Ops

Ops

"Tell anyone, Potter, and I'll be the one to kill you--" was the last thing Harry heard before the beer sloshed over his shirt-front in a great wave of foam and hops.

The onslaught startled him to his feet, less for the impromptu drenching--though that alone had him shaking out his clothing and turning a don't-fuck-with-me glare on the offender--than the voice, and even that less the hissed words than the timbre: the characteristic, charismatic drawl that he'd recognize in the dark.

In the light, though... in the light, that glare faltered into a squint at the... redhead. The redhead from two tables over, the redhead who'd been laughing too long and too loud, the redhead in a harlequin's velvet top torn shy of his midriff, the redhead who was looking back at him with Malfoy's silver eyes.

The redhead who loudly exclaimed, back in the same nasal tones he'd been affecting, "I'm so sor-ry! I can't believe I--so clumsy!" and hiked up a handful of sodden shirt and began to wring it out. Clipped still, but pitched for Harry's ears alone, "Kneazle got your tongue? That's right, keep looking pissed--MacDougal's not going to make it, as you should've bloody guessed a bloody quarter-hour ago. Password's brillig--"

"--Slithy," Harry automatically responded, bristling; he'd have left, if the information weren't so important to the Department of Mysteries and a little village near Alnwick; if MacDougal weren't trusting only him these days; ...if he hadn't played too many rounds of 'only a few more minutes,' long enough for strangers to claim tables by the exit and nurse their token drinks. Strangers who stole looks at him--here, in a Muggle pub--as if they knew who he was. Maybe it was a full moon. That'd explain his luck. A quick glance past Malfoy, "They're staring."

"Hide in plain sight, boyo. Look like you've given up on your friend, and follow my lead." His voice rose, resuming its affected tone; as if in mid-sentence, "...get a serviette, I'll just wipe you up and--"

Why the hell not? Malfoy for MacDougal, and him reeking like the pub itself, and all the sneaking around that had sounded fun before it became not only password-this and password-that, but bloody paperwork and sore feet and bad beer besides--not to mention the long hours Seamus had left him over--it didn't take much for Harry to summon outrage. "I'll show you a sodding serviette! You're wringing it out on my shoes!" What would Percy say? "Do you realise how much that leather costs?!"

Malfoy whinged, "I'm sorry, I told you I'm sorry," daubing ineffectually at Harry's front. "Don't get mad. It was an accident, I tripped over the chair, that's all. Just need to polish it up. Here, I'll buy you a drink..."

"Polish it with your tongue, maybe," Harry snarled--then yelped as the industrious serviette swatted him right across his crotch. 'Accidentally.'

"Listen, you..." Harry glared all around, as if trying one last look for MacDougal--and then reached for Malfoy's collar and yanked him bodily towards the door. "I've had a bloody. Long. Day. Got stood up.." No signs of suspicion from the watchers, only ill-stifled smirks. "And now, and now you're going to try and weasel out of doing what's right. If I want another bloody drink--" the still-whinging redhead must have paid up, because the waitress wasn't stalking them, "I can suck on my bloody shirt. You're going to give me your number--" almost there, and he tried to surreptitiously get a good look at their faces, the better to match them up to records later, if they weren't just illusion to begin with, "and when I get this cleaned I'm going to ring you, and you're going to pay up--" and with that, they'd made it out the door at last.

Malfoy's stumble at the sill wasn't all feigned; he could feel the onetime blond's weight against him for a moment before he recovered with a breathless, "You're stretching my velvet, you know, you're not a nice man."

"Who said I was?" but Harry relaxed his hold as they headed down the twilight-dim street; he spared a particularly baleful glower for a woman who, after a sniff at them, pulled her snotty-nosed children more closely into her skirts. "Your number. I want to find you again."

"Do you, now," flirtation edging into Malfoy's tone; he shook back his hair, crimson against pale, pale skin--or, mostly pale; Harry was irritated to find himself wondering whether the smudges beneath those silver eyes were genuine--"Well, you'll have to let me stop, if you want me to pull out my... pencil. And pay up." The woman squeaked, and herded her offspring that much more swiftly into a nearby grocer's.

"None of that. You'd better..." Oh. Right. Follow his lead. "'Round the corner, then. Out of the lady's way," and never mind that by now she was long gone.

Malfoy complied, demurely--until they were all the way around and had ducked into the opposing alley, out of sight. Immediately all business, "What I couldn't tell you in there was that I managed to get this from your MacDougal," and retrieved what turned out to be a plain brass token from his trousers' pocket.

Harry accepted it a little blankly--still warm, part of him noticed--and pocketed it in turn as Malfoy continued, "Show it to your department head. It's charmed; she'll know what to do. That's it; they shouldn't go after you, thinking you don't know: too close a fight. You should be fine from here."

Harry looked at him. "Pencil."

"What?"

"Your number. Not, say, your barber's, or whoever did that to your hair."

"Oh." And Malfoy coloured. "Just a pen--it's not a direct number, Muggle and all, but they'll know how to reach me--"

Harry found himself standing very still, watching the pen cross his palm with Malfoy's fine, precise script, braced by a hand that was warm as the token had been. "We don't work for the same people, do we," he hazarded at last.

"Close enough, just now," the redhead returned, twisting the cap back on the pen. "And even if I did... some of those people after you were Ministry ops. It's just that not all of them like you the way I do. Watch out." And with that, Malfoy kissed him--once, and hard, and very much on the mouth--and Disapparated.