Mrs Violetta Zabini

Twelve Days' Leave

A scene from the week before

The Auror Office's Application for Annual Leave (Festive Period) was a single sheet of grey Ministry parchment covered in small boxes, and Draco had been filling his in since before lunch.

"It's a form, Malfoy," said Harry. "Not your memoirs."

"Box seven asks for a reason." Draco did not look up. "I'm giving it one."

Harry leaned over the partition between their desks and read it upside down. Under Reason for leave, in Draco's narrow, elegant hand, with every T standing neatly in its tiny shoes, it said: To attend a private celebration of some social consequence on the Continent, at which the applicant's presence has been personally requested by the hostess, a lady who does not accept refusals and has never been known to.

Harry took the quill out of his hand, crossed the lot out, and wrote Wedding.

"You've ruined it."

"I've finished it." Harry signed his own form, which also said Wedding, with his name underneath leaning like a fence in a high wind. "Come on. He's in a good mood. Somebody's brought in a cake."

Gawain Robards had a glass office at the end of the room, which meant that everything that happened in it happened in front of an audience. He read Harry's form in about a second. He read Draco's rather more slowly, and when he reached the bottom he went back up and read the crossed-out part too.

"A wedding," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Both of you."

"Yes, sir."

"The same wedding."

"Yes, sir."

"For twelve days."

"It's a long wedding, sir," said Draco. "It's Italian."

Robards laid the two forms side by side on his blotter and squared their edges with one thick finger. Then he looked up at Draco.

"You're on probation, Malfoy. Probationers don't get Christmas."

"Until the twelfth, sir. After which I'm a free man, entitled to the same miserable allowance as everybody else." Draco paused. "Section four. I checked."

Robards looked at the calendar on his wall, and then back at Draco, plainly a man who had just been out-read by his own regulations and did not care for it.

Behind them, the Auror Office had gone very quiet. Every quill in it had stopped scratching, and every ear in it was pointed at the glass door.

"Whose wedding?" called Proudfoot.

"Theirs," said Savage, from the next desk, and the whole office fell about.

It was, Harry reflected, entirely his own fault. The Auror Office had called Draco Mrs Potter ever since the Christmas party at which Draco had, in front of witnesses, re-tied Harry's tie, removed a sausage roll from his hand on the grounds that it had been on the floor, and told Williamson to get his elbows off Harry's desk.

"It is not our wedding," said Draco, for what was clearly not the first time.

"Who's giving you away, Mrs Potter?" said Dawlish.

"Nobody is giving anybody —"

"Where are you registered?"

"Can we come?"

"I'm not buying you a toast rack," said Williamson. "You've already got the one in the kitchenette, and you never let anyone else touch it."

"Potter," said Draco, to the room at large, "is married."

"Then it's yours," said Proudfoot, and every head in the office swung from Harry to Draco. "Who to?"

There was a beat. Then, more or less in unison, from every desk in the Auror Office: "Granger."

Draco went pink. It started at his collar and went straight up into his hair, and there was nothing whatsoever he could do about it, and the entire department watched it happen. Harry thought it was quite possibly the high point of his career.

"It has been," said Draco, with enormous dignity, "a fortnight."

"You've found a reason to go up to Level One every day since November," said Savage. "We've got a chart."

"You have not got a —"

Savage held up a chart.

"Not yet," murmured Harry, out of the corner of his mouth.

Draco trod on his foot.

"Potter," said Robards. The room settled. "Whose wedding?"

"Mrs Zabini's, sir."

It went round the Auror Office like a draught under a door. Proudfoot put his face in his hands. Savage said, "Oh, no," with real feeling. Dawlish, who was old enough to remember the business with the balcony, crossed himself.

"Which one is this?" said Williamson.

"The eighth," said Draco.

"Who's the poor sod?"

"Aldric Fawley."

Robards put down his quill.

"Aldric Fawley," he said. "The Aldric Fawley you two spent October getting back."

"Yes, sir."

"Out of an impostor. At considerable expense to this department."

"Yes, sir."

"And now you're taking him to Lake Como to marry Mrs Zabini." Robards considered this. "Was there a reason you didn't just leave him where he was?"

"She's very fond of him, sir," said Harry.

"So I gather. She was very fond of the last seven."

"We don't talk about the last seven, sir," said Draco. "It's a rule. Number three."

Robards looked at him for a moment longer. Then he signed both forms, reached for his stamp, and brought it down twice, hard: APPROVED. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a black silk tie, folded very small, and dropped it on top of Draco's form.

"Take this."

"I have a tie, sir."

"Not this one. I wore it to two of hers. A wedding, and then the funeral. Same tie both times." He shut the drawer. "Saves time."

Harry turned his head, very slowly, and looked at Draco.

"Don't," said Draco.

"You said that. Word for word. About your hat."

"It's a perfectly sound principle."

"You've got a funeral hat, Malfoy."

"It's a hat," said Draco, "for occasions," and took the tie.

"One condition," said Robards. "Nobody dies. I am not spending Christmas answering owls from the Italians."

"It's a wedding, sir," said Harry. "What could possibly happen?"

Robards gave him a long, flat look.

"Potter," he said. "I have read your file. You have never once in your life been invited anywhere nice without something trying to kill somebody."

"That's not true."

"Name one," said Draco.

Harry opened his mouth.

"And the Yule Ball doesn't count," said Draco. "There were dragons that year."

Harry shut it again.

They went out through the glass door into a round of applause and a brown envelope already travelling from desk to desk, labelled in Proudfoot's capitals FOR THE HAPPY COUPLE. Draco snatched it off Williamson's blotter, read it, went pink all over again, and handed it to Harry, who put it in his pocket.

"What?" said Harry. "It's a collection."

Behind them, in the glass office, Gawain Robards pulled a fresh sheet of parchment towards him, dipped his quill, and began, in a large and patient hand: