The Goodness of Their Hearts

Another match. Another huge audience. Most of them, Draco thought cynically, hoping to witness another attack on Harry. He couldn't understand why Harry wasted his time on these people, risked his life for these people. It was just another story to them, another melodrama that they would forget about shortly after it ended. However it ended.

But he wasn't supposed to be thinking about them. They weren't the source of the threat. Neither was the idiot announcer with all the gory details of previous 'attacks'. All of his people had been pulled from their usual positions in the stands and were to concentrate only on the gear, the players, Oban and Zimmer.

This time he didn't get caught up in the beauty of the game. He barely watched the game at all. He watched Oban, who had no idea she was under suspicion. She strutted on the ground, watching the game and swearing at imperfections. He watched Hilton, who was watching Potter with that odd expression Draco had noticed on the reserve Seeker a few times before. Like he hated how well Harry played but couldn't help admiring him for it, too.

Draco wondered if anyone had ever caught him with that expression, back in Hogwarts.

He watched Potter, of course, when he couldn't stop himself. Because even when his whole soul wasn't in it Harry was a beautiful creature in the air. Light and fast and strong. And Draco had had him.

Draco smirked.

Mind on the job, Malfoy.

He couldn't see Zimmer. The general manager was up in his box. But Davis, who was wearing an invisibility cloak, was in the box with him. The gear had had round the clock supervision, and Draco would eat his Italian leather shoes if there were anything wrong with any of it. Refreshment potions had been brewed by his people in his office and transported directly to the arena under guard. And every member of his team not assigned to a particular person or thing was roaming the under the stands near the pitch.

Still, with all of those people lurking around looking for trouble, it took them a while to discern the source of the screaming.

It was coming from among the spectators, and at first the noise was indistinguishable from the general shouting and hooting of the audience. But after a few minutes the noise became more distinct, and louder, and Draco was forced to turn his attention to the stands after all.

He noticed people scrambling out and over their seats.

Then he saw the black, cloaked figure drifting onto the pitch, and his heart leapt into his throat and froze there.

And the people on the pitch started screaming and scrambling.

The announcer shouted, "There's a Dementor on the pitch!" and everyone started screaming.

He could not panic.

Think.

Not about every horrific story you've ever heard about Dementors.

There would not be a Dementor at a Quidditch match.

Since the war their movements had been highly regulated. There had been wards imposed on Azkaban that Dementors couldn't pass.

The Death Eaters could not have staged a coupe over the course of a Quidditch match and freed them. Well, maybe one of those freakish marathon matches that lasted four days. Not this one, which had been going for only half an hour.

Voldemort hadn't come back to life. Again.

A Dementor would not be at a Quidditch match.

This was a Quidditch match.

Therefore, that was not a Dementor.

Draco loved logic.

He watched the creature more closely, swallowing down some of his instinctual panic.

It was graceful. It moved lightly. But it didn't have that inhuman smooth flow that Dementors had.

It took only a few steps onto the pitch, then stopped and hesitated there. People drew back and ran from it. It turned.

It was going to leave.

"No!" Draco ran across the pitch. "Catch him!"

He saw MacNabb, one of his and a huge hulk of a man, look at him with a pale face. MacNabb nodded grimly.

And then another scream, this one of rage, from directly above. Draco looked up. So did MacNabb. And so did the Dementor.

Harry Potter in a dive, his teeth bared and his face twisted in fury, was quite the sight to behold. Terrifying and fierce. He was heading straight for the Dementor.

There was no contest. Draco and MacNabb couldn't run as fast as Harry could fly. An instant before the broom reached the Demanotr Harry jumped into the air and tackled the dark figure. The two of them crashed to the ground and Harry tore at the black cloth.

"Do you know that they do to me?" Harry demanded almost shrilly. "Do you know what I hear when I see them?" The cloth fell away to reveal a slim and handsome young man. "Why the fuck would you do that to me? Son of a bitch!"

Harry got in a few solid blows before MacNabb pulled him right off the struggling figure. Draco pulled out his wand - realizing he'd done so a little late in the event - and pointed it at the young man. "Don't move."

The man, eyes wide with shock, nodded shakily. Draco scanned him for a portkey and found it in the same of a key chain hanging from his belt. Draco deactivated it with a spell.

In his peripheral vision he was aware of Harry struggling with MacNabb, swearing profusely. And odd reaction, he thought. The Seeker had shrugged off the dangerous attacks but had exploded into a fury over a prank which, while psychologically unpleasant, didn't threaten his life. And yet, hearing him, Draco knew he was going completely mad over it.

Fortunately, MacNabb was a stereotypically huge Scot, and he restrained Harry without too much difficulty.

Draco put a binding spell on the Dementor impersonator. "Actor, eh?"

"I'm not talking without counsel!" he snapped back, stupid wanker.

"Hey, take all the blame if you want, for all those letters and all those attempts on Potter's life. What do I care? Harry, calm down."

"I'm gonna kill him!" Harry snarled, struggling against MacNabb's grip. "Fucking bastard! Think it's funny, does he? Think it's a good trick? I'll show him some fucking tricks he'll never fucking forget! Let me go! You're dead, you fucking bastard! You hear me?"

The actor stared at him. "It's all true, isn't it?" he said. "You are off your nut."

Harry just roared at that, making a massive lunge that, thankfully, still failed to break MacNabb's grip.

Draco put a hand on his shoulder. "Harry. We've got him. Calm down." And he didn't mean the actor, of course. Zimmer. The actor would lead to Zimmer.

But there was a wild look in Harry's eyes that alarmed Draco.

There was still pandemonium going on in the stands. Draco wasn't sure why, and as far as he was concerned it wasn't his worry.

A couple of arena security guards came out onto the grass. So did Zimmer. "Good job, Malfoy," he said briskly. "I'll arrange for the Aurors to take him."

"I don't think so," Draco said coolly, and he cast a body binding spell on him, too.

"What the hell - " Zimmer fell over, sputtering.

"What are you doing?" Oban screeched, running over to them.

"Holding them both for the Aurors," Draco told her with immense satisfaction.

"That's the general manager!"

"That's the stalker."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Be grateful. I almost thought it was you. I wonder what your bookies will think of this." Draco gestured at the mayhem in the arena, the spectators, and the confusion of the players, some of whom were flying away over the stands.

Oban was looking chagrined.

"Everyone knows," Draco added maliciously.

She muttered under her breath before striding away. That rather surprised Draco, that she appeared prepared to just leave Zimmer to his fate, whatever it was. Apparently no one was shown any loyalty on this team.

"You alright now?" Draco heard MacNabb ask, and he turned around to find that Harry had calmed down - somewhat. At least he was no longer jumping for the man's throat, though his eyes were glittering still. With that slicked back hair, the leather, and the cape.

Merlin. Now was not the time to be getting hard. Damn his trousers. They kept no secrets.

"You're a dead man," Harry said to the young captive. "I'm going to kill you. After the Aurors are done with you, I'm going to hunt you down and kill you. And it's going to hurt. A lot."

To be threatened by the Boy Who Lived was no small thing. The young man paled. "Here now, all I did was walk around in a costume. That's nothing. He's the one what got me to do it." With his eyes, about all he could move, he indicated Zimmer.

"Filthy lying beggar!" Zimmer hissed back.

"What's going on?" demanded a new voice. Draco looked up at the uniform of an Auror. "What have you done here?"

"I have good reason to believe this is the man responsible for sending threatening letters to Mr. Potter and sabotaging the Cannon gear with the aim of endangering Mr. Potter's life."

"Nonsense," Zimmer retorted. "I have reason to suspect you of the same thing."

Now that was a stunner. "I beg your pardon?" Draco demanded incredulously.

"I've been learning all about you since making the mistake of hiring you, Malfoy," Zimmer sneered. "You've had it in for Potter since you were both brats at school and here you've been living with him, watching him, planning your next attack. It's been you all along."

Draco's brain was numb. So was his tongue. This was so unexpected. He should have expected it. Why would anyone sincerely interested in Harry's welfare hire him? "That's ridiculous. You hired this fellow to act like a Dementor."

" You hired him because you couldn't do it yourself, as you did when you were students at Hogwarts."

The numbness grew denser. "What? I mean - what?"

"Do you deny it?"

"I was thirteen!"

"You don't deny it?"

"I was a kid! And you hired me!" What the fuck? He was seriously going to try and turn this on him?

"I can admit when I make a mistake."

He couldn't believe this. Where the hell was this coming from? He looked at the Auror, who was scowling, and Harry, who wouldn't look at him at all. Draco's stomach dropped. "You can't - you can't think what he's saying is true."

"No one ever found out who hexed his broom in his first year," Zimmer added triumphantly, "or who hexed the Bludger in his second."

"That's why you hired the private investigator!" To learn about Harry's history at Hogwarts. But why, really? Why such an elaborate plan? It didn't make sense.

"You mean you?" the Auror asked him.

"I'm a security professional, not a P.I."

"Quirrel hexed my broom," Harry said quietly. "A house elf hexed the Bludger."

Draco almost reacted to that. He'd heard the first fact, at the time, and had promptly forgotten about it in the flood of other events that had occurred that year. He'd never known about the second.

He kept silent, though, and watched Zimmer.

"No one knew that! We dug all - " and then Zimmer shut his mouth.

"You're right," said Harry. "No one knew. About the house elf. He told only me."

There was a dead quality to Harry's voice that Draco did not like to hear. Broken.

"It doesn't matter who did it originally," Zimmer said to the Auror. "He was there. He grew up with Potter. He saw it all. And he hated Potter. Now Potter's a big star, a professional playing. Malfoy always wanted that, did you know? He never won a game against Potter, in all their years at Hogwarts. That sort of jealousy drives people mad you know. And now he's trying to drive Potter mad, too, by recreating traumatic events from his childhood."

The Auror looked at him. Draco was delighted. No way did Zimmer come up with that theory in the time he'd been bound. "We're all going in to talk about this," the Auror announced.

"You can't arrest me!" Zimmer howled. "I'm the general manager!"

"And that has given you the impression that you're above the law?" the Auror demanded sharply.

"No no, of course not! But you have no cause. And Potter's part of my team. He's worth millions."

Bastard. Unfuckingbelievable bastard.

"What I've heard has given me probable cause. So are you going to be a good docile little general manager or do I leave you in the body bind?"

"Fine," Zimmer conceded through his grit teeth.

"I'm going, too," Potter announced in a soft voice. "I have a right to hear."

"No, Potter," Zimmer ordered. "You should go home and relax. You've had a hard day. I'll handle this."

No one listened to him. He and the actor were released from the body binds, but charmed with a compliance spell. So was Draco, but he didn't mind.

He was more worried about the fact that Harry still wouldn't look at him.