Title: And Forgive Us Our Malfoys

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

Pairings: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Angst

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 6300

Summary: Head Auror Harry Potter does not want an Efficiency Expert assigned to his Department. He does not want the Efficiency Expert to be Draco Malfoy. He does not want Malfoy to swan around being good at his job. But life rarely listens to what Harry wants.

Author's Notes: Another of my Advent fics, this one for susan5124, who gave me this prompt: Draco/Harry

Minister Shacklebolt has arranged for an Efficiency Expert to come in and review the department's budget and everyday operations and make recommendations on how the DMLE can be more efficient in their procedures and cut costs. This in itself would be a thorn in Head Auror!Harry's side, but add to it that the "expert" is Draco Malfoy and it's sure to be a nightmare.

And Forgive Us Our Malfoys

"Head Auror Potter? Draco Malfoy. Efficiency Expert."

Harry hated the touch of Malfoy's hand to his, dry and warm and impersonal. He hated the way Malfoy pretended they'd never met before. He hated the way Malfoy left his title until last, as if he was a visitor like any other. He wasn't.

But all the hatred in the world hadn't got him out of having to welcome Malfoy or budged Kingsley one bit on the need for a review of the Department. Harry nodded and launched into the welcome speech he'd prepared, a variation of the same one he gave reporters, prospective Auror trainees entering the Department on tours, and Ministry flunkies who thought it was their duty to be here for some reason.

"Welcome, Expert Malfoy. We're a small section of the larger Department. The Aurors are bigger in reputation than numbers." That sometimes got a laugh, sometimes snorting, but Malfoy listened with his head slightly turned to the left and his eyes locked on Harry's desk. "I'm responsible for overseeing the day-to-day duties of the Department. Assigning Aurors to cases, making sure paperwork gets filed on time, and discussing problems with trainees are all within my purview."

"And very happy you are about it, too."

"I'm sorry?"

"I know the parameters of your job, Head Auror Potter. Minister Shacklebolt explained it to me." Malfoy turned around and looked him dead in the eye. "I also know you don't trust me and don't think I can do much to improve your Department."

Kingsley was either extremely honest with him or Malfoy just picks up on truths like a sponge. "I haven't seen you in action yet. I don't know how well you'll work."

Malfoy gave him a grin that had teeth in the same way sharks had bloodthirstiness. "Then why distrust what I can do?"

"I keep a close eye on the Department. I do feel that your presence here implies something about the Minister's doubts on how well I'm doing my job."

Malfoy's smile faded with surprising speed. "It implies nothing, Head Auror Potter. Minister Shacklebolt told me as much himself. He simply wants to be sure that everything is running at peak efficiency. You aren't an expert trained in evaluating that. I am."

"All right, Expert Malfoy. The Aurors haven't been told you're coming. Here's a map of the offices and names of who's assigned to each one—"

"Oh." Malfoy took the map and gave it a cursory glance, then placed it back on Harry's desk. "But you won't come with me."

"I'm sorry?" Harry had to say again. He felt as though the ground had upended him and tossed him into a pit—the kind of situation he had no experience with on a daily basis now, damn it. Kingsley had told him several times that Harry was to remain at his desk, not accompany Malfoy. Anything else would imply distrust of Malfoy's abilities.

Harry had argued that he had every reason in the world to distrust Malfoy, but Kingsley only gave him that level glance that he'd mastered sometime in his second year of Ministering, and told Harry he wouldn't have hired Malfoy if he thought he was still a spoiled brat.

"Come with me." Malfoy reached out and placed a hand on Harry's arm. Harry blinked. He could sometimes feel at a touch when someone used Dark magic, he was so sensitized after years of doing this job, but he hadn't expected the tingling jolt that went up through his skin. Malfoy blinked and smiled slowly. "I think you need to see how this is done."

"So I can do it in the future?"

"Mmm. So you can learn."

Not the same thing. Harry had learned to spot little nuances like that after years of interrogations. But he knew he wouldn't get much of an answer out of Malfoy if he refused, and going with him was what he really wanted to do. The novel sensation of having something he wanted to do come up now that he was Head Auror seduced him more than it should have. He nodded. "All right."

"Good." Malfoy gave him another, different kind of smile and turned away. "We'll start with your office."

"You don't appear to have any kind of filing system, Potter."

Malfoy had dropped the Auror title a few minutes into his mission, which was actually fine with Harry. "Head Auror" had one too many syllables to be comfortable. "No. I tackle the stack from the bottom first thing in the morning."

"From the bottom?" Malfoy looked up as though someone had whistled at him across a crowded room.

Harry shrugged, not sure what kind of attention-getter the whistle would have to be. "Because people's memos and reports from overnight get put on the top. So the ones on the bottom are the ones that have been there longest and need the most attention."

"That's inefficient," Malfoy said at once. "What happens if there's been a case exploding this morning and you need to deal with that at once?"

"I listen to the wireless and read the paper before I come in," said Harry, trying not to roll his eyes. "I would be aware of any case like that. And I do have a charm on my name when someone uses it in certain contexts."

"Contexts?"

"Well, more like places. If someone mentions my name in the Daily Prophet office, for instance, I hear a chime and I know what they're saying for the next thirty seconds."

"How do you get any sleep?"

"I'm used to cat-naps."

Malfoy gave him another frown and turned away. Harry wondered for a second what was inefficient about that, then decided to shrug. He had never said he understood Malfoy.

"You would do more work more efficiently with a filing system." Malfoy was moving around the room as he spoke, waving his wand, and papers rose up and followed him like a trail of ducklings. "You would have more time to work on what was important if you knew what was important."

"Well, that would depend on having a spell that could send memos to designated places, instead of just floating them all in as people found things they thought I ought to know." Harry was beginning to get a little more interested despite himself. This wasn't anything like a spell to track down a Dark Arts practitioner, but it was complicated and powerful magic. "Could you set up something like that?"

Malfoy turned to him. "You never did."

"Is that supposed to be a question or a criticism? You know, so I understand you."

Malfoy's smile flashed for a moment. "Now you understand," he said. Harry was about to complain that he didn't, which was why he'd asked, when Malfoy shook his head and went on. "It needs to be done. However, you don't think that the Minister only hired me to evaluate your office, do you, Potter? I have to do the rest of the Department, too. Which means that I'll find out who's sending you memos with no sense of organization and no sense of precedence whatsoever, and I'll get them to stop."

"I knew you were going to do the rest of the Department. Otherwise, the map would be a useless gift."

"That's it, Potter. It's more fun when you play."

Harry opened his mouth to ask what the hell that meant, only to have to shut up because Malfoy was swirling his wand through the air and a series of soft chimes, like the one that Harry used to alert him when someone said his name, was going off. Papers danced and swirled into new boxes that Malfoy must have conjured. There were also wire baskets, and transparent cabinets, and low boxes that Malfoy sent the yellowing parchment and files into with a sniff.

"Keeping too much old paper is a bad habit. Have your flunkies take these boxes to the archives for filing."

"What about the rest of this stuff?" Harry gestured at the wire baskets in particular. "Those look almost Muggle."

"Look at you, using your eyes," Malfoy drawled. "Yes, they are. I've studied some Muggle organizational techniques, you know."

"I didn't know."

"I have, Potter." Malfoy turned around and looked him in the eye. "I'm an Efficiency Expert. That means being willing to hunt out efficiency wherever it dwells, not simply scampering along its trail when I have the time."

"Well, I can sympathize with the hunting impulse, at least." Harry ignored the odd way Malfoy's face changed. Maybe Harry's comment had brought up bad memories of the Snatchers during the war or something. "What's in the wire baskets?"

"Memos and reports that you don't need to answer right away, but should look at within the next week," Malfoy said promptly, and pointed at the cabinets. For the first time, Harry realized the transparency came from plastic, not enchanted glass. "These contain papers that you'll need on a regular basis but not every day, filed so you can see what they are more easily. The boxes on your desk are for important papers. You'll notice that they have a Self-Shrinking Charm on them so that you can get them out of the way easily when you want to have a clear desk or impress someone you have to interview."

"A clear desk," said Harry in a daze, and shook his head. "I don't think I've ever had such a thing."

"You should. A clear desk is the sign of a happy mind."

Malfoy watched him closely after that statement, as if he expected Harry to disagree. Harry didn't disagree. He just had no opinion on the state of happy minds whatsoever. "How are you going to use magic to determine which papers are important and which I can file in the future?"

"If you'll touch this," Malfoy said, and took out something from his pocket that looked like a large and glittering marble. Colors swirled inside it, purple and pink and a storm of green.

Harry hesitated only once before he touched it. Kingsley would find out about Malfoy murdering Harry as easily as Harry murdering Malfoy, and it probably wouldn't be efficient to kill the Head Auror. Or at least this wouldn't be an efficient way.

The marble's colors all flew up to press against the glass where Harry's hand rested, and Harry felt a sharp tingle. The next instant, rays of all colors flew out and touched the boxes, cabinets, baskets, and so on.

"There." Malfoy tucked the marble away. "Papers are now attuned to your sense of their importance—as long as you're in this office. I'm afraid I can't help you with memos that find you outside the office, menaces that they are."

"Wow," said Harry. "So even when I'm not here, they'll sort themselves?"

"Not that advanced, unfortunately," Malfoy said, with a wrinkle of his nose that made Harry grin despite himself. "When you're not here, they'll pile up on your desk. But the minute you come in, they'll fly into their proper containers."

"Wow." It did sound like it would make his job easier, and Harry was all for things that would help him with paperwork and ease the constant burden of having to deal with it. "Thanks, Malfoy."

"Just doing my job." Malfoy swept his head down in a mock bow and turned towards the door. "And now, to deal with the other people in this Department who are drowning and need my immediate help."

"What an interesting document this is."

"Does he have to do that with everything?" Tyler Macdonald complained in an undertone to Harry.

Harry shrugged sympathetically and tried to smile. Macdonald was a field Auror, in charge of most of cases involving fire curses that Harry assigned; he had a gift for uncovering documents people had tried to burn, healing burn victims, and combating active flames with his own water charms. He was young and energetic and worked well with his partner, Auror Sandra Ross.

He was two years older than Harry. He didn't do half as much paperwork.

"Interesting," Malfoy reported, and Harry finally turned to face him. Because Malfoy had been saying that about all sorts of papers he found in Macdonald and Ross's mess of an office, but not with that tone.

Macdonald went on ignoring him. Harry had to be the one to say, "How is it interesting, Expert Malfoy?"

Malfoy was at the bottom of a crusted pile of paper on Macdonald's desk, his head tilted back in interest as he examined the latest parchment. He held it on a spike above him, Harry noticed, not with his hand. Well, Harry couldn't blame him for that. Macdonald was one of the messiest Aurors in the division, and they'd found less food crumbs than food boulders scattered into every corner of the office.

"It appears to be a love letter," Malfoy said in his blandest voice. "And not from an Auror to a woman with the same last name." He lifted his head, his eyes lingering on the wedding ring on Macdonald's hand.

Macdonald snarled and sprang for him. Harry reacted at once, snapping his wand around. A softly glowing barrier manifested in front of Macdonald, sending him reeling back. Harry took his arm.

"Is that necessarily your business to dig into, Expert Malfoy? I don't see why love affairs would have an impact on the efficiency of an office."

"Because you yourself would be too pure to conduct one, Head Auror Potter." Suddenly the title was back, Harry thought, more intrigued than he knew he should be. Malfoy prowled a few steps forwards and smiled at Macdonald, who was plum-colored but looked too stunned to swear. "If, for example, the love affair was conducted using the office's money, while apparently working on the office's cases…"

Macdonald tried to move again. Harry tightened the barrier like a net and forced him back. "May I see the letter, Expert Malfoy?"

"Of course, Head Auror Potter."

Malfoy walked across the room to hold his spike out. It was stuck through the top corner of the paper, so Harry could still read it.

My Dearest Sandra,

I know we should wait, but I don't want to wait. I want to see you tonight. I know we're breaking the laws of morality, but not the laws of the heart. Yvonne doesn't understand me the way you do. She doesn't know what it's like to risk your life beside someone and feel your heart beating at the same time as theirs, when our eyes meet.

The next case we have coming up is a small one. I'm sure I already know what kind of fire curse this is, and it wasn't used for a murder, but for a suicide that Overson wanted to make look like a murder so he could get us to arrest members of the family his family has a blood feud with. We can take a few days and spend some time in Switzerland. Please, please come with me. We'll seal our love.

Love,

Tyler.

Harry turned around and stared at Macdonald. He did remember that case, one of the few times that Macdonald had come to the wrong conclusion. Overson had been murdered, and it had cost them a lot of time and trouble—and money, he thought—to track the real murderer down on the Continent.

"You were doing this?" Harry knew his voice sounded a little strange, but then again, he had never thought he would have to confront one of his Aurors about something like this.

"On the Auror Department's money and time," Malfoy added, nodding wisely.

Harry ignored him for the moment. Macdonald was pale, his hand on his wand and then falling away again as if his life was over. Which, well, it would be if he assaulted the Head Auror and the Efficiency Expert that the Minister himself had hired.

"It—it didn't work," Macdonald said, too quickly. "She never responded to me. We never went to Switzerland."

Malfoy sighed and asked the ceiling with his eyes why he lived in a universe of idiots. "I doubt you would have kept this letter if it didn't work." He glanced at Harry.

Harry was silent, but he was thinking of a lot of the glances Macdonald and Ross sometimes exchanged, and the way that Macdonald's wife Yvonne had called the office more than once complaining that he wasn't home and she didn't know where she was, and that case…

Even if Macdonald was telling the truth and they hadn't slept together then, he'd been distracted enough to be wrong and almost let a murderer escape.

"You can't kick someone out of the Aurors for infidelity!" Macdonald was building up a head of steam that made him look like the Hogwarts Express. "There's nothing in the bylaws about it!"

"No, but they can at least be pulled up for a review because they're wasting Department time and money," Malfoy said sweetly. "Like the one I'm doing."

Macdonald turned to Harry. Harry blinked, and then realized Macdonald was waiting for some kind of blessing or reproach from him as Head Auror. He shook his head.

"If you wasted Department time and money, then you need to be called to account for it," he said.

Malfoy stared at Harry as if that wasn't the support he had expected. Macdonald tried another tactic. "But—you know that we caught the murderer in the end! So it wasn't like I cost the Department—"

He shut up abruptly, and Harry thought it had to be because of Harry's expression. No one drew a wand; no one shouted. Harry just came a step forwards and whispered, "You did nearly let a murderer go. Don't you remember all the months we had to spend tracking him? We could have had him safely in hand if you had only paid attention to what you were supposed to be doing instead of who you wanted to fuck."

Macdonald winced, but didn't even say anything about the word. Harry heard footsteps outside, and wondered if that was part of the reason.

A second later, when Auror Sandra Ross came in and stared at both of them, he was sure it was.

"Tyler? Head Auror? What's going on?" She seemed to dismiss Malfoy as someone who had shown up for an inexplicable reason, while she glanced uneasily back and forth between Harry and Macdonald.

"They know, Sandy," Macdonald whispered. "It's all over."

"I'm an Efficiency Expert called to review the Department," Malfoy said. "Do you know how wasteful it is to leave your old love letters lying around?"

It was Ross's turn to protest that she didn't know what he was talking about and then make excuses. Harry ignored her. He just stared at Macdonald and let the same thought run through his mind, over and over.

If I'd had what you had, I wouldn't have wasted it.

"Aren't you glad I came with you?"

Harry smiled absently as they left yet another office. This time, Malfoy had found hoarded parchment and quills, spilling out from cupboards that he'd looked thoughtfully at for some time before tapping his wand hard against them and blasting the doors open. "If only so I won't have to face the outraged expressions myself, yes."

"Why would they be outraged if you were the one doing it?"

"Oh, because it seems like I don't care about this kind of thing and then I would have suddenly changed my mind."

Malfoy stepped into his path, making Harry stop in the middle of the corridor. "And is it a terrible thing?" he asked quietly. "To change your mind?"

Harry studied him with a frown instead of replying. Malfoy had such a serious expression. Harry wondered if this was another test, or investigation. Ways to be efficient with your emotions?

"Not that," Harry said. "But it can be a terrible thing for a Head Auror to be indecisive. I have to provide a sense of leadership."

"Why did you become Head Auror?" Malfoy turned around and walked ahead of him, but looked over his shoulder to continue the conversation.

Harry winced a little. They were heading straight for Ron's office. But he could still respond. "Because Kingsley wanted me to, and the Aurors said they would love it, and the Head Auror before me—Dawlish—recommended me for the job."

"Hmmm," said Malfoy, and faced forwards again.

Harry wondered if he was thinking that it wasn't efficient for Harry to be Head Auror. In some ways, Harry would love to agree.

But there hadn't been another candidate. Dawlish certainly hadn't chosen anyone, not wanting to seem as if he had favorites, and Kingsley hadn't endorsed anyone because he was waiting for the Aurors to choose, and other Aurors had told Harry that they didn't think anyone could do as good a job as he could.

Although maybe not. If I missed Ross and Macdonald having an affair right under my nose, what else did I miss?

There probably should have been another emotion in him at that idea besides a spark of mad hope.

"Now, mate." Ron got Harry in a corner and lowered his voice to a whisper he probably imagined Malfoy couldn't hear. "What's he really doing in the Auror Department?"

Harry blinked. "Currently? Looking through your files with that spell he's developed." Malfoy seemed to have a procedure. It involved a lot of headshaking, tongue-clucking, and sighing when he first entered an office, but then he would start making papers fly, spills dry up, and budget records—if there were any in that particular office—line themselves up neatly in front of him.

"No. I mean." Ron glanced between him and Malfoy and nodded. "Is this some kind of plot to catch someone out? I heard about Ross and Macdonald. Like that?"

"No," Harry replied. "I didn't know anything about the two of them until Malfoy discovered that letter."

Ron grimaced. "I feel sorry for Yvonne." He hesitated again. "But then—why is he here?"

"Inspecting the Department."

Ron folded his arms. Harry shook his head back at him. "I don't know what you want to hear, mate." So far the Aurors had been variously terrified or disapproving or nervous around Malfoy—especially after word about Ross and Macdonald got out—but they hadn't disbelieved his purpose.

"Kingsley would never put an investigation like this up your nose unless he had reason to suspect something was wrong."

"I think he did. Maybe something like Ross and Macdonald." It would be like Kingsley, Harry thought, to send an Efficiency Expert into that situation instead of confronting the perpetrators himself. Kingsley was one of the least confrontational people Harry had ever met, despite his career as part of the Order.

"You can tell me."

Ron was bending towards him, and Malfoy was shooting them more than the occasional interested glance, as though he wondered whether standing that close was inefficient. Harry shook his head and said, "No, Ron. It's only what I was told."

Ron squinted at him. He looked close to betrayed. "But why is Kingsley so worried about inefficiency in the Department, when—"

"Weasley!"

For once, Harry was relieved to hear Draco and Ron start their bickering. He didn't have an answer for Ron, not one he would have accepted. He hadn't had an answer when he'd stared, those long months ago, at the letter that Ron wrote to congratulate him on becoming Head Auror, either.

"I've always filed my papers that way, Malfoy."

"Yes, but do you know how much time you'll waste looking for them if you can't tell them apart by content? At least 5.2 seconds per page. A smaller one could be hidden under a larger one. Look at this—"

"Hands off my property, Malfoy!"

Harry was recovered enough by then to intervene. "Expert Malfoy," he said absently, "as enlightening as this is, don't you think we might have spent enough time on one office? We do have an entire Department to inspect."

"Yes, you're right," Malfoy said, and cast Ron an unfriendly glance as he moved away from the desk. "But I'll be sending along a guide to efficiency, Weasley. I suggest you read it. If you can find it five minutes after you put it down."

Harry blinked as Malfoy led him back into the corridor. Malfoy hadn't made the offer to send written guides on efficiency to anyone else.

Which…had Harry suspecting part of the difference was him.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Potter." Malfoy paraded along in front of Harry with his nose in the air. "I always take the most efficient way to accomplish my goals."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

This time, Malfoy only looked back at him with a faint smile.

"You've never looked at these ledgers, have you, Potter?"

"No. I was afraid to."

Their voices seemed to echo off the cavernous walls of the room where the Ministry kept the budget ledgers for most of its Departments, not just the Aurors. Malfoy still turned and gave him a single, incredulous glance, as though Harry had confessed to being afraid of chickens.

"Why?" Malfoy flicked a ledger open with one finger and bent over the leathery, dusty tome, inhaling as if the scent came from wine. Harry shook his head. He knew you had to have a particular kind of soul to be an Efficiency Expert, but he thought Malfoy might have been carrying it a little far.

"Because I didn't know what I would find, and how to confront people about it." Easier to tell Malfoy about this than Harry would ever have guessed. "And I didn't know how much I would understand of what I read, either."

Malfoy blinked and looked at him again. "So you suspected something was wrong."

Harry shrug-nodded. "There was probably some waste. You get a Department this size, and of course there will be. But I didn't know what was normal and what was something I should have turned a blind eye to, and what was something I would have to talk to people about."

"You hate talking to people?"

"Confronting them about their behavior. I'm no saint. I never could have made Macdonald and Ross as ashamed about their affair as you did with just a few words."

"There was no use trying to appeal to morality with that one. And he's right that no one prosecutes Aurors for infidelity alone. He would only have responded to concerns that could be brought up legally. I found some." Malfoy paused again. "You hate talking to people," he repeated, as if he couldn't believe it.

"I told you what about. I'm perfectly fine with interrogating criminals or talking to you like this."

Malfoy leaned his elbow on the table and studied Harry. "After I almost forced you into it, sure."

Harry just shrugged a little again. "I'm not sure what you want me to say." He wandered past Malfoy and looked into the ledger he held open. It was a swimming sea of numbers and notations. "I couldn't have understood the code people are using here, anyway."

"The notations are all explained in that one." Malfoy nodded to another ledger lying elsewhere on the table. His eyes were still fixed on Harry. "What I'm doing isn't hard, or dreadful."

Harry flipped open the other ledger. There were explanations of the notes, sure, but they were written in a hand so small, Harry would have to squint to make them out. "Hmmm?"

"I'm not hard, or dreadful."

"Oh, no." Harry blinked and looked up. "I'm grateful that you found out about Ross and Macdonald and went easy on Ron. Ron would have bothered me for weeks if you hadn't. And Macdonald…" Harry could feel his jaw tightening to the point his teeth hurt. "Because of his negligence on that case, we had to spend months chasing a murderer we could have caught in a few days otherwise."

Something like a smile trembled on Malfoy's mouth for a moment. "That's the kind of inefficiency that really bothers you. Almost letting someone guilty escape."

"Letting someone innocent take the fall is worse." Luckily, Malfoy hadn't uncovered that kind of inefficiency in his rounds, or Harry didn't know how he would have left the Auror in question without a curse. "But yeah."

"Hmmm," Malfoy said in turn, and went back to the ledger he was working on. Harry sighed and sat down at the table. There wasn't really anything he could do here, but Malfoy made a discouraging noise when he got up to leave.

So Harry sat there and watched Malfoy work through the ledgers and make lots of little notes on a piece of paper, and wondered whether he should feel glad or afraid about the numbers of notes.

"Minister Shacklebolt."

Harry actually didn't know why he was here for this part. According to everything Kingsley had told him, Malfoy was supposed to be making his report on the efficiency of the Department to the Minister alone, or maybe the Minister and a few selected budget officials. But instead Harry, Kingsley, and Malfoy were all in Kingsley's office.

It's because he kept making those little discouraging noises, Harry thought, and knew it was the truth, although why small noises from a man he'd disliked most of his life should have such power over him, he didn't know. He leaned back with his arms folded across his chest and watched Kingsley.

"I've completed my report on the Auror Department's efficiency," said Malfoy crisply, and laid a single sheet of parchment on Kingsley's desk. Harry blinked. He would have thought that, at the very least, there would be a report the size of Kingsley's head. "In general: the usual small waste and lack of proper consideration when it came to taking care of money, the hoarding of parchment, quills, and ink, and only a few cases of gross negligence."

Kingsley nodded and picked up the report, reading it over. "You mean the Ross and Macdonald affair?"

"Yes, one of them." Then Malfoy paused and turned around, facing Harry. "The other major case concerns the appointment of Harry Potter to the position of Head Auror."

Kingsley dropped the report so fast it might have burned his fingers. Harry stood there and felt as hollow as the archives where they kept the budget.

"What?" Kingsley whispered. "Harry, what did you do?"

It hurt, a little, to have Kingsley believe that he would have committed some waste of Department time like Ross and Macdonald, but Harry could see where he was coming from. Malfoy was an Expert. Harry hid his expression as well as he could and faced Malfoy. "I'd like to know that, too."

Malfoy leaned his elbow on Kingsley's desk and smiled gently at him. Harry blinked. He could only assume Kingsley might not notice it, though, since Malfoy was standing with his back to Kingsley and his voice was as brisk as ever.

"I noticed that the Auror Department does not function efficiently with Harry Potter as Head Auror. He runs himself ragged doing the job, spending time listening for mentions of his name and dashing from crisis to crisis. It may be comforting for the other Aurors to have someone they trust to handle those crises, but it means they don't do as much as they should.

"He has no assistants or magic that would help him in such a cause—not even a way to organize his paperwork. He's never looked into the budget ledgers because he was afraid he wouldn't understand them. He hates confronting people. I submit that he is far more effective as a field Auror than the Head of the Department."

Harry breathed out slowly. By then, of course, he had understood what Malfoy was doing, and the only challenge was to keep the joy from crossing his face like a sunrise.

"You might be right, Mr. Malfoy," said Kingsley slowly. Harry saw the flicker of irritation on Malfoy's face at the abandonment of his title. "But Harry has been chosen by the Aurors themselves to be their Head."

"And did anyone choose Dawlish in the same way? Or did he come to power through appointment and seniority?" Malfoy turned back around to face Kingsley.

"Well, now that you mention it…"

Harry didn't pay attention to the rest of the conversation. He couldn't, when his heartbeat was so busy in his ears.

He was going to be able to leave it all behind, the chores and tasks he didn't understand and didn't feel capable of getting a grip on, and go back to what he knew and loved.

He was going to be free.

Harry waited until they were out of Kingsley's office, and in fact all the way back in Harry's office, and Malfoy was talking about how he could move the spell that attuned Harry's paperwork to him into his new cubicle, before he turned around and grabbed Malfoy and pinned his shoulders against the wall.

Malfoy's voice dried up. He stared into Harry's face. "What is the meaning of this, Head Auror Potter?"

"You don't have to call me that." Malfoy started at the sound of his voice, too. Harry reached out and drew a shaking finger down Malfoy's jaw. "You're the one who made sure I could be free of that," Harry whispered. "Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you. I did it for your Department, which deserves a Head Auror who—"

"I know you would have made the same decision regardless of who was there," Harry continued. He knew exactly what to say, which hadn't been the case for all the months he'd spent behind that desk. He felt as though his heartbeat was going to shake him to bits with happiness, but he was determined to get this out first. "But you set me free. So, thank you."

Malfoy looked at him, and looked at him. The expression wouldn't have let Harry back away any more than those little discouraging noises had.

But the point was, he didn't want to back away this time. He wanted to do something—something that would thank Malfoy and show his joy and be wild and daring and brave in the way he hadn't been since he was made Head—

So he did. It was wild and daring and Malfoy could always punch him for it later and Harry wouldn't even try to dodge. He leaned in and kissed Malfoy, on the lips, making it the biggest and wettest and most smacking kiss since the one he'd had with Cho Chang.

Malfoy went "Mmmph!" and then "Hmmm?" and then "Ah." His hands came up and bossily repositioned Harry's head in just the way he wanted it, and then he settled into the kiss.

When Harry drew back, Malfoy considered him for a long moment, then said flatly, "If you tell me that you'll never be able to kiss me like that again because it was a heat of the moment thing, then I will respectfully tell you that you are full of shit, Head Auror."

"At least it's not Head Auror Potter, now." Harry stepped back and winked cheekily at him. "And no, it's not the last kiss, so you don't have to say I'm full of shit."

"Not that I'm not flattered and grateful, and not that I don't want more." Malfoy spent a moment straightening his shirt in what Harry highly suspected was not the most efficient way, his cheeks glowing bright. "But what brought that on?"

Harry shrugged, grinning. "I wanted to break the rules. And I am grateful to you, and something about the way you made those little noises didn't let me leave. And this is the best gift anyone's ever given me."

Malfoy paused and glanced at him. "Ever?"

"Ever."

Malfoy puffed himself up a little. Harry hid a chuckle. He could practically hear Malfoy's thoughts purring and preening over how none of Harry's friends or colleagues had ever given him a better gift, and how Malfoy was the best at something concerning Harry.

"This isn't the most efficient way to start a relationship, you know," Malfoy then chose to say.

Harry took his hand. "I know that. But you know what? Fuck efficiency."

Malfoy opened his mouth in what Harry was fairly sure would only be pretended outrage, but Harry didn't care, because he leaned in and covered Malfoy's lips with a kiss again.

There was nothing efficient about the way Malfoy kissed back, or at least about the way he moved his tongue and went on kissing long past the point where he could assume Harry agreed with him.

But in the way it told Harry lots of things without words—it was some of the most efficient communication Harry had ever encountered.

The End.