Title: An Auror Like This

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

Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash, mentions of Pansy/Blaise

Warnings: A bit of angst, a bit of violence

Rating: R

Wordcount: 4800

Summary: Harry's main thought when he started talking to Pansy Parkinson was that maybe she could help him understand what the hell he was doing, pursuing Draco Malfoy. He never thought that he would find a friend, too.

Author's Notes: Another of my Advent fics, this one for sandersyager, who asked for a deep friendship between Harry and a Slytherin, or Draco and a Gryffindor, in the early days of an H/D relationship. Here you are!

An Auror Like This

"Why did you expect me to be able to tell you?"

Harry stared at Pansy Parkinson, and blinked a bit. She looked back at him with calm eyes, and, when he carried on standing in front of her desk, asked, "Is this the bit where you say that you made a bet with Weasley and you were setting me up all along?"

She sounded calm enough, but Harry could see the way her hand had slid down to grip her wand. He was good at noticing things like that, both because he was actually out of Auror training now and walking among criminals who wanted to curse him, and because some of his fellow Aurors wanted to curse him. Harry hoped that Parkinson wouldn't be one of them.

"Well, um, because you were his follower," said Harry. "Or, er, his friend." The motion of Parkinson's wand beneath the desk made him add that hastily. "So I thought you might at least be able to tell me why he's letting me approach him and date him at all."

"But the way you asked the question was, 'What am I doing with him?' Which did rather sound like you expected me to be able to peer into your mind." Parkinson slowly released her grip on the wand, studying Harry appraisingly. "I know it might seem like it, but I'm not a Legilimens. I got all those good marks in the training program by serious hard study and work."

"I know that!" Harry said indignantly. "I didn't mean to suggest that you skated through or anything."

"Right, because you aren't really here to question me on my personal merits, you're here to question me as a source on Draco." Parkinson shook her head. then paused. "You looked as though you were about to jump out a window when I mentioned his name. That is the person that you're dating, right? And stunned to find yourself dating? I'm still right?"

"Dating," Harry said. "Getting to know. Something." Draco seemed to prefer the notion of "getting to know," except on alternate Sundays, when it was "dating."

"Right," Parkinson drawled, and then gave Harry a grin that was so like Draco's but so distinct at the same time that Harry found himself grinning back before he thought about it. "Listen, Potter, I think Draco is the one who has to define himself for you. If you don't understand something he says or does, ask him. You're certainly not going to get any answers if you sit around fretting."

"I do not sit around fretting."

"Right," said Parkinson, but this time, Harry didn't find her smile as charming. "Listen. I know that you probably think the best way to approach a Slytherin is through his friends, because that's what you'd do with a Gryffindor. Right?"

"Maybe," Harry said, with a shrug. He had to admit that he thought he would ask the Gryffindor directly and get an answer, but he was trying to get over the prejudice about Houses that Hermione was always scolding him for and focus on important, adult things. "Although I've never dated a Gryffindor I didn't already know."

"And look how well that turned out."

Harry rapped his fingers on her desk. "If you're not going to give me any advice about my current love life, at least you could refrain from criticizing my past one."

"You barge in here and ask me a silly question." Parkinson lifted her feet, clad in unexpectedly pointed boots, to the desk and thumped them down. "I think I'm entitled to any entertainment I can get out of it."

"You asked Pansy about me?" Draco tilted his head back and laughed richly. "You might as well ask her why she became an Auror."

"Well, why did she?" Harry asked, because he wanted to know, but mainly because he wanted to see Draco's eyes flash with eagerness again.

Draco spent a moment looking around the restaurant that Harry had brought him to, sipping idly at his drink. Harry bit back a moment of impatience, and just watched him instead. God, Draco was beautiful, with his pallor so sharp that it contrasted with the dark wood of the chair he was sitting in.

His beauty was far from the only reason Harry was dating him, of course. But it was one of the reasons Harry had noticed him after the war. Draco claimed that he had grown into his features and Harry was enchanted by what had been there all along, but Harry knew it was more than that. Draco no longer looked desperate, for one thing.

"She won't tell me," Draco finally said, when he had picked up a fork, eaten a pea, and toyed with his glass long enough that Harry wanted to throw it at him. "I did ask her, and so did Blaise when they started dating, but she won't tell anyone. She says that it's obvious and we should be able to figure it out." He pointed his fork at Harry. "You're one. You might have the most luck figuring it out of anyone."

Harry considered that for a second, but he had to shake his head in the end. The Aurors weren't paid well enough for wealth to be Parkinson's motive. They sometimes received glamour and notice in the press, true, but only when they were involved in a successful arrest, and she hadn't been yet. She had a good reputation among the other Aurors; she'd been near the top of her classes in the training program. But there were nearly as many people who distrusted her for being quiet and surviving during the war, and she couldn't have known before she entered the training program that that would happen.

On the other hand, he kept being reminded that he knew the other Slytherins his age less well than he thought he did. So he looked at Draco and ventured, "She might want to help people, the way I do?"

Draco was eating another pea. He began to laugh soundlessly, and then choke. Harry had to go around behind him and whack him on the back, and apart from it being clear that that was definitely not the reason Parkinson had become an Auror, Harry had no more idea at the end of the meal than he did before.

On the other hand, he had a Draco to watch, and kiss. So that was nice.

"Potter! You're going to partner me for this demonstration."

"I am?" Harry asked, almost under his breath, but he moved up to the front of the classroom to join Parkinson as she stood facing the trainees.

A crisp glance from Parkinson showed him that she'd heard him, and didn't really appreciate his sense of humor. She had her wand drawn. Harry drew his. The trainees were watching both of them with wide, eager eyes, arranged in a sitting semicircle in front of them. Harry wondered if they were more excited because the Boy-Who-Lived was there or because they'd heard of Parkinson's reputation.

"We're going to show you exactly what you might have to do to get out of a sticky situation when you're in a raid and get cut off from your companions," Parkinson told the trainees briskly. She faced Harry. "You'll be playing the part of a criminal who just came around the corner. I'm playing the part of the heroic Auror."

Of course she is, Harry thought, but he obligingly assumed a hunched-over posture and made his wand spit dark sparks. A few of the trainees giggled, but most were caught up in the drama Parkinson was narrating.

"I'm going into an old manor house that someone has reported seeing new activity at. It was supposed to be Unplottable, but now it's become visible. That suggests it's not just the original owners of the house returning."

Parkinson spoke in a low, charged voice that got the attention of the trainees right away. Harry kept from shaking his head in admiration, but only just barely. She was good at this.

"I enter through the front door, and I think the rest of my raiding group is right behind me. I'm wrong, though. An old trap on the front door sprang after I went past, and cut me off." Parkinson waved her wand and cast a nonverbal charm that darkened the room around them, to the point that the sudden Lumos on the end of her wand was the brightest thing there. "I have to make sure I can see where I'm going. I find myself in a room full of dusty old furniture."

There was a moment, and the illusions of the chairs and tables shimmered to life. Harry felt Parkinson's eyes on him, and assumed she had wanted him to provide the illusions. Well, too bad. There was only so much he could do.

"I can't see very well. If I do have to move suddenly, I'm hampered by the furniture." Parkinson turned from side to side, in a neat way that emphasized how real the illusions had become to her. "And then what do I hear, but someone coming towards me?"

This time, Harry was ready. He cast Auditory Charms that made the sounds of tromping footsteps and cackling laughter fill the room. Parkinson cast him a faint, cool glance that wasn't unfriendly.

"So I have to choose quickly how to defend myself." Parkinson dropped into a crouch behind the illusion of a large table. "The largest piece of furniture isn't always best, but it's a good choice when your enemy is coming and you have to block his vision for a second."

Harry stepped up to the table and turned his head around as though looking for something. He felt Parkinson tense in the moment before she launched the spell, and Harry screamed obligingly and tilted backwards, although he allowed her Mouth-Sealing Charm to miss him.

"What you want," Parkinson said, speaking absolutely normally even as she scrambled out from under the illusion and went after Harry, who dodged again, "is some spell that will render your enemy harmless. The Disarming Charm will work, but you have to be aiming in the right direction to cast it. So will something else that prevents him from casting spells. SIlencio!"

Harry let that one hit, but very carefully thought a non-verbal Tickling Charm, and Parkinson succumbed with a little shriek of laughter.

Harry held the wand to his own mouth and thought Finite, and then faced their open-mouthed class. "But if your enemy is skilled in non-verbal magic, which he might be," he explained, while Parkinson staggered and laughed, "that spell alone isn't enough to get rid of him. So it's best to use both spells, the Disarming spell and that one, together. And hope that he's not the sort of bastard who'll attack with something stronger than a Tickling Charm."

"Or the sort of bastard who would sneak up behind you with a spell," Parkinson's voice said from behind him.

Harry spun around and raised his shield, and the Blasting Curse that Parkinson would have hit him with bounced off and back towards her. Parkinson twisted around, and the curse missed her, but hit a wall hard enough to make a chunk of it fall out and a trainee shriek.

"Or the sort of bastard who would aim a spell at you that could have done serious damage," Harry muttered, his eyes narrowed and fixed on Parkinson.

Parkinson gave him a single brilliant smile. "That sort of thing might happen, if your partner weren't a very good duelist," she agreed.

Harry rolled his eyes and stood firm, but it only made him feel stupid when all the trainees were applauding Parkinson, and he ended up smiling back.

"I don't know if I should…"

Harry ended Draco's indecision, or hoped he did, with a kiss, and gently pushed him inside the house. Draco leaned against the wall next to Harry's door, his lips chill with the winter air around them and his left hand flailing around uselessly. Harry took the hand and guided it down to his shoulder. In seconds, Draco was gripping him and kissing him firmly.

It was nice.

Then it went beyond nice, and Harry swallowed down Draco's eager gasp with a motion of his own throat. He reached out and slid his hand beneath Draco's trousers, and Draco was already spreading his legs for him, anticipating and urging on the motion of his hand. Harry couldn't remember the last time he'd had such a welcoming lover.

He drew back and kissed Draco again on the mouth, then dropped to his knees.

"Really?" Draco asked, his eyes wide and his teeth visible where his lips were parted. Well, and they were also visible because they gleamed in the firelight. It wasn't as though a Malfoy's teeth would ever dare be anything but nice.

Harry laughed soundlessly and nodded, then drew out Draco's cock and began to suck. He still had to work to keep his lips tucked over his teeth, something he forgot all the time because he was being enthusiastic, but he knew he was good at this.

From the way his head sagged against the wall and his hand, on the way to Harry's head, faltered and dropped down so it was dangling, Draco had no complaints. Looking up at him, Harry almost forgot to keep his lips over his teeth, almost bit, sometimes almost forgot to continue sucking.

But he remembered when Draco made the tiniest impatient movement, and sucked hard enough for Draco to cry out roughly. Harry smiled and slid his hands behind Draco's hips, urging him to fuck Harry's face if he wanted.

When Draco came, the only warning Harry had was the stiffening of his arse and the way he suddenly couldn't move his legs. But that was more than enough, and as Harry was eagerly swallowing, he even had enough strength in his arms to keep Draco's slide down the wall from becoming an avalanche on top of Harry's head.

Draco lay there on the floor, and Harry licked his lips and kissed his cheek. His own need was urgent now, but he could wait until Draco was back in the moment to urge him to tend to it. Harry wanted to know that Draco was there with him, not lost in memories.

Draco finally lifted his head and grinned at Harry. "Pansy thought you would never get on your knees for me," he murmured. "I look forward to telling her she was wrong."

Harry shuddered a little. "Parkinson doesn't need all the details," he muttered, and took Draco to bed for some that he hoped Draco would throw a considerate veil over.

"Potter!"

Harry, dangling from a rope that his spell had sprouted and attached to the wall, held out his wand towards Parkinson, wavering back and forth on the crumbling walkway that had dropped Harry, and called back, "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

Parkinson gave him a look dirty enough to make him laugh, and said through gritted teeth, "But there's no way that they don't know we're here."

Harry shrugged a little. They'd discovered that a few Death Eaters had taken over a historic castle in Scotland and were preying on Muggles who came through on tours, mostly by taking them away for experiments and then returning them to the groups with Memory Charms in place. It had seemed a straightforward case. Rabastan Lestrange and the rest hadn't managed to trap the area because the traps would probably catch Muggles and alert them that something was wrong. So Harry and Parkinson had simply climbed the side of the castle with a few Levitation Charms and then stepped out on a rampart.

Which turned out to have Crumbling Charms worked into it, and Harry had gone over the side. But he'd rescued himself in time, without even leaving Parkinson to do it, so he didn't see what she was complaining about.

Harry was going to worry about one problem at a time, though. That was a solution he had learned since the war. "Funalis!"

Parkinson uttered a shriek as a rope materialized from the air, grabbed her around the waist, and swung her down on the other side of the wall. At the same time, the one Harry was holding onto pulled very fast, hauling him up as though it was on the other side of a pulley, and he reeled up and then down into the courtyard where Parkinson was climbing shakily to her feet.

"There," Harry told her. "Now we're in, and we're not where they thought we were."

Parkinson gave him a dirty look that rivaled in intensity some of the curses the Lestranges sent at them a few moments later. But they fought back-to-back with no issue and captured the Lestranges and their partner, so Harry knew she couldn't really resent him.

Well, he thought that until he encountered the Sticking Charm that bound him to his chair and kept him there for at least an hour after Parkinson had gone home.

"Pansy told me you scared the shit out of her the other day," Draco said.

He had joined Harry in the Leaky Cauldron when Harry invited him, but he kept his head turned away and moodily ate the chips Harry bought. Harry stared at him in silent incomprehension, and finally decided Draco must be upset because Parkinson was his friend and Harry had frightened her.

"I can apologize," Harry said, and sighed. "I didn't mean to upset her. It was just the best thing I could think of to make sure that we both got to the bottom safely and in a place where we could fight the Lestranges."

Draco looked up and took one of Harry's hands. It was the first time he had done something like that all evening, so Harry tried out a tentative smile.

Draco didn't smile back. "She wasn't all that frightened. What really upset her is that she thought you were becoming friends, and now she thinks maybe you were only trying to get close to her so she would tell you about me."

Harry blinked and thought back over his interactions with Parkinson. They had seemed—not exactly hostile to him, but at least, well, fraught. He had assumed that she felt the same way about them, that this wasn't a friendship.

But maybe for someone like Parkinson, who had existed on terms of indifference or hostility towards him at Hogwarts, this was something like friendship. Harry nodded. "I'll apologize to her, then. I didn't know she felt that way."

Draco's smile really could light up a darkened room. "I told her that was probably it. That you don't notice subtle emotional reactions unless they're spelled out for you."

Harry grinned and leaned towards Draco. "There are some things I notice. Like how well that robe becomes you. Do you want to wait until we can get some privacy, or can you be very quiet?" And he slid his foot up Draco's leg beneath the table.

Draco's quickening breath and fluttering eyelashes were all he had hoped for.

"I'm sorry, Parkinson."

Parkinson kept her head down, her eyes fixed on the files in front of her. "What does it matter? We got the Lestranges, after all."

"But that's not the only thing that's important," Harry began, and then spelled the files to hover in the air when he realized she refused to look at him. Parkinson lifted her head with slow, majestic coldness. At the same time, the people in the photographs on the walls of her office—which included various ones of herself—turned and looked at Harry with the same expression. Harry blinked. "That's impressively creepy."

Parkinson's face softened a little. "Thanks. I've worked on the spell for a long time." Then she folded her arms. "That doesn't mean I forgive you, Potter."

Harry hesitated, then forged ahead. "Draco told me that you thought we were becoming friends. I didn't think of it in the same way. Sorry."

"How did you think of it?" Parkinson's expression and voice had gone past cold into arctic.

"Someone who would work with me and could put the past aside," said Harry, and threw his hands up when Parkinson continued to glare at him. "Come on, Parkinson! You never made it clear that it was anything more than that!"

"Potter." Parkinson sighed and raised a hand to massage her forehead. This time, only two of the photographs did it as well, which Harry was glad of. "To someone like me, someone who hated you and wanted to give you away to the Dark Lord during the war, that's a long way from where we were."

Harry hesitated again. Then he said, "Well, yeah. But that makes you an Auror like anyone else. For me, I mean. I wasn't treating you any differently from the other ones I work with who aren't Ron. I didn't mean to—I don't know, give you the wrong impression."

Parkinson sat still for a second, and then inclined her head slowly. "That's true."

"All of it?" Harry asked. He didn't want Parkinson to think that he regularly treated other Aurors who weren't her in a special way.

"All of it," Parkinson conceded with a nod. This time, she actually smiled at him. "You were treating me equally to others, and that means that I can both consider a friendship with you and appreciate being treated like everyone else instead of a potential enemy. Thank you."

Harry smiled back, and then strengthened the smile when Parkinson regarded him indulgently. "Why did you join the Aurors?'

"You aren't that much of a friend," said Parkinson amiably, and waited until Harry released his hold on her files before she started working on them again. Harry strolled out of her office, and found that he was grinning.

"So at first you talked to Pansy because you wanted to know about me. Now you're talking to me because you want to know about Pansy."

Harry tossed his head back and laughed. He had to admit, he was a little exhilarated. Draco had just sucked him off for the first time, and now he was kneeling in front of Harry on the bed with streaks of white still wrapping his lips. Harry didn't think anyone could blame him for feeling on top of the world right now.

Draco scowled at him and wrapped a cold hand around Harry's ankle, grinning when Harry yelped. "That's better. Now tell me."

"I didn't ask you about her because I want to get close to her," said Harry, folding his hands behind his head and crossing his legs. He wanted to move around and whoop, but from the look on Draco's face, certain tender parts of him could be in danger if he did that. "I'm already close to her."

"Huh?"

That was the last straw Harry could take: the bewildered expression on Draco's face and his slow blinks combined with the word. He burst out laughing and let himself roll to the side, substituting his shoulder and side for Draco's punches.

Draco finally got in a good one, and Harry reared back with a gasp and shook his head. "I told her that I treated her like all the other Aurors, which is true. And she accepted that, and so we have a sort of friendship now."

Draco leaned slowly back on his heels. "But not like the one she and I have."

Harry smiled at him. "No." Not like the one I have with Ron and Hermione, either. But Draco had established a certain dictate early on that Harry had promised never to violate: no mentioning Ron and Hermione when they were in bed together. So Harry didn't say it.

"And not like the relationship you and I have, either." Draco trailed the sheets between his fingers, his head tilted and one eye fastened on Harry.

"Merlin, I hope not," Harry said fervently. "Or Parkinson and I really need to have a talk."

Draco grinned himself and pounced on him, and Harry greeted him with eager hands and lips, and there was no more talk of Parkinson that night.

"You thought you could stop me, but I foiled you!" The ranting Dark wizard held his gloved hands up and shook them back and forth triumphantly. Between them, the glowing blue chain that he claimed could end the lives of all wizards within ten miles rattled. "They send their best Aurors against me, and they fail! I was truly born to rule the wizarding world!"

Harry only needed a glance from Parkinson to understand her plan. He nodded. Honestly, sometimes it was like Legilimency between them, they flowed so well.

"Aranea!" Parkinson called, and the spiderweb shot from her wand, which the wizard had neglected to take away, even though he'd taken Harry's—she was only a pouting girl and not a threat, apparently—and tangled the chain and the wizard's hands. Just in case, they didn't want him dropping it, although Harry thought the chain was only an ordinary one that he'd made glow with a light charm. The wizard yelped.

Harry broke into a run and snatched his wand up from the table behind the wizard, then surged around and grabbed him by the throat. The wizard tried to curse and say, "Ack," at the same time, and just like most people when they tried to do two things at the same time, didn't manage either very well.

"Silencio," Harry said with satisfaction. Honestly, the gloating that Dark wizards did never got any less stereotypical.

Parkinson came towards them while Harry held the wizard motionless, and she carefully leaned in and examined the chain. Then she snorted. "The 'ritual' you worked to empower it didn't work the way you did it," she told their criminal, and cast a spell that dissipated the spiderweb just above the chain, then caught it as it fell.

"What does it do?" Harry asked, noting that she still held the chain with some caution.

"Summons a dozen fluffy bunnies instead of the hurricane of glass shards that it was supposed to." Parkinson rolled her eyes. "Honestly. Incompetent people."

Harry grinned, Stunned the wizard, and then Lightened him and scooped him up. "What, you don't like fluffy bunnies?"

"Horribly allergic," said Parkinson, and Harry laughed. Then she eyed him speculatively, and Harry tilted his head. He had found that either very good things or very bad things followed that look. "Hmm. You do know you could call me by my first name? Why haven't you yet?"

Harry blinked. "Because I thought it would get me hexed."

Parkinson nodded gravely. "A good reason. Remind me to hunt you down right away if you turn Dark. You'd prove frighteningly competent and sensible, unlike some people." She pinched the hand of the Dark wizard sprawled over Harry's shoulder, and then turned back to him. "So?"

"Whatever you say," Harry said meekly. "Pansy."

"Competent, sensible, and knows his place," Pansy announced to the world at large. "I'm keeping him as a partner." She tucked her hair behind her ear and her wand in her holster, and Harry knew she was smiling, although her lips didn't move. "Come, now. We should have been back an hour ago. If you hadn't let him Disarm you immediately because you thought we could reason with him…maybe I'll have to revise my opinion of your competence…."

Harry grinned to make his cheeks ache as he followed her out of the complicated cavern system their prey had taken over. She wasn't Ron, and she wasn't Hermione, and she definitely wasn't Draco, and he still didn't know why she'd joined the Aurors.

She was Pansy, and she was his friend. And that was enough.

The End.