he past week with nothing to do but watch Malfoy work.

Which was why he was certain that Malfoy was taking his time with this last door. With nothing to upy his attention other than Malfoy, Harry had recently gained quite a bit of knowledge about how he worked. He knew that when Malfoy was concentrating particularly hard, the tip of his tongue could be seen poking through his teeth. When he came across a difficult curse, his nose would wrinkle slightly. During moments when he was casually sweeping for trigger points, Malfoy would hum a surprisingly soothing melody.

And currently, Malfoy was doing precisely none of those things; he was just staring, blankly, at the bloody doorknob. Harry had absolutely no idea why Malfoy would want to drag out their time standing in a dank, mouldy hallway of a dank, mouldy house. Harry didn’t exactly want to go down into the basement himself, but they couldn’t leave until every last inch of the house had been swept and cleared, and it wasn’t as though the hallway was much more of a fun place to be, hot cups of tea not withstanding.

Harry’s temper was very quickly fraying. “Seriously, Malfoy, what is the hold up?”

He tensed, waiting for the backlash of Malfoy’s anger for being interrupted again, and was surprised when it didn’te. Instead, Malfoy sat back on his heels and rubbed at his nose—that was now wrinkled slightly, Harry suddenly noted—with the heel of his hand.

“I’ve removed the mordent manibus curse, but there still seems to be some residual magic.” Malfoy huffed out a quiet breath and scrubbed his hand across his face. “I can’t tell if it’s just leftover from the hand biting curse, or if it’s something else entirely.”

Harry thought for a long moment. “Does it physically stop us from opening the door?” He asked finally.

Malfoy shook his head. “No, but I don’t know what will happen if we do. I can’t even tell if anything will happen.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, neither do I,” Malfoy muttered to himself. He shook his head, and then stood up again, leaning against the wall next to Harry. “There’s something there, but I can’t tell what. It feels…”

“It feels, what?” Harry asked, when it became clear that Malfoy wasn’t going to finish his sentence.

“It feels like I’m not allowed to know it yet,” Malfoy said with a shrug.

“I don’t understand,” Harry repeated. He was starting to get a bad feeling; the creaks and groans of the house around them suddenly sounded louder, more purposeful, and the door in front of them seemed to shimmer with ugly possibilities. He was rapidly bing very tired of this entire job.

“Well, the only way to know for sure is if we open it, right?”

“Are you joking, Potter?” Malfoy said, raising his eyebrows.

Harry shrugged. “We can’t leave until the house has been secured, and if you can’t work out what it is by looking at it, that only really leaves one option, doesn’t it?”

Malfoy blew out a loud breath, then rolled his eyes. “Fine. But you’re going first.”

Harry snorted. “I didn’t e

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