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"Potter. You're late."

"I'm sorry."

Harry might have tried to excuse himself more than that, but he didn't see the point. He was late, and he might have cost Malfoy a lot in time or the favors it had probably taken him to set up this game. He just contented himself with nodding, heaving his broom, and adding, "Can we still play?"

"We can." Malfoy watched him with his head on one side, so like an owl they'd once had that Harry had to smile in spite of everything. "If you're not wounded."

"No." Harry supposed it was natural for him to think that Harry was wounded, with the delay he'd had. He swung his broom down from his shoulder with an easy motion to prove it, and added, as Malfoy started to lead him further into the darkness, "What team did you have the players come from?"

"You think I have the connections to get a professional Quidditch team to come out here?"

"Yes."

Malfoy's smile leaped out of the darkness like the Lumos Charm the other night, but even brighter and more unexpected. "Well, I do. But there's a mixture of teams. I suspect none of them wanted to risk all their players for fear of being humiliated. The Chasers are from the Wasps, the Falconers sent two Beaters, the Keeper's from the Arrows, and the Seeker..."

"Yes?"

"The Cannons."

Harry felt the taste of victory in his mouth, as thick and raw as blood. "And you think people will say it's a fair win if we do it when Leopold's the opponent?"

"Not that many people will ever know about this game anyway. The people who matter will, but it's not going to be a common topic of gossip." Malfoy glanced back at him, smile lighting the way again. "Besides, they think they're going to win because they're seven professionals. We're two amateurs."

"Not you."

"Amateur level. And I don't even have the experience of playing on a school team that you do. They're going to be humiliated, even with all their fine efforts not to be."

Harry nodded. "I see what you mean. Besides, the Cannons have a certain reputation among their fans." He was thinking of Ron, who had insisted over and over again that Jackson Leopold would have won if it hadn't been for that windy day, or that cheating enemy Seeker, or the unfortunate spasm of his broom underneath him.

"That's true." Malfoy hesitated for a moment, and Harry looked up, wondering if there was some other obstacle on their way to the field. "I wouldn't have invited you to this if I didn't think that you were a strong enough partner for me to win."

"I know."

Malfoy nodded once. "I thought you might think..."

"You wouldn't want to be humiliated in front of professionals any more than I would. No, Malfoy, I do understand this. Your motives, and the limitations, and the way we work together. I wouldn't ask for anything more. Certainly not a pity fuck."

Malfoy smiled as though the world was beginning, and led Harry onto the pitch.

They were one being in two bodies.

Harry felt it the moment they walked onto the Quidditch pitch. Of course he and Malfoy were closer together, and the professional Quidditch players were gathered a short distance away. So it was natural to feel as if he could sense echoes of Malfoy's presence playing all around him, hear every rush of blood in his veins, feel his breath, even when they were too distant from each other for that to be possible.

Even when they shook hands with the players-and got a glare from Jackson Leopold for their trouble-Harry didn't feel that close to them. But then, they were his opponents. It was only natural to be wary.

Then he and Malfoy stepped back, and gripped their brooms, and kicked into the air. They would have to catch the Snitch, fend off Bludgers themselves, and get the Quaffle through one hoop. They wouldn't be able to spare anyone to act as Keeper.

And then it became undeniable.

Harry knew not just where Malfoy was, but what he was feeling. And that was insane, when all he could really see of him during their wild maneuvering was the edge of his hand on a broom, or the bristles of the tail as he spun out of the way of a hit. Harry didn't know Malfoy that well. No one could, not after a fortnight's acquaintance.

Except he did.

Harry spun to the left, and a Bludger sprinted past his head with a whine. It was going too fast to change direction, and that whine had told Malfoy where it was. Harry knew that without turning his head. He tore away after the Quaffle, and spun it through their hoop by checking it with his hip.

He knew Malfoy was flying near the ground, and knew just by turning his head that he hadn't spotted the Snitch yet. Harry used his broom to hit the Quaffle this time, and avoided the Bludger by diving. Then he took to the high road, the cloud road, to hunt the Snitch.

It was nothing like the dizzying night when he had flown after the cloud. Instead, he rose in a hawk's spiral, and ignored the Beaters that chased him. They had faster brooms, or at least one did, but it didn't matter. Malfoy was about to hit the Bludgers after them, and give them something to think about.

On cue, he heard the Bludgers arc around and the Beaters' startled cursing. They probably hadn't even realized that one of the deadly balls had got out of their control. Harry smiled and kept turning his head.

There was a flicker of gold off to the side, but a second later, Harry realized it was only the fairy lights around the pitch flashing from the custom engraving on someone's broom. Harry sighed. They were five minutes into the game. It would have been good to end it before then.

But the professionals were at least looking more serious and less resentful than they had before the game. They had taught them respect, Harry thought, as he completed another ring of the spiral and looked around for the Snitch again. Malfoy might say that most people would never know about this game anyway, and be right, but Harry knew word would spread through the sort of underground networks that had let Malfoy arrange this game in the first place.

Harry looked down at another flash of movement. Malfoy was directly beneath him. He glanced up at Harry, and his eyes widened.

Harry didn't bother questioning the intuition that flared to life inside him. He dropped.

Another Bludger was chasing him, and it would have smashed his head if he'd stayed in the same position. Without the spells that were there to soften impacts in a normal game, he would have died. Harry let the thoughts flow through his fingers and his head and out into the air again, not affecting his performance.

Something else was doing that.

The tug of awareness that bound him to Malfoy made him dance to the side. He reached out his hand. He knew what was coming, and he knew that Malfoy was rising, and he knew that there was a slash of gold diving towards them, and he knew and accepted all that as his fingers linked with Malfoy's.

And at the same moment, the Snitch touched their palms. And their linked fingers closed around it.

Harry panted. He lifted his head and saw Malfoy staring back at him, his face ablaze with so many emotions Harry wasn't sure he knew all their names. He inclined his head after a moment, and Malfoy nodded solemnly back.

"That's impossible."

"They must have cheated somehow."

"How? We saw them take all the spells off their brooms, and Malfoy's pitch doesn't permit other spells that would let them know..."

Harry let the voices trail away as unimportant when he saw the way Malfoy was looking at him. They knew they hadn't cheated, although if the professional Quidditch players had to decide they'd done it to make their loss acceptable to them, that was fine.

They knew the truth. Where "they" consisted of him and Malfoy.

Harry had never felt anything like it. Not with Ron, who had been his best friend most of his life. Not with his Gryffindor teammates, although they had been good enough to win the Quidditch Cup several times.

He and Malfoy landed, and Leopold landed, too, and stalked off the pitch on the other side. The rest of the players didn't pay attention to him. They hovered over Harry and Malfoy and shot so many questions at them, mostly about how long they'd been playing together, that Harry was at a loss to answer them all.

Luckily, Malfoy fielded most quickly and easily.

"No, just since the last full moon...yes, I personally tested him myself...Seeker is the position he played at Hogwarts...no, I never went in for Beater...if you say so...James Potter's son...perhaps."

It was as if they were still in tune even when not flying together, both on and off the pitch. Maybe they were, Harry acknowledged slowly to himself. It wasn't like he'd ever had really good sex before Malfoy, either.

Doesn't that give me something to think about.

Harry met and held Malfoy's eyes, at the same moment as one of the Beaters asked, "Would you consider playing on a team apart from him, if both of you were offered professional contracts?"

Harry frankly gaped. That was not something he had ever thought would come out of this game. Malfoy just curled the side of his mouth with lordly disdain.

"Of course not," Malfoy said. "He's my partner."

Harry tilted his head to the side, vaguely aware that he now resembled an owl, like Malfoy when he'd met him on his way into the Quidditch pitch. Malfoy only smiled back, rich and insinuating.

"Well, let's dicker, then."

Harry turned. There was an eighth player on the Quidditch pitch, one he hadn't seen before, decked out in the uniform of the Montrose Magpies. He nodded to Malfoy and focused on Harry.

"Eighteen hundred Galleons a month," he said calmly, "to play as our reserve Seeker."

"I won't accept a contract apart from Malfoy," Harry said, although his heart was spinning and his head was pounding. It was more money than he had ever been offered in his life, more than Dad and Sirius made as Aurors. "I thought he just told you that."

"No," said the Magpies player in a slight drawl, "I know that. We need two reserve Seekers. Frankly, our games are dangerous with the strategies we practice, and our Seeker is almost ready to retire anyway. Twenty-six, he's getting slow. We need to have our choice of replacements in the future, but if I know Halibut, he'll stick it out to the last month of his contract to show he can. That's fine, that'll give you plenty of time to dazzle on the field. What do you say?"

There was a wave of grumbling among the other players. Harry couldn't even look at them. His head was still pounding as though someone had cast a Skull-Splitter Jinx on him, and he looked at Malfoy instead.

He knew, despite the lack of expression on his face, that Malfoy was burning with a bonfire of delight beside him.

"I think," Malfoy said, "that we might want to renegotiate the price."

Harry nearly opened his mouth to complain-this was already the highest price he'd ever head of for beginning Quidditch players-but then he saw the resigned way the Magpies' representative nodded, and knew that the man had expected the renegotiation. And from some of the muttering behind him, the other players were angry that their own teams weren't going to authorize them to go higher, or maybe offer contracts at all.

It was a new life opening before him, suddenly, in the middle of the Quidditch pitch on a dark moon night.

"Are you going to tell me why you were late tonight?"

Harry swallowed and looked up at Malfoy. Dawn was in the distance, and the Quidditch players had departed two hours ago. But he and Malfoy had lingered outside on the pitch by mutual consent, neither wanting to give up reliving the game.

Or what had happened afterwards.

"My parents and their friends who live with us caught me sneaking out of the house."

Malfoy's face flickered through a few rapid expressions. Then he said, "But you're of age."

There was a question in the back of his voice. Harry glared at him. "We were in the same year at Hogwarts, Malfoy. Of course I'm bloody well of age."

"Then what is their objection?"

Harry sighed and messed his fingers through his hair. He knew Malfoy was twitching with the desire to smooth it again, and that was something that even Sirius couldn't always resist. Malfoy, who had known him so much less time, understood him well enough not to reach out and try.

That was the kind of knowledge that made Harry speak the truth.

"They're trying to see themselves in me, I reckon. My dad and Siruis were famous pranksters at school. They assume that I would use the Invisibility Cloak to play pranks at night, instead of sneak off to something like this. And they think I'm going to be an Auror."

"What a waste of talent. Someone should arrest you if you try."

Harry's smile was brief. "Yeah, but they don't see it that way. They're proud I play Quidditch, because my dad was on Gryffindor's team too, but they don't...they don't see it as something I can challenge myself at. They think I'll spend a few more months 'recovering from Hogwarts,' as Sirius puts it, and then join them in the Ministry. They keep asking me what I would do if I became a professional Quidditch player and then got old."

"Of course you'll get old. But you'll have made enough money by then to relax for the rest of your life if you want. Or pick something expensive and do that."

"They don't think I will."

"You don't strike me as someone who has a lot of problems saving your money."

"No. They...my mum thinks I'm a genius, like her. Just that I wasn't challenged enough at Hogwarts and I'm waiting for the right chance to exercise my genius. She would be happy if I wanted to become a Healer or an Unspeakable or something. Anything that's hard and combines several disciplines."

"Does she play Quidditch?"

"No."

"Then her opinion is irrelevant."

Harry had to smile again, but he said, "She's my mum, Malfoy. Of course it isn't irrelevant. And my father's other friend, Remus, is the worst in some ways. He knows that I'm not happy, but he just thinks it's amazing that I have such a good life, and Sirius and my dad and mum are so welcoming to him. He thinks that's enough. It's enough for him. It should be for me, too."

"Potter," said Malfoy, and his voice was low and charged with a kind of intensity that made Harry's spine prickle more than it would have if Malfoy had suddenly switched to his first name. "Do you think my parents approve of me setting up a Quidditch pitch like this and trying to become a professional player? The way we just did?"

"That was pretty fucking amazing, wasn't it?"

"We're amazing together. Now answer my question."

Harry slowly shook his head. "I never met them, only heard stories about them from my dad. I thought...well, maybe they were just letting you do whatever you wanted because you had the money and the time. Or maybe they could see that you burn to play Quidditch and they let you do it because of that."

"Ha. No." Malfoy's lips curved the slightest bit. "My mother lets me do what I want, in the serene expectation that I'll get bored of this someday and do what they want instead. My father thinks Quidditch is entirely beneath me. My grandfather is actually the one who had the pitch constructed. I had to spend a lot of time improving it to raise it to meet my standards. My father refused to help."

"But he didn't interfere, either?" If James had disapproved of Quidditch, Harry would have known.

"Of course not. That's beneath the dignity of a Malfoy."

Harry reached out to Malfoy as he stared into the distance. "Well, you've done a brilliant job on the Quidditch pitch," he said. "The only thing I regret is that we didn't play together in Hogwarts and learn we could be the team we are before now."

Malfoy cocked his head. "I wouldn't have known how to appreciate you then. I was only a child."

"And now we're not."

"Decidedly not," Malfoy said, and slid his hand slowly up Harry's hip. "Shall we celebrate before we go and tell your parents?"

"We?" Harry asked, gasping a little as he felt how cool Malfoy's hand was.

"Of course. I never intended to let you go alone."

"Harry? What is the meaning of this?"

Harry took a moment to lean back against Malfoy, who looped an arm around his waist in support. That made Remus blink, his mother stare, and his father open his mouth as if to shout. But Sirius, who was watching intently, reached out and patted Dad's arm hard. Dad shut up long enough for Harry to speak.

"I've been given an offer to play professional Quidditch. Reserve Seeker for the Montrose Magpies."

"But how..." Mum.

"You never showed any interest..." Sirius.

"Why with Malfoy, of all people?" Dad.

Remus just bowed his head as if he understood and was weary already.

"I showed interest. You just never paid attention," Harry said, and ignored the devastated looks that appeared on his parents' faces. He looked at Mum and Dad. "This is a great chance. Someone who's only played on a Hogwarts team is almost never offered a chance like this."

"But what's it going to do to your career?" That was Sirius, who seemed to have forgotten that he'd held Dad back a second ago. He was all bent on charging ahead, and his face had a snarl wrinkled across his lips. "Your real one. Your Auror one."

"That Auror career was something you planned for me," Harry said. "I never planned on it. I tried to make it clear that I wasn't you lot, but you never wanted to hear that. So I went along with it and waited for the chance to show you I wanted something different."

"Is Quidditch going to be enough of a challenge for you?" That was Lily, of course, her hair swaying as she leaned intently forwards.

"You ought to see him on the field," said Malfoy, and everyone started as if they'd never thought he would speak despite standing right there. "With skilled enough opponents, of course it is. He simply never had them when he was at Hogwarts."

"We never asked you that, Malfoy."

"But I can answer as well as Harry can," said Malfoy, and smirked when Sirius started to splutter. "So why shouldn't I?"

Harry, meanwhile, looked at his mother and said, "He's right. It'll be enough of a challenge for me now that I'm playing professionally." He leaned back against Malfoy's warmth and added, "And now that I have a partner who can keep up with me."

If the implications of the word "partner" occurred to anyone, obviously they went straight over their heads. Mum still looked concerned. Dad said, "You know that you can't play professional Quidditch forever?"

"You can't be an Auror forever, either," Harry snapped back. "You're in your late thirties and they've already assigned you to deskwork, Dad. You complain about it, but I know you almost died in any number of cases. I want to do the dangerous risky career of my heart. Not yours."

"There are lots of Aurors who are in less danger every day," Sirius began.

"But not many of them. And I don't want what you want. I'm not you."

The words seemed to make the house shake. Harry's parents exchanged guilty glances. Harry hoped it was because they hadn't listened to him, and they realized it now.

But Sirius, of course, was still charging straight ahead. "How can you think you're going to be safe with a Malfoy playing next to you? They'll stab you as soon as you cross them! You'll have a fight, someone will say something unforgivable-"

"You're closer to saying something unforgivable right now than he is, Sirius. Shut up."

Sirius might not have, but Remus stood up and moved around in front of him. Harry thought he wasn't supposed to hear the words. Once again, they seemed to have forgotten that he and Malfoy were standing right there.

"Let him do what he wants, Padfoot. He can't do it forever, but there are very few things one can do forever. At least he'll be happy. And this way, we'll be on hand to help him if and when he decides that he can't stand it any longer."

Harry felt his muscles relax, one by one. That was all he wanted, the same chance they would give so many other people. He didn't know why it was so hard for his loving, open-minded parents and godfather to do that for him, but it seemed to have been.

"I almost think they'll agree," Malfoy whispered against his ear.

Harry nodded, and was ready when Sirius turned around and grimaced at him. "I think you're making a mistake," he said, in a voice that reminded Harry of the way he sometimes growled when he was in dog form and lying in front of the fire. "But it's your mistake to make. Your life." He looked around the room as if for help or inspiration, then turned and thrust his hand roughly at Malfoy. "You. Look after him."

"I don't want to lose him. I will." Malfoy shook Sirius's hand and turned to look at the rest of Harry's family. He'd moved so his chin was top of Harry's head and his arm was around Harry's waist. Harry held his incredulous chuckle in. He was provoking them, but then again, probably better to make Mum and Dad face up to everything all at once.

James flushed and said, turned away so that he had his arms folded, "Fine. You take care of my son. And it had better not be in the way that your father took care of enemies of You-Know-Who."

Malfoy's eyes could really flash when he wanted them to, but luckily, Dad wasn't looking. Malfoy nodded and turned to face Lily.

Lily sighed gustily and stretched her hand out to rest on Harry's cheek. "I'm sorry that none of us understood you," she whispered.

"As long as you can live with me doing what I want now," Harry said, not looking away from her face, "I forgive you."

His mum hugged him, of course, because she was his mum. At least Harry didn't hear Malfoy snicker. In fact, he let Harry go and stood calmly by while Lily hugged him, then reclaimed Harry into his embrace the minute she let him go. Lily seemed to relax as she hadn't done so far since Harry and Malfoy walked into the kitchen.

"If you can care for him..."

"I can, Mrs. Potter."

Lily nodded and turned back to Harry. Her eyes were wet. "Then go, with my blessing." This time, she kissed him on the cheek. Harry kissed her awkwardly back and then waved his wand to Summon his clothing and other possessions down the stairs.

"You're going now?" Sirius sounded stunned.

"There's not much point in delaying, really," said Harry. "I mean, the Magpies' contract starts tomorrow. And we can Floo in from Malfoy Manor if I spend the night there." He shifted a little closer, backwards, in Malfoy's arms, to let him know Harry stood with him.

Sirius turned and stomped out of the room. Dad wavered, then came over and hugged Harry-Malfoy let him go again-before he went and joined Sirius. Remus didn't hug him, but put his hands on Harry's shoulders and stared steadily into his eyes.

"You're sure you want this?" he whispered.

Why wouldn't I? But Remus had been on his side more than anyone else despite being the one to find Harry sneaking out last night, so Harry made sure to widen his eyes and try to look his most innocent and pleading as he nodded.

"Good, then. Good-bye, cub." Remus hugged him hard once, and stepped away, too. They all stood watching as Harry and Malfoy walked outside and to the Apparition point, and then they went and watched through the windows.

Malfoy said nothing until they were safely beyond what anyone might overhear through the windows or doors. Then he asked, not looking at Harry, "Are you ready to face my parents, now? They're going to make this look as easy as baking biscuits."

Harry stopped walking and tugged on Malfoy's sleeve until he turned around. Harry held his eyes, then, and gave a single exaggerated nod of his head. Whether or not Malfoy believed him, it made him smile.

Together, they turned and Apparated out.

The End.