least you saw fit to tell me this time," Kingsley muttered, blithely unaware of Harry's mental breakdown.

I've got to get out of here.

Memories were crowding themselves into his brain, Ron's hysterical laughter the first time Harry had attempted the Puteulanus Pulvis hex and turned his own hair blue for days. They'd covered it up with glamours at the time, and it had eventually worn off on it's own, but they'd been the only ones to know about the mishap, and Ron had teased him fiercely about it for weeks afterward, dropping the word blue into nearly every conversation no matter what they were discussing, be it Quidditch or Death Eaters.

He all but sprinted from the building, trying to outrun his memories.

-o0o-

Draco realised Potter was gone when he didn't return after a half hour had passed. He dropped by Shacklebolt's office, but the man offered him nothing more helpful than "He's gone home."

He spent another half hour waffling about remaining in the office, and then decided his paycheck was salary based, and skipping out the last few hours of the workday wouldn't hurt him in the least. He tossed a farewell to Shacklebolt over his shoulder as he passed, and the man simply buried his face in his hands, wondering what he'd taken on accepting Malfoy into the department as Potter's partner.

Draco didn't bother knocking this time when he appeared outside Potter's flat; he simply let himself in and put the kettle on. "Potter," he called. "I'm in your kitchen."

Potter appeared in the doorway, wrapping in a blanket and looking for all the world like a child who's puppy had just died. "Why are you here Malfoy?" he wanted to know.

"Because you're not at work," Draco said blithely, and then realised that it came off sounding rather odd. "No point to working if there's no work to be done," he amended weakly. "You look like hell. Christ, Potter, it was just a childish prank. No need to feel so guilty; I'm sure the colour will wash out in a day or two."

Potter flinched as though he'd been kicked, and Draco stepped towards him. "It will," the ex-Gryffindor reassured him hollowly.

"Talk to me, Potter," Draco demanded magisterially. "I'll fix you your bloody tea, and we'll sit on that hideous settee, and you'll tell me whatever's going on behind those absurdly large green eyes of yours."

Potter stared at him as though he'd grown an extra head, but when Draco shoved the mug into his hand, he looked at it, looked at the couch, and then settled himself on the couch. "I don't need to tell you a damn thing," Potter said obstinately. "I'm still feeling a bit ill after my episode the other day."

"Bollocks," Draco said firmly. "I've been in this with you for a month. You've got that look on your face that you only get when someone reminds you of Weasley or Granger."

Potter drew in further to himself, seeming to diminish there on the couch. For a relatively large man, he could make himself extraordinarily compact when he needed to. "It's none of your bus-"

"Business? Of course it's my business. What did I tell you when I got myself into this mess? I'm not attempting to take anyone's place, but I also refuse to allow you to work yourself to death. With that comes the responsibility of making sure you're not anything-elsing yourself to death, either."

Potter lifted an eyebrow at his unusual choice of words. Draco felt a flush creeping up his throat, and flapped his hand at his partner.

"Be quiet," he said. "I'm a pureblood, not a dictionary." When the faintest hint of a smile passed across Potter's face, he knew he'd struck the right tone. "Now," he began. "We've come a long way from school. Anything you tell me stays between the two of us. I'm hardly going to rush to the papers and tell them my partner's a raving lunatic at this point - all it would get me is reassigned, and then I'd never learn anything about being an Auror, especially if they're all as startlingly dim as Sinder."

"Silena's not that bad," Potter said.

"Fawning sycophant," Draco declared. "If she'd been any more obvious about it, she'd have stripped naked right there in the office and given you a lap dance."

"She wouldn't," Potter disagreed. "She values her life."

"Does she now?"

"As you clearly don't. Why are you here, Malfoy?"

Draco set his cup down on the table and fixed Potter with a serious stare. "It's been eight years, Potter. You've got to put it behind you. It's terrible. I never liked any of you in school, but I wouldn't have wished death or madness on either of them, and it's terrible that it happened, but it did. How on earth can you make anything of yourself as an Auror if all it takes to bring you falling to pieces is a mention of your friends?" Potter's knees were drawn up to his chest, and he stared fixedly at an empty stretch of wall. "Can you imagine what would happen if that got out among the Dark wizards you're still tracking down and hauling in? That all they needed to do to get past you would be to bring up Weasley's demise?"

Potter flinched, but Draco forged on. "Or worse," he said. "What if they broke into St. Mungo's and did something to Granger? Used her as a hostage against you? You'd completely fall to pieces and be of utterly no use to anyone. You've got to get past this."

Whatever thread of control was holding Potter together snapped, and before Draco could blink he found himself pinned against the couch, Potter's hand against his throat and a wand jabbing into his temple. "I don't have to get past a damn thing," he hissed warningly. It was disturbingly close to the Parseltongue he'd used on the Mud Mission as Draco had dubbed it, and he found himself fighting off the shudder that ripped its way up his spine. There was something ... dangerous about Parseltongue, something almost sinister in it's complete innocence, and the fact that not only was it a completely foreign language, it was communication with an animal. It never failed to strike him straight between the shoulder blades, and had ever since his second year, the first time he'd ever heard Potter use it. He realised he was unconscionably distracted, and returned his attention to the lethal and pissed Auror sitting on his chest. "I don't have to get past a damn thing," he repeated in a more normal tone of voice. "Ron's dead, and Hermione would have been better off dying, and I didn't."

"There was nothing you could have done-"

"Don't fuck with me, Malfoy, you don't know the half of it. It doesn't matter to me if Hermione dies because she's already dead inside. And I should have died with them."

Draco could hardly believe his ears. "Saint Potter," he sneered, falling back into old habits when confronted with the familiar hostility from Potter. "Feeling guilty for living when they didn't, so you're going to slowly kill yourself in your job so you can have something to tell them when you finally manage to off yourself."

"I'm not trying to kill myself!" Potter shouted suddenly. "I can't die yet! I still haven't finished!"

"Finished? Finished what? Destroying yourself?"

"I'm going to hunt down every last dark wizard in the world," he vowed. "And I'm going to make sure that no one else ever has to lose someone they love to Cruciatus-induced madness."

"Vengeance," Draco drawled. "A noble, Gryffindorish goal. Couldn't save yourself from suffering, so you'll just go on saving the world, no matter how miserable it makes you."

"I'm not miserable!"

"You're alone! You can't possibly tell me you're happy coming home every day to this tiny cramped flat, by yourself, with no one to talk to, no one to go out to the pub with and share a drink. When was the last time you went flying for the fun of if, instead of on a mission for the Aurors? You're going to kill yourself carrying on like this and I can't just sit here and do nothing!"

The shouting match faded away, leaving harsh breaths and fiery glares in its wake. Potter retreated to the other side of the room, not looking at Draco. After a long silence, he turned to him slowly, grim determination lighting his eyes.

"You're right," he said quietly. "I'm miserable. But there's nothing you can do about it. Just go home, Malfoy. I'll see you tomorrow."

It's a start, Draco told himself. The first step to solving your problems, after all, was admitting you had a problem. "Fine," he said softly. "Tomorrow." He let himself out and apparated away.

-o0o-

Dragon: *hands you a Snitch-shaped cookie* *hugs back* It's just a boost to my rather pitiful ego that I'm capable of writing a creepy character. And I'll let you (and anyone else who reads these) in on a secret: you're meant to suspect Littlewood. She's highly suspicious, I think. Little old lady, lives alone, obsessed with pure blood... Oh yes, quite suspicious, I think.

Mr Spears: Are you kidding? I love you guys. You're my inspiration to write. I write the ideas I want to, but it's the responses of people like you, who take the time to read it and then review it to let me know you've read it, and what you thought of it, who make the effort of writing worth all the hassle. So thanks to you for being such an amazing reviewer~ And a boost to my flagging ego, to boot. I'm so glad you're enjoying it. ♥

thrnbrooke: Yaay! Thank you!! ♥ ♥