Title: Working With Them

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

Rating: PG

Warnings: References to violence, OC character deaths, ignores the epilogue.

Pairing: Harry/Draco pre-slash

Wordcount: 3300

Summary: The newest Auror in the Socrates Corps, Isla Rudie, watches Aurors Malfoy and Potter at work and—well, at work.

Author's Notes: This is the fifth fic in a series called the Cloak and Dagger 'verse, which consists of alternating one-shots and longer stories. So far, the stories in order are: "Invisible Sparks" (one-shot), Hero's Funeral (eight chapters), "Rites of the Dead" (one-shot), and Sister Healer (ten chapters). The stories follow Harry and Draco tracking dangerous Dark wizards called the twisted, and this story therefore makes more sense when read after the others.

Working With Them

Isla saw them first from a distance, two days before the case that got her assigned to Socrates Corps—two days before she faced her first twisted.

They walked along the corridor of the Ministry that led from the Head Auror's office perfectly in step, their heads at exactly the same height despite the fact that Malfoy was a bit taller than Potter, their gazes fixed on the distance. Their Auror robes billowed around them the way Isla remembered Professor Snape's robes doing at school. She wondered if he had taught Malfoy the trick of it, and he had taught Potter.

But they had been rivals at school, she remembered. Would Malfoy have taught Potter anything he wasn't required to?

Well, yeah, of course, he'd have to if they were partners and had to save each other's lives. Isla shook her head. Sometimes her thoughts from the days when she was a schoolgirl still entered her head and messed up her thinking. If Malfoy and Potter couldn't cooperate, the Ministry would have broken up their partnership by now. They didn't care if partners sometimes disagreed, but refusing to follow orders or proving more trouble than they were worth would cause even the bureaucrats to admit they sometimes made a mistake.

Isla shook the thoughts out of her head and watched them go. She wouldn't get a chance to see two of the most notorious and powerful Aurors in the Department often, and surely she could learn something from them by watching the way they walked, if nothing else.

Their steps were perfectly in time, she realized as she followed them, slowly enough not to be a nuisance. Perfectly. They marched to music no one else could hear. Isla wondered if they were one of the partner teams that used charms to coordinate their movements. Some people had to do that when newly paired or right out of training.

But she didn't think so. She thought they were naturally that graceful, and watching them show off their skills made her sigh in what was part admiration and part envy. She would give a lot to be that well-matched with Bertha.

But she wasn't, and after a few minutes of watching, she went back to her office to contemplate the case file about a wizard called Ascanio Hall—although they would call him something else when the case was done.

Isla leaned her head back on the pillow and stared at her hand, immobilized by a partial Body-Bind above her head. At least it looked dark purple now, rather than the color of gangrene. At least she couldn't see movement under the surface now.

She closed her eyes. Then she opened them again. The walls of St. Mungo's were rather bland to look at, but they weren't bodies erupting in ants that ate flesh, bone, muscle and all, and heaved under the skin before that. She would be seeing the way poor Bertha had died in nightmares for months now.

"Auror Rudie?"

Isla looked up, blinking. Auror Malfoy stood in the doorway, his arms folded and his stare considering her as if she was another file in a long line of them. Well, Isla thought, he probably dealt with most people like that. And at least he didn't stare at her the way the Healers had, as if she would sprout ants from beneath her skin and kill them all. Healers seemed to think that being that kind of Dark wizard was catching, or that Isla was the natural heir to the Ant King's magic once she killed him.

"Yes, Auror Malfoy?" she asked, and saw him tilt his head to the side. He seemed to like formality. Well, good. She could work with that better than with all the Aurors who barely knew her calling her by her first name and crowding the room, patting her back and murmuring awkward condolences about the way Hall had killed Bertha.

"We wish to interview you about Hall's death," Malfoy said, and moved towards her with the same graceful, perfectly-timed glide she had seen him use in the corridor. Potter followed him. Isla swallowed and tried not to think idiotic thoughts like how much they must despise her for being laid-up with an infirm hand when they had faced things like the Sussex Necromancer and the Dark Lord.

"All right," she said. "But I don't know that I can tell you anything except what I already put in my report to Okazes."

Potter glared at her hand. "They made you write a report with that wound?" he demanded. "I'm tempted to tell them…"

He trailed off, but Isla knew it wasn't because he'd remembered diplomacy. It was because Auror Malfoy, taking the seat next to her bed that Okazes had used, had shifted, and his shoulder was brushing Potter's hip. Potter paused, then nodded and sat down on a low stool he conjured next to Malfoy's chair. Both of them studied her with distant eyes, but Malfoy's remained cool. Potter had sharp worry in the back of his gaze.

"The wizard you faced is called a twisted," Malfoy said quietly. "A Dark wizard driven insane by the use of the Dark Arts. They always have companions with them, they have use of wandless magic, and they can't Heal."

For some reason, his face twisted on the last words, as if he had bitten into a particularly sour apple. This time, it was Potter who twisted to the side and let his leg brush against Malfoy's, lingering a little too long and being too still for Isla to imagine that he'd merely wanted to stretch out a cramp.

"I see," Isla said. "I—is there something else I should have done? Some other way I should have captured instead of killed him so the Ministry could identify him?" She was of the private opinion that there was no way she could have captured the Ant King and survived, but she didn't know for sure. And the Ministry always wanted you to do something impossible—tomorrow, if not today.

"No," Malfoy said. "The Socrates Corps, which we're part of, exists to kill them, actually. That's what has to happen."

"Malfoy," Potter said.

"Shocking to hear you speaking up in favor of discretion, Potter." Malfoy turned his head to the side, and his eyes had an emotion in them that Isla couldn't recall ever seeing before—not just in his eyes, in anyone's. "Shocking to hear you obeying the Ministry's rules at all, in fact, when you must know they would destroy you if they could."

Potter's face flushed in a way that would have made Isla think he had a fever if she hadn't seen it happen. He shook his head. "If we all hate the Ministry so much, if we all have so little faith, then we shouldn't be working for them at all," he said quietly, in a sliding tone that Isla thought she had heard before, but couldn't remember off the top of her head. "I did things that they had reason to scold me for, Malfoy. Leave it be."

Malfoy leaned towards him and stared this time. Being under the weight of that stare would have made her confess everything at once, Isla thought. She had no idea how Potter could clench his jaw and meet it.

Potter swallowed at last, and Isla glanced back and forth between them, hoping for a hint of what had sparked the staring contest. She couldn't see anything, however. Malfoy ended by exhaling and shaking his head, and Potter leaned back and said, "I think we're frightening Auror Rudie unnecessarily."

"I'm not frightened," Isla said at once, because she didn't want two of the best Aurors ever to think she was a coward but also because it was true. "I was frightened when I was facing him, because I didn't know what he was and I had no idea how to defeat him. If I'd had knowledge of the twisted then—you said they were called that, didn't you?—then I would have been less afraid because I had the knowledge."

Malfoy gave her a single deep look. It was also opaque as hell, and so Isla had to straighten her shoulders and stare back, because there was nothing else she could do. Given that Malfoy tilted his head and assumed a pensive look a moment later, she didn't know if it was the right thing, but Potter nodded and put a hand on his partner's shoulder. They seemed to be more open about touching when she was more open about her emotion and showed them she wasn't some ninny shaking in her boots, Isla thought.

"Potter?" Malfoy rolled his shoulder back. Isla thought at first he was trying to get rid of Potter's hand, but the hand rode with the motion and came down in the same place. Maybe he was trying, instead, to get more contact.

And you really need to stop thinking about that. They deserve the right to have private lives, too, if they want to, and of course it would make sense for them to be close. They're partners.

Isla had only had time to flush and consider apologizing before Potter said, "She's right. She faced a twisted, and she came out alive. That's an achievement in itself. How much could she do if she had more information?" He gave Isla an evaluating look that made her squirm a bit. It made her wonder how many people had underestimated what Potter could do and gone with the "generic hero" estimation, instead of what he really was.

"Potter," Malfoy said. "You think." He didn't finish the sentence, but not because someone had cut him off, Isla realized after a moment. He had cut himself off. He was staring at Potter with his head bent and his hands spread, as if to excuse himself from dinner early.

"Yeah," Potter said. "They put us in the Socrates Corps. We're here to gather information on the twisted, but we'll learn more if we tell her what we're looking for and why." He turned back to Isla and said, with low intensity, "Anything you can remember. The twisted operate by laws that we don't understand yet, and one of the reasons is the intense secrecy involved. Anything you can tell us will be helpful."

Isla blinked, then sat up and nodded. To be trusted like this was delightful. And if their reputations weren't the best, well, that didn't matter. Everyone knew that they were the best in all the ways that counted. The administration of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement could put out its memos and make its speeches, and meanwhile the Aurors went on surviving against Dark wizards by knowing whom to imitate.

"All right," she said. "Bertha was the one who started suspecting something was wrong with the way he killed people." She swallowed against the memory. On the other hand, they both watched her with an intensity that made her suspect they would put the conversation in a Pensieve to replay later, so she gave up in resignation to the fact that they would note the small movement and what it meant, and went on. "He was leaving behind bodies that were chewed to the bone, and dead ants, and nothing else. Bertha was the one who told me that normal ants could do that, but not so fast, and not when there were only a few of them dead at each site and the victims had made no attempt to defend themselves…"

"I don't think of this as a promotion."

Isla raised an eyebrow and held a hand out. "Nice to meet you, too, Auror Macgeorge," she said dryly.

For a moment, she didn't think that Nicolette Macgeorge would take her hand or notice her at all. Macgeorge was tall and had well-tailored Auror robes and an air of confidence that came from being pure-blood for seventy generations. None of those were things Isla had. But here she stood, and here Macgeorge stood, and either they were going to work as partners in Socrates Corps or one of them would go back to Okazes and tell him that they weren't going to accept the promotion.

And it would be Macgeorge, because it wasn't going to be Isla.

Finally, Macgeorge made a rude noise and gave Isla's hand a single limp shake before dropping it. "I was with Lucretius," she said, glancing around the wide, open office with the six desks that they'd been told to report to. "And we didn't kill our prey. We brought them in and saw that they had a fair trial. I don't like the idea of killing rather than capturing."

"They must have brought you here because you killed someone," Isla said, lowering her bundle of files to the nearest desk. She didn't know if it was meant to be hers, since it had no nameplate, but no one else had obviously claimed it yet, so it was hers now. She swung her cloak to hang on the back of the chair, and added, in the face of Macgeorge's frown, "Because the only ones who serve in this Corps are the ones who've fought twisted and survived, and the way to survive a twisted is to kill one."

Macgeorge subjected her to a minute or more of freezing silence before she nodded, and, to Isla's surprise, gave her a small smile. Perhaps she had passed some sort of test in not backing away. "Yes," she said. "We faced a witch who thought that she could make us want to kill ourselves. Well, she got to my partner, though not fatally. He might not ever be an Auror again. But she didn't get to me." Macgeorge narrowed her eyes. "She was still trying to tell me that I really wanted to explode my own heart when I strangled her."

"Strangled her?" Isla blinked. She knew a few spells that would do that, but most of them were more complicated than she thought she could manage when under mental siege from a woman who had the power to make others commit suicide.

"I dropped my wand," Macgeorge said, and she had an evil smile when she wanted to let go. "I knew it wasn't going to do me any good, and it would do her too much as a weapon against me. But she had a hard time when my hands were wrapped around her throat, let me tell you."

Isla nodded and started to reply, but just then Malfoy and Potter walked into the office, and the atmosphere around them all changed.

Macgeorge didn't bow, but she looked as though she wanted to. Potter glanced at her once and kept walking. Malfoy paused and said, "Ah. You would be the daughter of Claudia Macgeorge? She used to visit my mother."

Macgeorge blinked and then reached out one hand. "Yes," she said. "Nicolette, her second daughter. I wasn't sure you would remember me. I was never considered mature enough to accompany her to the Manor."

"Blood will tell," Malfoy murmured, and nodded when he took Macgeorge's hand. Then he turned and glanced at Isla. Isla squared her shoulders and stared back. She was Muggleborn, yes, but that didn't mean she was about to cower in front of him. Anyway, Potter was a half-blood, so if Malfoy really still believed all the pure-blood nonsense that he must have during the war, their partnership wouldn't have lasted as long as it had.

"Don't worry," Potter said, voice so low Isla could almost imagine that Malfoy and Macgeorge wouldn't hear him. "There are more important things in the world than who your ancestors were, and he knows it."

"Do I, Potter?" Isla blinked as Malfoy flowed around to face Potter. She had expected him to ignore the comment, because only someone vulgar would take note of it. But Malfoy leaned forwards as though everyone but Potter had left the room, and his hand hovered above his wand. "What makes you think so?"

"There's no reason for you to put as much effort into me as you do, if blood was all that mattered," Potter replied, holding Malfoy's gaze. Isla blinked and glanced back and forth between them. They acted as though everyone else had ceased to exist. Was that what it was like, in a really good partnership? She had been friends with Bertha, but never that close.

"You have an illustrious heritage on one side," Malfoy said, barely breathing the words. Isla saw him shift his weight as though he was going to move closer to Potter, but in the end, he didn't.

"And on my other is a pure-blood family, right," Potter said, nodding. "That sort of thing is enough to content anyone, I should think."

Malfoy moved back a single step. His hand tightened on the wand, but he didn't draw it. Instead, he whispered, "Some of them say—some of them said—that it was your mother's sacrifice and not yours that saved the world."

Potter smiled, an expression that lightened the dark depths of his eyes in a way Isla hadn't known could happen. "So the Prophet got something right for once? Fancy."

The tension hovered between them for a moment more, fragile as a bubble. Then Malfoy took a step back and smiled. "We shall have to discuss this further someday, Potter," he said.

"Looking forward to it," Potter said, and made his way to his own desk, where he sat down and began to look through files as though he hadn't a care in the world. Malfoy moved up beside him and indicated a folder on the top of a stack Potter hadn't touched yet. Potter grunted a response and reached for it, opening it. Malfoy bent over so that he could get a look at it, his soft voice mingling with Potter's more wordless responses.

Isla turned to Macgeorge. The other Auror gave her a single deep glance and then turned away with what looked like a deprecatory shake of her head, taking the desk that Isla hadn't placed her things at.

"Do you think we'll have a partnership like that?" Isla whispered to her, glancing at Malfoy and Potter again. Malfoy pointed out what seemed to be an error in the file, if the sharp way his voice commented on the issue was any indication. Potter leaned back and looked up at him, and Isla had to swallow. There was something in his eyes, something in his face, that made her turn back to her desk not because she was afraid that they would look over and catch her watching, but because she didn't think she should be spying.

"Not exactly like that," Macgeorge said, spreading out her files on the desk and looking thoughtfully for the best place to put a paperweight that resembled a glass globe with a mummified hand in it. Isla decided not to ask. "But we'll work together fine, I expect."

Isla opened her mouth, then shut it again. It would have been disingenuous to pretend that "working well together" was all Malfoy and Potter were doing.

She settled into her chair and sneaked one more glance at them. This time, Potter was the one gesturing at a photograph, and Malfoy was the one bracing himself with one hand on the back of Potter's chair, watching his eyes more than his mouth.

Isla nodded and looked away again. Well, they had already taught her a few things, although she didn't know if they knew it.

And it's going to be an honor to work with them.

The End.