When Harry keyed into her office at a quarter to buttcrack in the morning, cold, bone-grumpy and smelling like an all-night stake-out in a swamp, Draco Malfoy was sitting at her desk. On her desk, more precisely: perched: like an unusually stork-legged secretary with delusions of sex appeal. He had a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a bag with a Telemann's Exquisite Donuts logo in the other. Harry eyed him dubiously.
"Morning, Pottsy," Malfoy chirped, brandishing the bag. "Got a prezzie for you!"
"On the slim chance that there's actually a pastry in there, I'm changing my clothes."
Malfoy seemed to follow this logic without difficulty, and watched with interest as Harry peeled off her abused field robes, pulled a thick jumper (pea green, pink "H") out of a filing cabinet, tugged it on over her undershirt and slung Sirius's ancient leather bike jacket over her shoulders. She dropped into her chair with a thump and flopped out a hand.
"If you've brought me any combination of pumpkin and cream cheese, I may have to revisit our dating policy." Malfoy looked briefly regretful, but Harry had a weather eye on his transfiguration hand.
Harry opened the bag. She blinked, then fished out her wand and poked. "See, this is what I love about our relationship, Malfoy. Other people's partners bring them pastries after all-nighters in February. You bring me severed body parts."
"Oh my God, lack-brain," Malfoy remonstrated, and ripped open the bag, leaving its contents exposed in a shallow nest of bleached paper. "I realize you've been marinating in Poogle's Bog lately, but do you not see? This is it! The key to the case that's had us working out of each other's damned pockets for the past three months!" When Harry only looked at him, he flapped his hands. "This is Maria Gertrude von Hohenheim's thumb! Maria Gertrude von Hohenheim's thumb is a main de gloire!"
"Thumb de gloire?"
"Yes, yes, the Romany variation." Malfoy indicated the beaded red thread that encircled the shrivelled little object twice before drooping to the paper like a trickle of blood. "And that is the phylacteric equivalent of—"
"A datestamp," said Harry, catching up. "Have you looked up the—"
"Cut from a body after it's been buried for nine weeks and disinterred during a new moon," Malfoy recited. "Yes I have, you think I'd leave the research to the likes of you? Here's the lunar calendar for last summer, crime windows marked in red, here's the spell trace analysis and here's the bibliography." He nudged three file folders Harry hadn't noticed on her desk.
Harry didn't even comment on the hilarity of the bibliography. "Still no location of burial," she murmured, flipping pages, "but this is a hell of a lead, Malfoy." Get past the quirks and the drama-queen flailing and he was a damned good agent. Obsessive personalities had their uses. "And yet," she couldn't help teasing, "I can't believe that the one thing in the world I really—" and then she didn't have to finish, because her stomach let out a loud, disgruntled rraowr.
Malfoy snorted. "I do remain Slytherin. You uncramp that dating policy of yours and then see what kinds of goodies you get." His voice was all breeze and innuendo, but when Harry snorted back and cut her gaze sideways, he was staring into his coffee cup instead of sharing the joke.
Harry nudged him. "Well, one way or another: breakfast. Come on down to the caf with me and you can explain how the hell you found this."
"No," Malfoy said immediately. "Let's go across the street to Saucie's. They have good eggs."
It was good to have a different kind of war to wage with Malfoy. Harry locked
the thumb in her filing cabinet, neatly Accio-ed Malfoy's coffee and
took a luxurious sip before using it to gesture: "After you."