Seek

[A/N - We'll get our first brief glimpse of Draco in this chapter!]

Despite his night being full of dreams where he had chased James Bond through the Ministry with Ron whilst the two of them debated on the efficacy of their lightsabers against Bond's cunning, Harry woke up well-rested. The tv was playing the ten a.m. news now, he noted. Harry allowed himself a long moment to appreciate the taut crispness of the sheets, stretching luxuriously before forcing himself fro the bed and into the equally well-appointed bathroom.

While he showered, he weighed his options. He could go rushing right out to find Malfoy, tell him what Snape had wanted, and get on with his life. That would be the obvious thing. But he found himself oddly curious about Malfoy's choices, and in the end he decided to give into his baser instincts and ... reconnoiter the situation. It wouldn't be spying because he had perfectly innocent questions that the Malfoy he had known would certainly refuse to answer.

Harry called down for a late breakfast when he'd showered, and left the hotel almost an hour later, pleasantly full and pleasantly surprised. The young man that had brought his meal up had included a walking map of the city, as well as guides to the various methods of public transportation. It seemed as though there was no place in the city one couldn't reach as a pedestrian, a fact the waiter seemed particularly proud of.

With a smile on his lips, Harry set out towards Malfoy's building.

Five minutes later he was sure that Timmons had lied to him. The building standing at Malfoy's address wasn't dilapidated, but it certainly wasn't posh. It stood, a red-brick U around a tiny central courtyard all paved in broken slate tiles, fronting a street with trolley rails set in, not a stone's throw from some sort of stadium and directly across from a transit stop. As Harry stood at the curb of the stop looking up at Malfoy's building incredulously two teenagers ambled up, followed shortly by the arrival of the streetcar, a sleek looking thing that disgorged a surprising number of people.

It was sheer luck that Harry spotted Malfoy first. The other man's hair was almost totally hidden beneath a black knit cap, and if Harry hadn't heard that smooth drawl he'd never have managed to cast the notice-me-not spell before Malfoy passed not three feet behind him. As it was, he stopped for a moment and glanced about, his nostrils flaring as if he could sniff out the tingle of magic he must have felt. After a heartbeat that felt like eternity to Harry, who was trying desperately to blend into the crowd of people walking away from the tram while still keeping an eye on Malfoy, he turned and walked on. He appeared to be chatting with a dark-haired witch whose perceptions were not as keen as his own.

Harry was simultaneously relieved and shocked. He had escaped notice, yes. But Draco Malfoy on public transport? Muggle public transport?

As he watched, Malfoy and the petite brunette keeping pace with him crossed the street to Malfoy's building, where he made some complicated hand gesture at the courtyard gate, which swung open. Harry pursed his lips in concern, but none of the Muggles around him seemed to have noticed Malfoy's blatancy. Really though, to cast a spell in such an obvious place!

He cast about, then dropped his charm when he had satisfied hi self that no one was watching. Digging about in his jacket pocket, he pulled out the map he'd been given. He was scanning it for a likely place to spend his afternoon when a voice next to him chirped, "Powell's."

He looked up to find that there was a woman studying him. "Pardon me?"

She smiled, the lines around her mouth reminding him fondly of Molly, and exclaimed, "Oh! You're English!"

"Um, yeah." Harry paused awkwardly, unused to being spoken to so familiarly by strangers. "Quite, actually."

He gave the woman a weak smile, and she clapped her hands together in delight. "Well! That's nice. Anyway, you ought to go down to Powell's, if you're looking for something to do."

Harry stared at her blankly, and she gestured at his map, a self-conscious flutter of hands. "It's - your map, you see?" She looked slightly abashed. "Only tourists have them. Well. I mean. We all have them but only tourists... you know, carry them around."

"Oh." Feeling guilty for having so obviously flustered her, Harry grinned and proffered the map, which the woman took with a more comfortable smile, easily pointing out the bookshop to him before going on her way up the street past the stadium.

-

Harry had been in impressive libraries. He was, after all, a wizard. And he had been in some of the most respected bookseller's in wizarding and Muggle Britain.

He was still impressed. The bookshop occupied an entire city block, and he had spent hours wandering through it's rooms. Night had fallen on the city without his noticing, and he had left the shop only reluctantly. He had several books in a plastic stack, as well as a postcard for Hermione that was a map of the entire store.

The clerk had noticed his accent and volunteered a dinner recommendation unsolicited, which he was beginning to think was a trait the people of the city shared in common.He had had several casual chats with people in the aisles of the store, and each one of them was unabashedly eager to tell him something about the shop or the city.

He had decided to leave the clerk's suggestion of sushi for another night, and took instead the advice of a young man who'd told him there was good pizza just across the street. Harry'd not been disappointed.

Now he was standing outside of Malfoy's building again. It was only slightly out of his way back to the hotel, and Malfoy was the reason he was here to begin with.

He felt slightly voyeuristic, standing in the dark across the street, watching people's silhouettes cross their windows as mist flowed past him down toward the river.

Ten minutes later he still hadn't caught a glimpse of Malfoy's blond head. He crossed the street, headed for a side entrance he'd passed on the way from the bookseller's, and felt the brush of wards against his senses. It seemed as though Malfoy had wrapped the whole building in wards that would alert him to another magical presence approaching his home. Harry lifted a hand, pressing cautiously against the magic, careful not to exert enough pressure that Malfoy would become aware of him.

Thankfully his training during and after the war made it fairly easy to dampen his own magical signature as he sussed out the wards. He was surprised to find that they appeared to be keyed to Malfoy alone, which meant they'd go off every time he had a magical visitor and that they contained charms of well-being. That was harmless enough, it meant that Muggles crossing through them would feel calmer and more content than they might otherwise, as would wizards with a low tolerance to mood-altering magics. There was nothing illegal about the charms, it just struck Harry as odd that Malfoy would have bothered. The wards and charm appeared to be tied to the trees planted along the sidewalks, which meant that their energies would feed the spell and Malfoy needn't do anything more than renew the magics occasionally. Still, it was more trouble than Harry would have thought Malfoy would undertake for any Muggle.

Harry took a moment to calm his mind, then pushed his magic deeper within himself and crossed through the wards without activating them. It was the work of minutes to determine that there were no further wards on the side door.

Satisfied, Harry withdrew to the DeLuxe. There would be time enough to think about Malfoy tomorrow. Maybe he'd do his thinking at the Market that everyone had been so eager to tell him about today.

[A/N - I do love reviews. They keep us writing, right?]