Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Sister Healer. The sequel, and next fic in the Cloak and Dagger series, will be a one-shot called "Working With Them."

Chapter Ten-Aftermath

"You have no idea how much trouble you're in."

Harry stared at his hands, and shrugged limply. He didn't see what right Okazes had to scold him. He was the one who had agreed that Harry could work without a partner, and if the consequences of that were hitting him now-namely, that he might be held responsible for the pain Harry had suffered-he shouldn't take it out on Harry.

"What were you thinking, killing that many twisted and not investigating the root causes of the case? When you have that many twisted approaching one woman, the case requires the efforts of all the Socrates Aurors..."

Harry stared at the far wall and let the words wash over him. Okazes could bitch all he liked. Harry had stayed up late writing his reports (and being pleased that his reattached finger, at least at the moment, worked as well as ever). He had listened to Malfoy's monosyllabic requests for silence and solitude, and obeyed them. He had contacted Alto's family and the Healers at St. Mungo's and explained what happened. He had sent a special report on the blue-eyed twisted to the Head Auror, where it would probably languish unread, because nothing that the Ministry's trouble child got involved in could possibly be worthwhile.

Okazes came to the end of his speech, or at least so the sudden silence said. Harry drew himself up, and replied with as much calm dignity as he could muster. "Sir. You wish for several reports on the deaths of all the separate twisted, or only one report on all of them?"

"One report. Are you deaf?" Okazes waved him away with a tight fistful of sheets of parchment that rustled like muted screams. "Get out of my sight."

"Yes, sir," Harry said, with a fast little bow that Okazes would have had to look at more closely to see the mockery in. Since he was already turning away, with his nose projecting into the air, Harry doubted he would. He left the office, standing in the corridor a moment so he could close his eyes and let some of the weariness drop away.

He had to write the report, sure. But he could do it tomorrow. He had already labored too much for the Ministry today, and he recognized the hollow feeling inside him that wasn't hunger. If he spent any more time here, if he had to look at one more pair of uncomprehending eyes or listen to one more twittering voice, he'd go mental. He had to go by his office to pick up official parchment for writing the report, but then he could leave.

Except that, when he returned to the office, Malfoy was there, leaning one hip on his desk. He stood up when Harry entered and used a quick spell to shut the door. Listening closely, Harry heard it lock.

Well. All right, then.

He felt the weariness burn away like dust to flame as he approached Malfoy. It seemed that, if he needed an enemy to fight, Malfoy intended to give him one.

He looks as though he's fought a squadron of dragons.

Draco didn't intend to let that keep him from doing what had to be done, of course. Potter had strength in seemingly endless quantities. To keep him from wasting that strength in the future, distrusting Draco and trying to keep secrets from him, Draco would insist on an expenditure now.

"I never thanked you for killing Alto when I couldn't," he said.

Potter blinked at him. He didn't expect the thanks, said the first blink; he couldn't imagine why Draco would have lingered merely to speak to him about that, said the second; didn't Draco have a home to go to? said the third.

Draco did, but he had no one there save a portrait who would ask too many questions. No welcoming letters. No Floo chiming with incoming firecalls. And he saw no reason to let this go, to permit Potter to put walls up between them and only knock them down in those rare moments they worked together and forgot to fight. He would die that way, and so would his partner.

It was a matter of course that he wouldn't permit the first death to happen. It had surprised him how fiercely he did not desire the second.

"You're welcome," Potter said at last, in a graceless mumble. This wasn't the man who had approached and killed Alto, fighting off her flaw where Draco succumbed to it. Draco wondered how many different sides there were to Potter, how many he flaunted and how many hid.

And how many he would ever be permitted to see.

"That reminds me," Potter added, and sudden energy flowered out of him, like a rose on the eve of summer. He strode across to his own desk and took a piece of parchment out of it, turning it around so it was braced in front of him like a shield. "I need your signature on this."

Draco recognized the shapes of the letters already written on it even from this distance. He locked his arms and stared at Potter in silence.

"What?" Potter snapped. He tossed his head up like a restless hound, and Draco wondered for a moment what he would look like in a leash and collar. Wrong, his mind snapped back, and he shook his head, dismissing the vision, never to return. "You know you have no good reason not to sign it now. We're not in St. Mungo's, you're not under a twisted's flaw, you hate me-"

"I don't hate you," Draco said softly. "I want to rebuild this partnership."

"And you think that would work?"

In those words, Draco heard all the compressed emotion, heavy as black dirt, of someone who had been abandoned, and pushed aside, and pissed on, and hated, and distrusted, and banned from hospitals, and told himself he didn't need anyone anyway, and made things worse for himself-all the doubt and outrage that pointed to Draco leaving him behind, because he couldn't imagine anything else.

Draco wouldn't let Potter make other people's problems his own, though. He hadn't done those things, and he wouldn't let Potter get away with saying he had. He folded his arms and yawned, loud and long and deliberately offensive. "I don't want another partner," he said.

Potter stared at him, and then shook his head. "A new partnership would give you a fresh start, as well as me," he said. "What happens if I can never overcome the vision of you torturing me, and abandon you or don't guard your back well in some situation that gets you killed?"

Draco didn't answer immediately, because he had to study Potter's face and work through the sense of his words rather than simply attack. "That's your particular nightmare," he said at last. "Failing your partner."

"I should say so," Potter said. "After Lionel."

"You didn't fail him," Draco said. He had read enough of the official report on Potter and Vane's last case and picked through enough of what Potter had told him yesterday to be sure of that.

Potter bared his teeth. "You don't think so? If I'd kept my stupid feelings to myself, the way I should have, he wouldn't have felt the need to go off and investigate on his own. He would have thought he could trust me to watch his back instead of ogle his arse."

Draco snorted in spite of himself, but shook his head. "You couldn't know he'd react that way. Unless you want to blame yourself for not knowing him well enough to anticipate his reaction?"

Potter remained silent, looking past Draco with that vague, bored stare that he had seen so often since he partnered with the git. He had thought once that Potter used it when he wished to ignore something Draco said, but he knew now it was a way of preventing his own engagement in the conversation.

"You do," Draco said. "You stupid wanker, don't you realize that doesn't work? You can't prevent all your partner's actions. You can't anticipate them. Next you'll tell me that you feel guilty for exposing me to Alto during the fight, when you couldn't have known she would show up just then."

Potter's eyelids flickered. Draco had to sit down. He shook his head. "How have you lived with yourself like this? How do you keep from collapsing with the guilt every time someone gets hurt?"

"Most people, I'm not responsible for," Potter said, the sound of grinding teeth in the back of his voice. "But I feel guilty for getting my partner hurt for the same reason I'd feel guilty for abandoning a victim I was guarding and someone sneaking in and hurting them in the meantime. You're fighting beside me. You're supposed to be able to depend on my reflexes, and my instincts, or why did they give me this job?"

Draco closed his eyes. "And would you expect me to feel the same guilt about hurting you? Particularly when I was the instrument of that pain, rather than simply failing to anticipate what would happen with Alto?"

Silence. Potter grinding his teeth was fairly audible, though.

"Explain to me why it's different," Draco said, opening his eyes and studying him again. "Why do you get a monopoly on the guilt?"

"I don't think your last partner died because you were careless," Potter said, glaring at him as though Draco had made him swallow a Vomiting Potion. "I know the file is sealed and I can't actually read about the Sussex Necromancer case, but so far, you've taken better care of me than I have of you."

Draco rolled his head on his neck. "I tortured you, and you wanted to get rid of me to the point that you didn't care if I wounded you," he offered. "Let's say that the guilt is split both ways and equally, all right?"

"I should have realized something was wrong when you insisted on staying in her hospital room with her," Potter muttered, apparently pursuing a different conversation entirely. "Because you don't trust people that easily, you don't fall in love with them at first sight, and you were gone so many times longer than you meant to be."

"Neither of us could have anticipated a twisted with Alto's unique gift and the unique way she had of affecting me," Draco said. "Stop saying we could have."

Potter touched his fringe, as if to soothe the burn of his scar. Draco kept from touching his Dark Mark in response. He knew Potter wasn't feeling the Dark Lord's return. He was probably indicating all sorts of things about how he felt like a hero and he felt responsible for what happened to other people in some secret language Draco could understand better if he knew more about Potter's past.

"I don't understand," Potter said softly to his hands. "You're willing to forgive me?"

"Who in your life hasn't been?" Draco asked. "Your friends must be. I don't ask you to think of me as a friend, but as a partner, with some of the same privileges," he added, because, knowing Potter, he would take the worst understanding of Draco's wording possible.

Potter didn't seem to have heard what he could take offense to. He looked up with blank, bright eyes, and stared past Draco's head again. Then he shrugged and dropped the form he held into the dustbin.

"Right," he said. "So we begin again, and try to trust each other. Try to be partners, not simply people thrown together by the Ministry to work on cases." He surveyed Draco warily for a moment, as if he thought that Draco would object to his wording.

"We do," Draco agreed. "And part of that is telling me what you know about this twisted with blue eyes who was possessing the others."

Harry nodded and sat down in the chair behind his desk. He should have known it would come to this sooner or later, and perhaps he should have told Malfoy the truth some time ago, when he had first met that twisted. It would have saved trouble and scrambling now.

Why hadn't he told Malfoy about that twisted, come to think of it? It wasn't a secret he particularly wanted to keep, and the blue-eyed creature had appeared for the first time at the end of their previous case, the Larkin case. He had never made a solid decision to stay silent about it.

You don't make solid decisions about anything. That's the trouble. You simply stay quiet, and then when you think about it again, the best time has gone by.

Harry shook the cobwebby thoughts out of his head and focused on Malfoy, who was waiting. Malfoy sat with his hands laid flat on his knees, his face very nearly as flat, as wooden. Well, Harry couldn't help him with that, but he would try to make the wooden look go away later.

"I saw the blue eyes when I was reporting to Okazes at the end of the Larkin case," he said.

Malfoy, without shifting a muscle of his body, made Harry feel the force of the outrage and betrayal that sang through him. Harry turned his head to the side.

"You distrusted me that much, even then," Malfoy whispered, "to think I wouldn't believe you about a mutual enemy."

"I didn't trust anyone," Harry said, licking his teeth so they wouldn't snap shut and make him have to speak through them. "Not you, not Ron, not Hermione, not Okazes. I didn't tell my friends about the blue-eyed thing, either."

"Why not?"

Malfoy's voice was clearer now, which gave Harry some hope he would listen. Studying the wall so he would know in an instant if an enemy ever drugged him and dumped him here wrapped in ropes, he said, "Because it didn't occur to me. And because I don't talk much about the job to them, not since Lionel died. Too many secrets to keep. Too many questions they could ask that would lead straight to something more sensitive."

Ticking silence. He thought Malfoy would make a remark about Mudbloods, or return to the topic of Okazes.

Instead, he said, "They don't know about what Vane meant to you, what it did to you when he died."

Harry whipped his head around, eyes narrowing. "Neither do you," he said, and now his teeth had snapped shut. "You heard the desperate confession I made to break you free from Alto's power. No more than that."

Malfoy leaned forwards, hands still on his knees, and stared so long and so hard at Harry that Harry wouldn't have been surprised to find eyeholes burned in his forehead. His voice, when he spoke, seemed to come from a long distance off.

"You told me more than you intended to, then. I know about your obsession, and I know about what it would have done to you to have that obsession torn away. I know about this bleeding hole you carry around with you, the one that fills you with guilt and conviction that you'll never do right again. I know you think that you've already decided to go the rest of your life without love and sex because of what Vane was to you-even though it's only been a month since he died."

"I don't think that," Harry said. Yes, it had been as he'd thought. He'd told Malfoy the truth, and Malfoy had only remembered it to mock him later. "I know that. I believe it."

Malfoy went on, linking his fingers together now, in a posture Harry thought it likely he probably used when he was trying to teach younger Aurors something. "You think that, because it's too early for you to know whether you can keep the vow. A month of deep grief, fine. But you've talked to no one but me about this. What does it say, Potter, that you can tell the person you trust least the deepest truth of your life right now?"

Harry snapped his teeth together on his own this time. "That I was trying to save your life, whether or not you'll ever thank me for it."

Malfoy's head darted down then, and it was a long pause before he went on, long enough that Harry could feel his lungs quivering with his breath.

"Yes, that's true," Malfoy whispered. "It's true that you don't care much about yourself. You'll use the truth as a blanket or a bandage or a weapon, anything to keep someone else safe and distant from you."

Harry cocked his head. Malfoy sounded different now, but he didn't know why. That was only putting into different words the things Harry had already told him.

Malfoy looked back up now, and his face was set and grim. "I believe that you were going to speak to someone after the Larkin case, someone who could help you with your grief-and your tendency to rush heedlessly into things as you did on that case. Did you?"

"I didn't rush into things on this case," Harry countered. "I didn't have the time. Alto came seeking us, and we planned the assault on Jerome together, and-"

"I didn't ask that," Malfoy said. "I asked whether you had spoken to anyone, the way you promised to and the Ministry required."

Harry gritted his teeth. "I didn't intend to forget," he said. "I just forgot. It happens."

To his blinking astonishment, Malfoy nodded, accepting that. "Yes, all right. But I'm reminding you of the necessity now. Are you going to talk to someone?"

"If you do," Harry said. "You need the same things I do. To talk to someone about your sadness over Daphne. To talk about going mad. To talk about experiencing the direct power of a twisted on your mind and body."

And then there are times that Potter's commitment to candor and honesty does nothing but anger me.

Draco spent a few moments simply breathing and staring at the far wall before he nodded. "I will not put it off," he said. "And I think we should keep each other informed of our progress."

Potter smiled at him. "I can agree with that. Do you have a particular Mind-Healer you would recommend, or should we take our chances and see what the Ministry pairs us with?"

"I was going to St. Mungo's," Draco began, and stopped.

Potter reached out to capture his hand, exactly as if they had been friends for years and he had the right. Well, Draco hadn't told him that he didn't, so perhaps he assumed he did. "I don't think that's the best choice right now, for either of us," he said quietly. "Not to mention that my ban is probably still in effect, and the last thing we need when we're looking for someone to help heal our minds is to struggle through challenges and sidelong glares. Now. Do you know a Mind-Healer who works for the Ministry that you would recommend?"

Draco blinked for a moment, and then swallowed. It seemed Potter was perfectly happy to go ahead with the counseling now that he had someone who had reminded him of it and would insist on it. Draco had thought he was lying even when he claimed to have simply forgotten. Because how in the world could he not have remembered the promise and evaded it on purpose? Promising something to a Slytherin would mean nothing to the vast majority of Gryffindors, after all.

But this was more proof that Potter was telling the truth, that he had simply forgotten.

Which implied a level of casual carelessness about himself that Draco wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with.

Perhaps he would, however, after they had spoken to their chosen Mind-Healer. And he did want to keep this partnership. He shook his head and said, "No. I have never had occasion to resort to them."

Potter nodded as though he had expected that—perhaps he had, based on what Draco had said in the past—and pulled his hand away. "Then I trust you to find one that we can both go to," he said, and turned around as if he would go back to his work and leave Draco sitting on the chair between their two desks alone.

"That's it?" Draco asked.

"What?" Potter glanced at him, already sorting through what looked like a half-complete report and a stack of files from St. Mungo's. Draco wondered where and why he had got them, and then wanted to smack himself. For checking on the truth of Alto's story and the twisted in her past, of course. "Well, yes. If you think we need to do something else to heal my mental wounds—" he grimaced as if referring to them that way was distasteful "—then we can do it after talking to the Mind-Healer. But this is the only course I'm willing to commit to right now."

"That's not what I meant," Draco said roughly. "You would trust me to choose the Mind-Healer? Even given what I did to you?"

Potter gave him a direct glance, and his hands stopped sorting the paperwork for an instant. "You wanted to keep the partnership," he said. "I still think we're not suited to each other and the simplest course would be to end it."

Draco winced, the words piercing him the way Alto's words had pierced his mind.

"But you want to keep it, and I'm not opposed." Potter shrugged and turned back to the reports again, his voice muffled as though he was speaking through cotton. "I have to start showing that I trust you sometime. So, this."

He went back to searching, and Draco leaned back and closed his eyes, because letting someone else see his thoughts at the moment was not advisable.

So…

He had, possibly, gained a trusted partner, or someone who might become a trusted partner if they took care to learn about each other instead of snapping and retreating. He already knew they worked well together on the battlefield. The ultimate challenge would be seeing what happened as the months wore on and Potter began to forget about the scar on his finger, began to look at Draco with different eyes and forget that he had tortured him.

If he could.

If they would have the time to do such leisurely exploration, with the blue-eyed twisted hunting for them.

Draco tightened his muscles. He had lost many things in his life, more than he wanted to admit—his parents' regard, his fiancée, his self-respect for a time given how easily Alto had leaped into his mind—but he would cling all the more tightly to the things he still retained. His Auror career. His continuing life.

Potter's trust.

He stood and went to look at the list of Mind-Healers.

The End.