Title: How Noble In Reason

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione

Warnings: Flangst, a bit of sex, profanity. Ignores the epilogue.

Rating: mild R

Summary: The Head Auror thinks that there's Voldemort-like magic in the cellars of Malfoy Manor. Harry agrees to investigate. The Head Auror thinks Harry should formally Court Draco Malfoy to get close enough. Harry doesn't agree with this, but he doesn't have a lot of choice.

Author's Notes: This will be a short story, eight or nine chapters. In some chapters the angst is stronger than others, but it's a light story for the most part. The title is a line from Hamlet.

How Noble In Reason

Chapter One—Benjamin Binks Is an Idiot

"What is this about, sir?" Harry hoped that his tone was brisk enough. You had to use a certain amount of briskness with Head Auror Binks; otherwise, he might think you actually cared.

Benjamin Binks glanced up at Harry. He had one hand hovering protectively over a file on his desk, and the first thing he did was look out the door behind Harry's shoulder. "No one saw you come in here?" he asked, lowering his voice into a mysterious hiss. "You told no one why you were coming?"

"No, and no, sir," Harry said, and settled into the chair in front of Binks's desk, though he stayed seated on the edge so that Binks wouldn't think he wanted a long, comfortable chat. "It's easy for me to get away with that, since I don't have a partner."

Binks wasn't distracted enough to miss the edge in his tone. He gave Harry a stern glare—well, as stern as he could be when he was still trying to watch the corridor, too. A one-eyed glare wasn't very frightening. "You know that the reassignment of Auror Weasley was inevitable."

Harry started to argue that he hadn't known that at all, that he and Ron had always planned to be partners and had functioned well together for three years, and then cut himself off with a sigh. Never get involved in a row with the Head Auror, he repeated to himself. "Well, anyway, no one saw me."

"Good." Binks waved his wand, and his door shut as if on a string, Silencing Charms springing into place. He was proud of that spell, though Harry couldn't see why. The Head Auror's secretary would see anyone who tried to listen in on his conversations through the door anyway, and a permanent ward on her desk disrupted concealing magic like Disillusionment Charms. "Read this."

The file was thin, as was usual with new cases, so Harry didn't take long to read it. Only one phrase was important, anyway. He glanced up and blinked. "You're certain of this, sir?"

"As certain as one can be." Binks looked at him cunningly and tapped the side of his head. A seemingly permanent bulge poked through his light brown hair where he tapped. Office legend said that he'd been knocked on the head years ago and maintained the wound because he considered it the embodiment of his genius. "Of course, we'll need you to provide the official confirmation, as it were, heh?"

Harry smiled politely and returned to his reading, this time the second, in-depth scan that would tell him if he'd missed anything important.

It didn't seem so. The report was so simple in the first place as to be hard to mistake. An Auror doing a regular investigation of Malfoy Manor had noted powerful Dark magic coming from the direction of the cellars. She had been trained in the Ministry's relatively new way of recording such spells, and had used the notation to good effect, then come back to the Ministry and compared her notations to the ones already on file.

The only ones they matched were the notations done by those with some memory of Voldemort.

Harry started to raise his hand to touch the lightning bolt scar still present, in faded form, on his forehead, and then remembered that Binks would expect him to do that and one of his life purposes was frustrating Binks whenever possible. He dropped his hand back to his lap and looked at Binks. "The notations are imprecise, sir. You know that."

He didn't need to say that use of the notations alone had led to a widow who'd bought a mildly illegal lust potion being arrested as a former Death Eater. The notations depended on individual perception of the power, resonance, and lingering form of Dark magic. The Auror who'd arrested the widow had apparently thought lust potions and Dark Marks resembled each other.

The widow was still suing the Ministry, the last Harry had heard.

"Yes, I know that," Binks said, putting his inflection in the wrong places. Harry wondered if this was going to be one of the Head Auror's notorious bad days, where he tied the nearest Auror to a chair and interrogated them relentlessly in an attempt to get them to reveal the secret all-powerful Coalition of Seven Dark Lords they must be reporting to. He started to ease his hand towards his wand, but Binks was babbling on instead of trying to cast spells on him. "But think about it, Potter. Voldemort was living in Malfoy Manor that last year. Isn't it possible that he left some artifact behind? Perhaps even something that can resurrect him?"

Harry blew out his breath in annoyance. Binks was like a stupider Mad-Eye Moody, but sometimes he was right by accident. Though Harry had never heard him say the word "Horcrux," he'd latched onto the idea that Voldemort might have trusted his immortality to artifacts years ago and refused to let it go.

Sometimes, paranoia and stubbornness can combine to look a lot like intelligence, Harry thought, and answered, "Yes, sir. It is. And of course it has to be investigated." He was the only one for the job, too, he knew that. He was the only one who would be able to say for certain what Voldemort's magic felt like. It was a sensation he still felt in his dreams.

"Good." Binks poked a finger at him. "What do you know about the current situation of the Malfoys?"

"Er." Harry checked the file again, though he already knew that didn't say anything in particular. But it was a good idea to appear less competent than you were, more dependent on the Head Auror's information, so that he wouldn't suspect you were going around and doing things behind his back. "Not much, sir. I think that Lucius Malfoy was arrested and tried, but the Wizengamot didn't have enough evidence to convict?"

In fact, he was certain that part was correct. Harry had stood by in case he was needed to give testimony for Narcissa or her son, but their cases had never come to trial. Hearing how they had saved the Savior's life was enough for the Wizengamot to quietly drop charges.

"That's correct," said Binks, with a nod that went on too long. "Ridiculous, of course, since Lucius Malfoy had the Dark Mark and Voldemort was living in his house, but there you are. Another failure of our corrupt system."

Like you, Harry thought. Binks had only got the Head Auror position because of nepotism in the Ministry; he was the great-grandson of the current head of the Wizengamot.

"And no one has seen Lucius and his wife since they went on a quiet 'holiday' to Italy and never returned." Binks let out a sigh that rattled the office door. "The Italian Aurors refuse to extradite. Of course he's paying them."

Harry nodded politely, and then said, "But Draco Malfoy is still living in the Manor, sir? Has anyone approached him?"

"He refuses to cooperate with the Aurors on principle," Binks said, without even a mysterious nod. So it might be true for all Harry knew, rather than a projection or fantasy of the Head Auror's mind. "He lives in the Manor by himself and holds ridiculous parties every day."

"Well, we could sneak into the parties," Harry said.

"Not when you're the only one who can identify Voldemort's magic," Binks retorted, quickly and, for him, cleverly. "And I don't want my Aurors doing anything illegal that will give the Malfoys another loophole to wriggle through. No, you have to enter openly, legally, and with Malfoy's complete compliance."

Harry braced himself when he saw the gleam in Binks's eye. Here it comes, some new insane plan.

But nothing could have prepared him for Binks saying, calmly and with every appearance of happiness, "I want you to start formally Courting Malfoy."

"What?' Harry spluttered. Some of the spit from the splutter went far enough to soak the case files on the other side of Binks's desk.

"A formal Courting involves sending gifts and tokens of admiration to the other person, starting a process that will culminate in marriage," Binks began to explain, apparently thinking Harry's exclamation was one of ignorance instead of disbelief.

Harry held up his hand. "I know what a Courting is, sir." Ron had eventually ended up marrying Hermione that way, after years of dancing around her after the war. They'd known they were in love, thanks to the Battle of Hogwarts, but they had taken as long about the "best" way to get married as they had about declaring their love in the first place, especially since Hermione found most of the pure-blood customs barbaric. "But I can't—that just involves lying to Malfoy, too."

"But not illegally!" Binks said in triumph.

Harry put his hands over his face. "Sir," he said, "you can't really expect me to do this."

"You're bent," said Binks. "He's a bloke. I don't see the problem."

Harry looked up, opened his mouth, thought about the effort it would take to explain to his Head Auror that being bent didn't mean he wanted to shag every man under the sun, and then shut his mouth again.

"Will the Auror Department compensate me for the gifts that I'll need to buy?" he asked. He was going to end up doing it anyway, so he might as well make a good go at it. He might try to capture Malfoy's attention with gifts that he could actually use and value even after the deception was revealed.

"Yes," Binks said. "Of course. How could you ask such a thing and not think the answer would be positive?"

Harry made one more attempt to break free. "Are you sure that I need to do it this way, sir? I've been receiving extra classes in Concealment and Disguise. I could try sneaking into the Manor and locating the source of this magic, at least enough to tell us whether it's really something we need to be worried about—"

"Tell me," Binks said, with a mean little smile, "has anything you've learned in Concealment and Disguise taught you how to cover that scar?"

Harry sighed. "No, sir." The scar resisted glamours, ordinary makeup, spells that were meant to change the shape of his face or make it uncertain in the memories of people who looked at him, and even Notice-Me-Not Charms. It took full-out concealing magic like Invisibility Cloaks or Disillusionment Charms to hide it, and Harry doubted that Malfoy Manor would have wards weak enough to let him get away with that.

Binks nodded. "Then you'll Court him, and you'll get into the Manor and investigate, and you'll arrest him."

"Not if there's not actually anything there, or if he doesn't have anything to do with it," Harry countered.

Binks stared at him. "But of course he will."

Harry shook his head, stood up, and left the office. The Head Auror never minded a little rudeness as long as he could interpret it as being in accord with his commands, which this was. Harry knew it was better to go and indulge his temper elsewhere than sit there arguing any longer.

He didn't want to do this. He knew how much the Courting tradition meant to pure-bloods, because he'd seen how tenderly and seriously Ron picked out Hermione's gifts. Even if it meant nothing to Harry, even if he could do this in the pursuit of his job and not feel bad about it when Malfoy found out the truth, Malfoy could be devastated when he found out.

But there was no choice. Harry had to investigate anything that might offer the slightest chance of Voldemort coming back, and stop it.

Then Harry stopped in the middle of the corridor and stared at the far wall. He would have banged his head against it, but he didn't feel quite that angry with himself. Being around the Head Auror had the tendency to affect one's brain.

Of course. What an idiot I am.

There was no way that Malfoy would accept the gifts. He knew what a Courting process was supposed to look like, and he would know Harry's was false. So he would return the first gift with a rigid letter of refusal, and Harry could show the evidence to Binks and demand that the Head Auror let him try something else.

Harry shook his head, smiled in relief, and then went to his office. He would need to think of a perfect first gift: something that Binks would acknowledge as having put in good effort, but which Malfoy would see through. By the time he settled into his chair, Harry had decided that the right one would be something too extravagant. Why would Malfoy trust his boyhood rival spending a lot of Galleons on him?

It was something. It would make Binks's stupid plan fail, and Harry could investigate with normal methods and prove that the Auror who'd recorded the resonance of Dark magic from Malfoy Manor had probably been wrong in the first place.

There was no way that Voldemort could come back. Harry knew that he had destroyed all the Horcruxes. So Malfoy harbored Dark artifacts, but he might not even know about them. His father had probably left him heirlooms that Malfoy had locked away in dark corners and never looked at again, because he had taste.

It did cause Harry to pause and wonder why he was so insistent about Malfoy being innocent, if only in his own mind. Six years ago, even three years ago, right after he got out of Auror training and was seeing Dark wizards everywhere, he would have been eager to believe Malfoy was trying to resurrect Voldemort.

Then he shrugged. Because I do think he's innocent, and he never was strong or evil enough to want to bring Voldemort back. Because he suffered from the bastard as much as I did, and Binks's theory makes no sense.

Because I hate being forced to waste time on this.

"I can't believe he actually made you do it, mate." Ron sat on the corner of Harry's desk, watching him wrap the first gift.

"I know." Harry rolled his eyes at his friend. "But I hope this will be the only exchange we need to make. After all, Malfoy won't actually accept this gift. Why should he? And the note I'm sending along with it is enough to make a dog sick."

Ron grinned. "Let's see."

Harry held out the letter, and then went back to carefully tying Cushioning Charms on the gift—a clock ornamented with gold and opals, its face diamond, with silver hands ticking across it. The traditional Courting gifts had to be delivered by owl, which meant Harry was taking no chances with the clock falling and shattering before his personal owl, Vulcan, could actually get it to Malfoy.

Ron hadn't made any gagging noises yet. Harry looked up. "What, did I make it so sickly that you can't make it to the end?" he asked, only half-joking. He'd tried to think of the stickiest words possible. Binks had to read it and be convinced, but there was no way Malfoy would be.

Ron looked at him with a pale, thoughtful face instead, and said nothing. Harry sighed. "I know. I hate violating the Courting traditions, too. I know how much they mean to you. But Binks is determined not to let me investigate in any other way until I've tried this, and that means I have to bring the ridiculous thing to an end as soon as possible."

"I don't know, mate," Ron said slowly. "This is actually a realistic-sounding letter. Not bad, at least," he added hastily when Harry opened his mouth. "But you're just not any good at deception."

"Yes, but I'm good at exaggeration," Harry muttered. It was the reason that Binks had used to split up their partnership, claiming that Harry had exaggerated the dangers in one too many cases to justify pulling Ron out when he had only minor wounds instead of pursuing the suspect all the time.

Ron smiled as he had to at the joke, but his eyes were earnest. "Here, read it again, and try to think about it as a stranger's letter," he said, holding it out to Harry. "What would you say?"

Harry sighed impatiently, picked up the letter, and began to read through. He knew what it said, of course. That was the point.

Dear Malfoy:

I hope that you'll forgive me intruding after so many years. I feel that things have changed enough that we can approach each other as strangers, or at least acquaintances. At the same time, the way I think of you is based on what I knew of you, and especially what I knew of you during the final year of the war.

When I think of the way that you saved my life when I came to Malfoy Manor and you had to know it was me, I feel a deeper connection to you than a life-debt can explain. And then you came after me in the Room of Hidden Things. Yes, it was stupid, because you had to know that I never would have come with you to You-Know-Who, but it was brave. And let's just say that the way I carried you out of the Room of Requirement has featured in my dreams more than once.

Because of the healing and changing work that I hope time has done for you as well as me, I'm sending a clock for my first gift, and asking for your permission to formally Court you.

Harry Potter, Auror.

"Oh, come on," Harry said. "It's ridiculous. 'After so many years?' 'A deeper connection to you?' I don't talk like that."

Ron raised an eyebrow. Harry was convinced that Hermione had taught him to do it. "Is he going to know that?"

"And look!" Harry thumped his finger on the second paragraph, and then realized it might be better to turn the letter around so that Ron could see. "Calling Voldemort You-Know-Who? He knows I don't do that."

"Or he'll read it as an attempt to be sensitive—" Ron pursed his lips together and fluttered his eyelashes "—to any issue that he might have with Voldemort's name."

Harry hit Ron on the arm and shook his head. "He has to be smarter than that."

"Why?" Ron asked in interest, swinging his legs like a little kid. Harry was about to tell him he looked like one, but Ron went on. "I know that you're into trying to see the best of everyone and assume that everyone changed after the war and all that—personally, I think you've spent too much time reading those books Hermione reads—but this is Malfoy we're talking about. He never saw any reason to change."

"It's not just the books," Harry said weakly, and Ron snorted. "Look, it really isn't, all right? Those cases—I know Dark magic corrupts the mind and we still have to bring them in, but how can you look at how pathetic they become as a result of that magic and not pity them, at least a little?"

Ron put his head on one side. "Please tell me that you pity the ones who dwindle into paranoid people hiding in cellars and not the ones who use Dark magic to rape and murder."

Harry grimaced and shook his head. He still worked cases that made long showers necessary after they were done. "But I can at least see the difference between motivations now, and Dark magic isn't the only way that someone can go wrong. Remember the Sizemore case?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "You'll never stop pounding it into my head that you were right about that one, were you?"

Harry gave him a grim little smile. The Aurors had been called in on the Sizemore case because the murderer had done deeds so violent that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had assumed he must be using Dark magic. But no, it was merely someone who hadn't ever learned that other people were real, and so thought they might as well die and suffer for his entertainment. Harry had met a surprising number of people like him in the last few years. Sometimes the magic they practiced had made them worse, but not always.

Ron had been on the side of the Dark magic. Harry had suspected from the beginning that no such thing was involved, and he had been right.

"Anyway," Ron said, dragging the conversation back to the major point with an effort that Harry appreciated for its sheer magnitude, "you don't know that Malfoy has changed. He might not care about this Courting. He might accept the letter and the gift for the sheer pleasure of laughing at you."

"And he might not," Harry said.

"Just don't say that I didn't tell you if he turns out to be worse than ever," Ron said, standing up. "I don't mind giving ordinary people the benefit of the doubt, but this is Malfoy."

Harry saluted him solemnly. "I'll remember. Are you going home to Hermione?"

Ron nodded, then hesitated. "You're welcome to come along if you want. Leave all this Malfoy nonsense until tomorrow, and maybe by then you'll have thought up a way to make Binks drop it."

Harry waved a hand. "No, that's all right. You and Hermione enjoy your snogging." He knew Ron and Hermione didn't mean to make him feel like an outsider right now, when they'd still only been married for two months, but he felt that way anyway. He mostly met them now in public situations where Hermione would keep the snogging to a minimum.

Ron flushed, but said, "You ought to find someone of your own, Harry. Only not this way." He nodded to the clock and the letter and left, whistling before he even got out of Harry's office.

Harry sat back in his chair and eyed the clock and the letter, then looked at his own watch. He reckoned that Binks hadn't left the office yet, and he could still talk to him and try to convince him not to use this stupid plan.

But Binks had changed his mind only once in the history of the Department, and then only in the face of an order passed down from the Minister himself. Harry mentally shrugged, told himself that his wording was so sentimental enough to give Malfoy sugar shock, and gathered up the gift and the letter to take to Vulcan.

It was only two hours later that Vulcan came and found him at home, carrying a single envelope in his beak and wearing an expression of extreme smugness that meant he wanted extra treats. Harry gave them to him and checked twice to make sure that the envelope wasn't a Howler and didn't bear curses before he opened it.

The handwriting inside was unmistakably Malfoy's, and the tone seemed to be his, too.

Potter:

Your letter and your goals are different enough to be amusing. Consider yourself invited to Malfoy Manor at eight tomorrow evening. I would add that you should wear dress robes, but since I sincerely doubt that you own or could afford any that would match my tastes, I will forgive your inevitable violation of common decency.

I give you permission to Court me.

Draco Malfoy.

Harry shook his head and sat there for a minute thinking about what Malfoy's motivations behind the acceptance of the Courting process might be, because he couldn't possibly believe in it. Amusement value, as he said in his letter? Desire to keep an eye on Harry, who he must know would be assigned to investigate the case if he was actually harboring Voldemort in his house? Defiance of the Ministry? Determination to find out what Harry's transparently stupid Courting attempt actually hid?

Any way it worked out, Harry decided, he looked forward to seeing Malfoy, with a surprising amount of pure curiosity.