Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of this particular fic, but there are others in the series coming up.

Chapter Eight—A Flair for Excuses

Warren and Jenkins, as it turned out, had been delayed by two of the ghosts that refused to vanish until the moment Larkin died. Then they came as fast as they could, to find a hero—

And someone who no one seemed to know what to do with.

Harry leaned back against the chair that they'd given him in the Socrates office and closed his eyes. He could use a few minutes alone, since everyone else was busy with paperwork and witness statements about the Larkin case. He'd made the excellent point that, since he kept his eyes closed or was unconscious for ninety percent of Malfoy's confrontation with Larkin, he wasn't actually a witness.

Besides, he knew that he would have a special interrogation team, composed of not just the Head Auror but Healers from St. Mungo's and a good portion of his superiors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He wasn't looking forward to it.

He had to figure out what he was going to tell them.

That Tella was right, and I do have a death wish? That would go down well with everyone, and they'd probably reconsider keeping me on as an Auror as well as putting me in Socrates Corps.

That I thought Malfoy couldn't handle himself? No. That would be an explanation for why I escaped hospital and came to help, but not for why I leaped in front of Larkin's curse instead of trying to take Larkin on myself.

That I didn't trust Malfoy and thought he might be working with Larkin? They'd want to know why I didn't report those suspicions earlier.

In the end, Harry sighed and decided that the explanation for why he'd been so determined not to let Malfoy share Lionel's fate was probably the simplest, after all. He would tell them that he still had nightmares and residual guilt from Lionel's death, which was the truth, although he would exaggerate the scope of the nightmares and downplay the scale of the guilt. Then they would return him to St. Mungo's for observation and have him talk to some people. But it would seem to be a resolvable problem, a problem they could fix, and they would let him stay in the Aurors. That was important.

"Potter."

Harry turned and blinked, thinking for a moment that Malfoy had come to summon him to his audience with the Head Auror and the others. His mouth was full of a light-hearted comment all ready to go, something about how Malfoy was lucky, because that was the shortest interrogation he had heard of since being in the Aurors.

But Malfoy came in by himself, not with Warren and Jenkins as he would have if they were all through being questioned, and as Harry watched, he shut the office door behind himself and locked it with a little twist of his wand. Then he paced towards Harry, his steps as grave and solemn as the steps of a judge. He did pause briefly by Latham's desk, as though, like Harry, he remembered the day they had first met up here and the man had done a poor job of spying on them through a flimsy shield of paperwork.

Harry winced at the thought. I didn't really know Latham, and Larkin still reached out and plucked him from life before I had a chance to do so.

"They're saying that it's because you're a hero," Malfoy said when he reached Harry. He stood there, looking down at him, and Harry looked back and up with no idea of how to respond. Did Malfoy believe that, holding Harry in contempt for thinking that he couldn't save his own life? Harry had no idea. "But I know it's not. You tried to tell me something about the vision in hospital, and I ignored you. You knew what was going to happen, and you threw yourself in the path of that curse. Why?"

Harry gave a long, rattling sigh that he knew came from the bottom of his lungs. Well, he had known Malfoy would find out about Lionel eventually. At least there was an official cover story there.

"I had a partner before I was assigned here," he said. "Lionel Vane, the only one I've worked with since Ron who really understood me and didn't think that my fame was earning me special favors or that I needed to be protected and coddled because of it. How much do you know about the Gina Hendricks case?"

"That the criminal wasn't human," Malfoy said promptly, drawing up another chair but not sitting in it. He leaned against his desk instead, his gaze deep and searching as he studied Harry. "That you were the one who hunted and killed it."

"Lionel died on that case," Harry said. "I don't think I could have killed the creature without the—the rage that that gave me. And I determined that no one would ever die like that again, no one partnered to me. The spell I saw in the vision, the one that would have destroyed me, was the same one the creature used on Lionel. No cure. Except the time-stopping you found. Thank you," he added.

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "You think that Larkin knew and took that information from your brain?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think we know what Larkin was capable of, exactly, and now we'll never know. It could have been coincidence. But I couldn't let you die like that. Nor any other way. I'm still in mourning for Lionel. I thought it wasn't affecting me badly, but now I see it was. So. I'll get some therapy for it, and then hopefully be a better partner to you."

Malfoy spent a little time staring at him. Harry stared wearily back. It was the truth, all except the part where he'd been in love with Lionel. That part belonged to him, and the dead.

Then Malfoy said quietly, "Bollocks."

Harry snorted, glad that his anger would still rise when he called for it. His guilt had sometimes eaten it before. But he didn't think that Malfoy had anything to complain about here, not when Harry had saved his life and trusted him and apologized. "What? You think I have some reason to lie to you?"

Malfoy shook his head. Harry would have thought he'd sit down by now, but apparently he didn't want to surrender the psychological advantage of standing up. "I think that there's a reason you didn't tell me about this directly when I asked you about the vision in hospital," he said. "You could have explained you saw yourself saving my life. I might not have believed you, but I would have been more cautious. Why didn't you?"

Harry opened his mouth, and then shut it. The silence stretched between them, and grew both longer and deeper.

Trust bloody Malfoy to have picked the one question he didn't really have an answer for.

Draco felt his satisfaction surge like blood when Potter leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He could have raged, but that would have put Potter's back up and involved them in a shouting contest. Draco didn't enjoy those, not when there were so many more productive things he could do instead—like shaming Potter into realizing his own mistake.

And he knew there was more here than Potter had told him, although that choice of question had been a lucky guess. He knew that Potter's destructive behavior in escaping from hospital, destructive of Healers' tempers and hospital wards as well as his own body, had a deeper explanation. He would learn what it was, and he would help Potter recover from it or eliminate it.

If he could not, then he would seek promotion into another Corps in the Auror Department. He refused to have a suicidal partner, one whose lack of success would reflect on Draco's abilities in one of two negative ways: either he would die, or he would be the one who survived but looked like a coward compared to the Boy-Who-Lived.

Or I could find myself on trial for murder as the one who let the Great Harry Potter perish.

Draco would not have that happen. Perhaps others had been blinded by Potter's fame to how broken he was, but Draco would not be. He fastened his eyes on Potter and waited.

"I," Potter said at last, and bowed his head. "Because I can't let another partner die. And I was afraid that you would take more risks if I told you what I saw. Either because you saw it as your duty to prove me wrong or because you would want to prevent the vision from coming true and do something that carried you into danger that I couldn't see," he added, obviating Draco's need for a question about what kind of an idiot he thought Draco was. "I see it as my duty to keep you safe."

"I have the same training as you," Draco said, after Potter had sat there staring at his hands and Draco had breathed quietly through his anger for a few minutes. "I haven't done this for as long as you, since I entered the training program when you left it, but I do. Your conclusion that I would go out of my way to doubt you is insulting."

Potter gave him a flat look. "Is it? You thought I was lying in hospital—"

"You were."

"About having the vision, not what it contained." Potter leaned forwards insistently. "Ron was used to the visions. Lionel accepted them. Hale, the partner I had between Ron and Lionel, thought I was mad and refused to work with me. I didn't want that to happen with you. And you went on thinking that I was lying about having them even when you saw two of them come true, and you can go back and look in my files and find out how many cases I've solved because of them. Why the fuck should I tell the truth to someone who would always think I was lying, about the visions in general and not just that specific time?"

"Larkin could have fooled you," Draco said. "And just because you had those visions from him doesn't mean that you have them in general."

He knew the excuse was weak, and Potter's gaze cut straight through him and his words. He reached out to his desk, behind him, and scooped up a thick stack of reports. He slapped them down in front of Draco, and Draco started at the noise.

"Read through those," Potter said. "My visions are mentioned in all of them. They didn't always lead us to the murderer or prevent victims from dying, but they were there. And they did help."

Draco grimaced. It seemed he had to accept that the visions Potter had seen weren't simply a trick of Larkin's.

But the truth still remained.

"Can I trust you to tell the truth about your visions next time, and not conceal important things from me in the name of protecting me?" he demanded. "Because if I can't, then it means little that I might trust you about having them."

Potter bared his teeth. "It's a complex, from my failure to save Lionel," he said. "I can't help it."

"You can and you will, if you work with me," Draco said, leaning forwards until he was in Potter's space. "Whatever it takes. And I think it's insulting to Auror Vane's memory that you think of him solely as the victim that you failed to save. He was an adult. He chose this job. He had the same training. He passed the tests to get in and the tests to become a full Auror. Are you going to say that he shouldn't have been out there?"

You don't understand, Harry wanted to cry out, instead of sitting there, frozen by the pressure of Malfoy's words. I could have saved him if I had been a bit stronger, a bit faster, a bit—

He might have trusted me more if he had never known how he felt about him. I was the one to blame for falling in love with him.

But Harry swallowed that part back, because he wasn't going to share it. And without it, his actions wouldn't make sense to someone else. Hell, they might not make sense to someone else with it. Harry didn't know, because he had never tried to explain it to someone else before. He sighed and nodded.

"No," he said. "I know he should have. I simply start thinking sometimes that I could have spared him if I'd been a little more careful."

Malfoy eyed him, as though he wanted to accept Harry's words but didn't think he could. Then he tapped one finger hard on his desk, frowning at Harry. "You won't be thinking that the next time we work together in the field, I hope."

"No," Harry said. Malfoy had saved his life. Harry had to give him credit for that. "And I am going to talk to someone about this."

Malfoy nodded, although the frown still lingered in the corners of his eyes and mouth. "If it matters, Potter, I lost a partner on the case that resulted in my promotion to the Socrates Corps. I'd worked with Kellen for four years, and the loss was a shock and a blow. But I'm not trying to overprotect you, am I?"

Harry opened his mouth to say that he couldn't imagine Malfoy overprotecting anyone—

And then he remembered what Malfoy had done in pursuit of safety for his parents during their sixth year at Hogwarts, and closed his mouth.

"I'll try, Malfoy," he said. "As long as you realize that it's not going to change in a day. And I'll still make mistakes."

"I wouldn't know what to do without mistakes from you," Malfoy said.

Harry smiled, then blinked as he realized what he was doing. Malfoy, too, opened his mouth and then shut it with a little blink, almost squinting down his own nose as though he was trying to understand why this amused him.

"Fine," Harry said, standing up and moving around his desk to make sure that there weren't any files there he would need to take with him to his interrogation. "So we've established that we work together better than expected, and that perhaps the Department knew what they were doing when they decided to partner us. Is there anything else that we need to work out?"

Malfoy was back to the frown-and-stare part. Harry stared back, emotionally exhausted. That was the deepest he'd talked with anyone since Lionel's death. Hermione and Ron had given him silent support, knowing there were things between him and Lionel that he would have found it impossible to share with anyone. The Healers hadn't been an option, and the Head Auror had given him the assignment to Socrates Corps as soon as he could walk again after the Gina Hendricks case.

"Other people have endured losses than you," Malfoy said.

"I know that," Harry said. "You just told me about one of them."

Malfoy shifted his weight. Harry thought he was reaching for words and not finding them, which had to be a novel experience for him. "I mean," Malfoy said, "that excessive sympathy for yourself is something that'll make you difficult to work with."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And I just acknowledged that that was the problem, and that I'm going to talk to someone about it. I don't know what else you want me to do. I can't go back in time and save Lionel's life." Though I would. I would in a moment.

"I want you to," Malfoy said, and paused and shook his head doubtfully. "To stop protecting me as if I'm made of glass."

"And I said that I would try that, too," Harry repeated patiently. "With some mistakes along the way. Shit, Malfoy, what do you want me from me? You have the right to ask for a lot, since I owe you a life-debt, but if we get into that, then we'll have to go back to the memories of the war and the debts we owe each other from then, and we'll never make good partners if we have to keep score like that."

Draco tilted his head. "I kept score like that with my partner Auror Moonborn all the time," he answered, mildly confused. He knew that he should have expected a few different reactions from Potter, but this seemed excessive.

Potter shook his head with a frown. "This isn't the same thing. If you're not Lionel, then I'm not Kellen. I don't want to keep count. I want to say that I owe you my life, and that in return, I have to acknowledge that you're a competent Auror, because you are. That doesn't mean we'll do things exactly the same."

Draco nodded. That sounded reasonable, on the surface, as did many of the things that Potter had just said to him.

And yet…

He thought there was something he was missing, something underneath that he should know about and didn't. But he didn't know what it could be. Potter had admitted that grief for his partner made him act irrationally, that Draco had saved his life, that a debt was there, and that he needed to take care of his problems. Those were all the admissions Draco had come seeking when he first entered the office and locked the door behind him. What else did he want from Potter?

Something more.

But that had been the case since first year when the shock of Potter's refusal had struck Draco's ego like a rock striking glass. And even if Potter had apologized the next day and become his best friend for life, Draco knew the bruise would still have been there. He was like that, largely unable to forget.

"Fine," he said. "Go away and let the Head Auror interview you, Potter. He sent me in here to do it first because he was putting it off, I think."

"Yes, he usually tries that," Potter muttered, looking both bored and irritated. Draco opened his mouth to ask how many times he had been scolded by the Head Auror and how easily he sat afterwards, but Potter walked out without looking at him again.

Draco settled back in the chair behind his desk. It would take several days of paperwork and probably another trip back to St. Mungo's for Potter, but this case was finished, and he thought he would enjoy the peace and quiet.

The stack of files that Potter had left for him to read caught his eye. Draco snorted and looked away, but his head kept turning back, and finally he gave in to his curiosity and picked the first one up. He flipped past reports, memos, the description of the arrest, and landed on a list of injuries, combined with photographs of them.

The first photograph showed a slender, dark-haired Auror, who matched what Draco remembered of Lionel Vane; he had never known the man well. He was leaning forwards and smiling into the camera, although a long, bloody gash ran down his left arm. On his shoulder leaned Potter, his own left arm in a sling, his body canted to the side in a way that suggested that something had happened to his leg, too. There was a strange mark on his face, one that looked like someone had slapped him with a hand that was on fire.

He did lie. Draco closed the file again and stared at the door, disturbed. He was getting injured like that long before the case where Vane died, and he still doesn't care as much about his own life.

Frowning, he slid the files back onto Potter's desk and turned to his own report. No point in taking up more burdens than he was prepared to, right now.

"You realize what this means, Potter?"

Harry nodded, his mouth set. "Yes, sir."

It wasn't the Head Auror they'd had in to talk to him after all, but Julian Okases, the second-in-command of the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He was probably only ten years older than Harry, but he ran a weary hand over his face now and shook his head, yawning like someone who had been up all night.

"We attempted to convince them to take you back," he said. "It didn't work. We offered to have you pay for the damages you caused in your escape, and even that wasn't possible. Their answer remains the same. You can't be treated at St. Mungo's, now or in the future."

"The prohibition doesn't extend to my friends or my partner, I would assume?" Harry asked quietly. He had no family to be affected.

"Of course not." Okases stared at him. He had grey eyes, though Harry didn't think they were as bright or as clear as Malfoy's. "Personally, I don't think St. Mungo's would have done this if you hadn't broken free of the Janus Thickey ward and disabled so many of their protections on top of the other disasters."

Harry knew what disasters he meant. Leaving hospital against Healers' advice, refusing to take certain potions that would have rendered him sleepy or inactive when he most needed to be alert, threatening a mediwizard at wandpoint when he awoke after a nightmare… There were a lot of things that had made more than just Healer Tella disgusted with him.

"I understand, sir," he said, for perhaps the fourth time in the conversation.

"I wish you could tell me what in the world we should do for you, Potter." There was that exhaustion again. "We've moved you to a new Corps, given you a new partner, in recognition of your skills…and the same problems seem to be happening all over again."

"I'm sorry, sir," Harry told his hands. He had told them the truth, over and over again: that the people around him and the work were more important to him than his personal safety, and that he had a tendency to be targeted by people who thought they had something to gain from killing him. That made for a bad combination, especially when he got wounded and couldn't slow down and take care of himself because someone else would get wounded if he did.

It wasn't that he really wanted to die—although sometimes, he had to admit, he wouldn't mind it, especially after Lionel. But if it happened in the pursuit of his work, it was about the best way it could happen.

"You'll have to make arrangements with the Ministry Healers to treat you after certain cases and before," Okases told him. "Make sure that you contact someone so you can talk about Auror Vane's death. This is clear?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you for the second chance, sir."

Okases sighed and waved him away. Harry stepped out into the corridor and started to shut the door behind him.

"Potter."

Okases's tone had suddenly grown sharp. Harry turned around, wondering what he had done now.

He started when he saw the way that Okases had stood and leaned forwards from the desk. His eyes had changed color from grey to blue, and there was hatred there that Harry knew instinctively didn't belong to the man being used to stare it at him.

"This isn't over," said the same sharp, hissing voice. "This was only the beginning."

Harry stared. Okases sat back down behind the desk and looked up at him, and the blueness was gone. He looked only weary, and surprised that Harry was still present. Harry never spent more time in the offices of his superiors than he absolutely had to.

"Well?"

Harry swallowed. He knew without asking that Okases wouldn't remember what had happened to him, and so it seemed silly to ask. "Going, sir," he muttered, and shut the door behind him.

Out in the corridor, he took stock. He had a new partner who didn't trust him, a ban for life from St. Mungo's, and apparently some kind of new opponent who could take over people and talk through them from a distance, which didn't sound like any spell Harry had ever heard of—but sounded very much like a flaw.

Well, shit.

The End.

This isn't a permanent end. There will be another one-shot next week that is a sequel to this fic (just as this fic is a sequel to "Invisible Sparks"), and others beyond that.