He took Harry on a bizarre progress through four different wood-paneled sitting rooms where he picked out a perfectly random witch or wizard in each one, nobody Harry even knew, and struck up a conversation. After five minutes of chit-chat he’d say, “Harry’s been showing me this new kind of pen Muggles have invented, the poor creatures. Have you seen it? A simple Inexhaustible Ink charm, and it would really be quite usable. You’ve been wanting to make a switch at the Aurors’ Office, Potter, haven’t you?” Then he’d scribble a bit with it and hand it over for examination, and five minutes later he’d make an excuse and they’d move onward to the next random victim.

“Did something happen that I’m missing?” Harry said after the fourth one, when Draco headed for the cloakroom with the demonstration apparently over.

“Infinitudes, apparently,” Draco said, swinging his cloak back over his shoulders. “If that wasn’t obvious enough, you’ll just have to wait for it, Potter, I haven’t time to explain tonight. I’ll drop in at the office later this week: perhaps you’ll have worked it out by then.”

“Wait, you’re not—oh, right,” Harry said hurriedly, just barely managing to cover for the fact he’d assumed they were going back to the Manor together. He turned away to put his own coat on, telling himself firmly he wasn’t disappointed, he wasn’t anything like disappointed, and he didn’t wonder at all what Malfoy preferred to shagging him senseless again.

“Oh, have I disappointed you?” Draco said, sounding gleeful. Harry gritted his teeth, Ron was right, what was he thinking, he was out of his mind— “You do realize it’s the first night of the new moon in twenty minutes.”

Harry jerked round to stare at him. Draco was watching him with a cat-in-the-cream smirk, but Harry didn’t give a damn about that anymore. “Do you need any help?”

“If you could help, you could do the work yourself,” Draco said. “Don’t be glum, Potter. I’ll put you over your desk Wednesday and make it up to you.”

Then Draco caught him by his coat and pulled him in and kissed him, and whirled out the door, all before Harry had a chance to get out the like hell you will.

#

Wednesday morning Harry pretended to himself he was shaving both ways just because he liked it, no other reason whatsoever, and he was distracted at work because he was waiting for Malfoy to come and tell him how the first round of repairs to the portal had gone, and he wasn’t looking at the clock or—

He came straight up in his chair at the knock on the door, but when he cleared his throat and called, “Alohomora!” it only swung open to reveal Raymond Gurley from the postroom with four fat padded envelopes for him, along with a faintly lavender-scented envelope in creamy heavy stock. “Special delivery or something, Harry?” he said, dropping them on the desk.

“Er, I suppose,” Harry said, baffled. “I didn’t order anything.” He didn’t recognize any of the return addresses, either.

“Did all four of them manage an entry?” Draco said, and Harry’s head jerked up involuntarily as he came in, exchanging places with Gurley’s cart. He came over and perched on the edge of Harry’s desk, peering over at the envelopes. “It’s nice to know initiative is alive and well in the Empire.”

“Wait, what are these?” Harry said. “Did you order them?”

“No, Potter, you did,” Draco said, ripping the largest of them open and dumping a double handful of faintly glittering ink pens on Harry’s desk, along with a letter from the chairman of Quinchley Quills, Ltd., So lovely to see you at Old Whissing the other day, Auror Potter. I wonder if you would care to try this new product and let us know your thoughts. We take our responsibility in supplying the Department of Magical Enforcement with the finest writing implements available most seriously, and going on a while in that vein.

“They were all quill manufacturers?” Harry said, looking through all the letters. There were a dozen different sorts of pens in the lot, some closer to the Rollerball than others, and there were varied special features trumpeted in each.

Malfoy sighed noisily. “Potter, when you wanted ink pens, I suppose you asked the Ministry to bang in an order with Amazonia or whatever the thing is called? And nevermind the loss of business to wizarding companies that pay tax to the Ministry and buy lunches for senior Ministry officials, et cetera?”

“Er,” Harry said.

 “Well, Quinchley et al will be delighted to slap a cheap charm onto an even cheaper bit of Muggle junk for you, if that’s what you like,” Draco said, flipping a pink pen across at him with a twist of his fingers. “And the Ministry will be delighted to buy them for you when the manufacturers offer them at half the price of hand-cut quills plucked from wild geese. Still care to go on at me about the uselessness of cultivating the right people? You could stand to do a little of it yourself.”

Harry compressed his jaw. “Right, and it’s worth the time, is it? All you had to do to get these pens was to know so many people you can recognize executives from four quill manufacturers on sight without even looking them up, then spend the better part of an hour chatting them all up, in a club you had to drag me to just to get let in again, and I don’t even want to guess what to be invited to in the first place—”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Malfoys have been senior members of Old Whissing for three centuries, I’ve been on the rolls since birth. And the pens are your personal stupidity, it’s not about the pens. It’s about getting what you want.”

“Yeah, and nevermind if that’s good or not,” Harry said. “I don’t want to manipulate people into doing things my way, Malfoy. I want them to do things my way because I’ve convinced them it’s the right way!”

“Yes, of course,” Draco sneered. “It’s not enough for people to do things for you, you want them to acknowledge your moral superiority.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Harry said, standing up, and then the door swung open again.