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"Nope."
Harry blinked incomprehensibly at the doddering man behind the counter where he normally dropped off any Auror equipment that he'd damaged while on duty.
"Sorry, what?"
"I can't fix those," Wiggersfeld said gruffly, sliding the dented and cracked glasses back over to him. "They're special made."
"Well, who can?"
Wiggersfeld harrumphed loudly and pulled a stack of parchment from beneath the counter. A pair of spectacles emerged from his cloak, and he perched them on the end of his nose as he began shuffling through the pile.
Harry shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to seem impatient.
"Ah," Wiggersfeld extracted a sheet. "They're made by Sui Generis Designs."
"Su – what?"
Wiggersfeld glared at him and held out the parchment. Harry took it.
It was an invoice from when the Auror department had requisitioned equipment from this Su-whatever company. It was quite a list, actually, and his eyebrows rose in disbelief as he glanced it over. Apparently, they'd made most of the specialized items that Harry frequently found himself relying on in the field, including the glasses he'd managed to break.
They were quite remarkable glasses, actually, with a number of different filters that could be activated one at a time, or separately with a touch of one's wand. The effects ranged from a simple dark tint for sunny days, to a filter that would let you see Disillusioned objects, to one that made cursed objects glow various colors in relation to the strength and severity of the curse. Needless to say, Harry really didn't want to have to go without them.
He reached the bottom of the parchment and noticed the address of the company was listed.
"I'll just go see if they can repair these, then," Harry said, but Wiggersfeld was gone when he looked up again.
Harry shrugged and squinted at the address, memorizing it. He left the parchment on the counter, grabbed his glasses, and Disapparated.
The address he'd fixed in his mind took him to a huge, rickety-looking warehouse. If not for the small sign affixed next to the door, on which was written 'Sui Generis Designs' in a fancy script, he would've turned right back around and Apparated out of there.
Instead, he strode forward and tried the door handle.
Despite the general appearance of disrepair, it opened easily and smoothly. Harry stepped inside, cautious and uncertain of what to expect.
There was a desk with stacks of scrolls sitting on it, and several shelving units were arranged to section off the area by the door. Harry assumed it was meant to be a reception area of sorts, but there didn't seem to be any chairs, and no one was in sight.
There was, however, some kind of racket being made on the other side of the shelves, and after a minute, Harry, already fed up with waiting, stepped through the gap in the shelves to see what was going on.
On the other side, there was a long, rather cluttered table stretching down the middle of the room, with a few stools randomly scattered around it. There were shelves lining the walls, with bins neatly labelled with things like 'Rune-Marked Dowels,' 'Spell-Strengthened Glass,' and 'Metal Coils.' Harry didn't see anyone, but the noises were coming from the other end of the table, and he walked around, burning with curiosity.
The first thing he saw was someone's very nice behind. He couldn't see who it was, because he (Harry was pretty certain they were a man) was bent over and partially inside some kind of contraption that looked like a stove, but with an aquarium on top. Harry couldn't make heads or tails of it at all, but the man was wearing some extremely well-fitted trousers.
Harry figured the man hadn't heard him come in, so it wouldn't hurt to wait another minute to let him know Harry was there. The Auror did begin to feel guilty about the ogling after about ten seconds, though, and cleared his throat loudly.
A muffled, vaguely familiar voice called back, "One minute!"
Harry had absolutely no objections to waiting one more minute.
He didn't exactly keep track of time, but he was pretty sure more than a minute had gone by when the man finally backed out of the aquarium stove. He saw immediately why the voice had sounded so muffled—he was wearing some kind of face shield strapped to his head, probably to protect from the bluish flame his wand was emitting.
"Finite," he said, and the flame vanished as he turned his head. "Potter?"
Harry wasted a second wondering how this guy knew his name, and then the man took his face shield off.
"Malfoy?"
"In the flesh," Malfoy said, smirking. He tossed the face shield on the table. "What brings you here?"
"You… work here? At, um, Sue Gennis?"
Harry was having a very difficult time reconciling the Malfoy he remembered from school with the one standing in front of him. He hadn't ever been attracted to him in school, unless you counted weirdly obsessive stalking as attraction, and… okay, maybe he should've taken the hint then.
It was just very odd to find that he had been ogling his past school rival, and now he couldn't help noticing that Malfoy was very flushed from whatever he'd been doing, and his hair was all messed up, and his trousers were still very well-fitted, and—
"No, Potter," Malfoy laughed sharply, "I own Sui Generis."
He pronounced it slowly and precisely, and Harry reddened in embarrassment. He probably should've assumed Malfoy wouldn't work for anybody, but couldn't he have named his company something a little easier to say?
"Well?" Malfoy asked, arching a brow. Harry suddenly remembered that he did have a reason for being here. He retrieved the broken glasses from inside his robes.
Malfoy gasped when he saw them. "What did you do, Potter?"
He snatched the frames out of Harry's hands while the latter was trying to decide where to start.
"These are meant to be virtually unbreakable," Malfoy said, inspecting them closely. "What did you do, toss them at a Venomous Tentacula?"
That was, as a matter of fact, almost exactly what had happened. Harry wasn't proud of it.
"Er."
Malfoy's glare was entirely unamused. "Only you, Potter," he muttered.
"So… can you fix them?" Harry asked, hesitant.
"No."
"Oh." Harry was disappointed, but he had pretty spectacularly damaged them.
"I'll have to make you a new pair," Malfoy said, and Harry looked up in surprise as Malfoy held out the frame to him. "Show me how you've been wearing them. I'll try to make the next ones harder for you to break."
Harry put them on, right on top of his regular glasses. Malfoy's mouth dropped open.
"Potter," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Please tell me you're joking."
Harry really couldn't tell him that, so he didn't say anything.
Malfoy sighed. "You could have had your prescription put in the lenses."
Harry honestly hadn't thought of it. So, he said so.
"Well, it's too late for this pair, anyway," Malfoy said. "I'll put it in the new ones. Do you know your prescription or must I call your oculist?"
"I haven't got one," Harry said, scratching his head. "Can't you just look at the ones I'm wearing?"
"You—when did you last update your lenses, Potter?"
"I got these when I was… eight, I think. I still see well with them," he said, defensive.
Malfoy crossed his arms. "You need to go to an oculist."
"These ones are just fine," Harry protested.
Really, they were, although Hermione had told him the same thing just the other week when she caught him squinting at the tiny print of the confusing instructions on the Swedish Muggle furniture they were attempting to put together. (Hermione insisted that doing it by hand would build character, but Harry saw Ron with his wand out behind her back, the tosser.) Harry had offhandedly ignored Hermione's advice, despite her persistent frowning. He didn't understand why he needed a new prescription, anyway. He'd used Engorgio on his same old pair of frames whenever they'd gotten too small, and there was nothing wrong with the lenses.
"Potter," Malfoy said, glowering, "You've just told me it's been over a decade since you had that prescription updated. If you want new glasses, go see an oculist, because I refuse to make an item that is in any way inferior."
Malfoy's tone had become increasingly adamant, and the last word was gritted out between tightly clenched teeth.
It was startling to Harry how passionately Malfoy felt about his work. Feeling rather flustered, he stammered his way through a promise to go as soon as possible, after which Malfoy looked somewhat appeased, and then Harry fled back to the Ministry and his nice, safe Auror office.
He owled an oculist in Diagon Alley that afternoon and arranged an appointment for the next day, during his lunch.
The oculist was as appalled as Malfoy at how long he'd had his glasses, made him do a bunch of funny tests, and then he had to choose between dozens of lenses, all of which were either 'one' or 'two.' He was beginning to get a headache by the end of it all, but the oculist was able to make his new prescription into glasses before he even left. Harry didn't bother trying any other style of frame—he was too used to his old ones—so he left looking much the same as he had walking in, but he felt like he was seeing a completely different world.
How had he ever thought he was seeing well? He hadn't thought he was seeing poorly until now, but if this was what he was supposed to be seeing the whole time—well.
It wasn't technically his lunch hour anymore, but Harry figured it was still Auror business, so after he'd scarfed down a sandwich, he Apparated to Sui Generis (still a weird name) to give Malfoy his prescription.
There was a very notable difference when he walked through the door this time.
Theodore Nott was sitting behind the desk, feet propped up on it. He opened one eyelid lazily as Harry stood there staring at him.
"Potter." He nodded. Harry found himself politely nodding back. Nott smirked, as if he had a secret, and then tilted his head back.
"Oi, Draco!" he shouted, and there was a clanging noise, followed by some very creative curses. Several very long, very awkward seconds passed, in which Nott did not stop smirking.
Harry tried to look at anything but him and nearly jumped in relief when Malfoy emerged from the shelves.
"By Merlin, Theo, if—oh." Malfoy finally noticed him. "Hello, Potter. That was quick."
Harry found himself tongue-tied, not just because the past twenty-four hours had somewhat reconciled him to the idea that he fancied Malfoy, but also because Malfoy had, very briefly, let his eyes wander over Harry. At least, he was pretty sure he had.
"Um," Harry said, quite intelligently, and then he rummaged around in his robes for the parchment the oculist had written his prescription on. "Here you are."
Harry had no idea what any of the numbers meant, but Malfoy must have, because he nodded in satisfaction and then looked back up at Harry slyly.
"Seeing things any differently now?"
"A bit," Harry admitted begrudgingly, and had to look away, feeling a flush spread up his neck.
His gaze fell on Nott, who had moved his feet off the desk only to replace them with his elbows, and, with his chin propped on his joined hands, was watching them with rapt boredom. It was rather unsettling, actually.
Malfoy cleared his throat, and Harry looked back in time to catch the tail end of a glare directed at Nott.
"They'll be finished sometime next week," Malfoy told him. "I won't rush the process."
"No, of course not," Harry said, hastily. He knew better than to suggest Malfoy shorten any incantations. "I'll just… leave you to it, then. Er. Thanks."
And with that, he fled Malfoy's presence for the second time in as many days.
He tried very hard not to think about Malfoy over the next week, or even mention that he'd seen him, although he had a close shave that evening when he went over to Ron and Hermione's flat and Ron asked what he'd been up to that afternoon. Apparently, Harry had missed the hilarious sight of Smith walking around the Auror offices with toilet paper stuck to his shoe for an hour, and potentially something else had happened that was actually funny, but Ron's retelling was so interspersed with laughter that it was difficult to understand, other than it had something to do with a number of Pygmy Puffs left unsupervised for too long.
Luckily, though, by the end of Ron's story he'd forgotten to follow up on his original question. Hermione did keep giving Harry odd looks, but he was sure there was no way she knew where he'd been. Or who he'd seen. Or if he fancied them.
Exactly seven days later, he received an owl informing him that he could stop by at the end of the day to pick up his new glasses.
Harry spent the rest of the workday thinking about it nervously, and trying to think of some way to ask Malfoy out that didn't involve him just blurting it out all at once. Maybe if he'd had more time to prepare, he'd have thought of something, but by the end of the day he was pretty much resigned to the fact that it would have to be spur-of-the-moment.
He Apparated from the Ministry at five on the dot and entered the warehouse, noticing with some relief that Nott wasn't there.
Malfoy was tinkering with something on top of the aquarium stove, but he noticed Harry almost as soon as he walked through the shelves and moved towards him, snatching up a little black case halfway down the table.
"I just want you to try these on here before you leave with them," Malfoy said as he opened it.
Harry removed his regular frames, and took the glasses from him, gingerly sliding them on. They felt much more comfortable than the original pair had.
"Did you do something different with these?" he asked, curiously.
"Well, I added a few things to this model," Malfoy grinned, and launched into a detailed explanation of what he'd done, which included, among other things, a magnification dial, a filter that would allow him to look through walls after he'd traced the proper rune on them, and a spell-activated feature that would let him see from the back of his head. Malfoy was fascinating to listen to, and Harry thought it was all bloody brilliant.
"Any questions?" Malfoy asked when he was done.
This was his chance, Harry thought.
"Yeah. Um… what is that thing, anyway?"
He pointed at the aquarium stove, internally cursing at himself for chickening out.
"Oh," Malfoy said, turning and looking a bit surprised. "Dragon-egg incubator. It's for Granger's new sanctuary."
"Ah, I see." That made a lot more sense. It was also probably a lot more efficient than Hagrid's approach to dragon-egg incubation had been.
"Well," said Malfoy, "If that's all, we'd better be off, then."
"What?"
"Our reservation is in ten minutes."
"Reservation?" Harry cried in bewilderment. "But… I was going to ask you -"
"Yes, I know," Malfoy said dryly, while also looking like he was trying not to laugh. "You haven't a subtle bone in your body, Potter. So. Dinner?"
Malfoy extended an elbow to him.
"Yeah, sure," Harry said, taking the proffered elbow with a short, incredulous laugh. "Dinner."