Disclaimer: Not mine, JKR's.
A/N: I've been writing this story for a long time. It was begun in that canon-space between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and that shows in lots of ways. The characters I use, for one. Post-ootp, I revised the story to comply with canon, but didn't make any major changes to plot, theme, or characters. It goes cheerfully AU with Half-Blood Prince, not because of the shipping, but because there's just no room for the revelations of that book in the plot of this story.
I think there will be eighteen chapters, in the end. And I promise I'll finish it one of these days.
One
*
Harry leaned his head against the train window and watched raindrops splatter against the glass. It was a grey, dreary September afternoon, and it suited his mood nicely. As did the train; it was the perfect place for him at the moment. A place where no-one knew him, where he could be still and quiet before he had to reintroduce himself to Aunt Petunia for the hundredth time.
The Little Whinging station drew nearer, and Harry made his way to the exit, swaying in time with the train. The platform was nearly empty on this commuter-free Saturday. It smelled like wet concrete, old cigarette butts, and something only identifiable as stink. Harry hurried out of the station, putting up his old black umbrella as he made it out into the fresh, albeit wet, air.
It was a damp quarter of an hour's walk to the residential home. The lobby was overly warm, as always, and Harry half-expected steam to rise from his wet clothes. He suppressed a shudder at the desperately cheerful pink carpet, pastel walls, and floral couches, and forced a smile instead for the benefit of the room's white-haired occupants.
He had to wait only a moment at reception. "Harry Potter to see Petunia Dursley, please."
"Right this way," the young nurse said, bustling out from behind the desk. "Your aunt's having quite a good day. We're always so pleased to see her showing signs of improvement."
"Yes," Harry said, swallowing. "Yes, that's always good news."
They found Aunt Petunia in a small sitting room at the end of the corridor. There were only two or three people sitting quietly inside, and Harry was grateful for that. His conversations with Aunt Petunia often turned rather testy, and the fewer witnesses, the better. Harry walked over to his aunt, who was hunched down in an armchair and peering beadily at the other residents.
"Hello, Aunt Petunia."
She focused on him, and after a beat, asked, "Well? Who are you?"
So much for improvement. Not that he'd thought it possible, anyhow, not unless there had been some sort of unprecedented magical miracle.
Harry sighed and settled down in a nearby chair, resigned to half an hour or so of giving the same old answers to the same old questions: I'm your nephew, my mum was your sister, no, she can't come visit you. . . .
He thought that one day he'd be able to do this on autopilot, simply turn off his brain and let the words flow. But that wasn't today, and he wished they were in her tiny bedroom with the telly as a distraction. He would much prefer trying to explain what the talking heads were on about than have this conversation again.
"I'm your nephew. Could we talk in your room?"
She narrowed her eyes. "You? In my room? Do I look mad?" Aunt Petunia stood and, brushing Harry aside, walked away. At the door, she turned and offered a parting shot: "And if you really are my nephew, you could at least do something with that hair!"
One good day, ruined single-handedly in under a minute. Harry made his own way out of the room, voices rising in his wake. He wondered if he was being judged as a horrible boy for upsetting his poor sad aunt, or if these people who had to live with her day in and day out were perhaps cheering him on.
It would be nice if just one of these visits would go well. It seemed that Aunt Petunia had been able to cling to just enough memory to feel loss when she thought of her sister, and bitterness when faced with her nephew. Harry supposed he should be pleased that his aunt had been able to hold onto something.
Ron and Hermione always offered to make the trip down to Surrey with him, and Harry always refused. This was his problem. His aunt. His responsibility.
*
Ron wandered about aimlessly, moving a paper here, opening a cupboard there. The London flat he and Harry shared was small, and his legs were long; there just wasn't enough room for a good spot of pacing. His only company was Hedwig, and her head was tucked firmly under a downy wing. Ron briefly considered waking her just to hear some disgruntled hooting. All in all, the quiet was driving him mad. It wasn't his fault; Weasleys didn't do solitude well. They weren't made for it.
A long Saturday evening stretched out ahead of him, dreary and unexciting. Ron heaved a sigh. Experience suggested that even when Harry returned, the quiet would remain.
There was one solution to the problem, and he reached for it, in the form of the fellytone-thing on the kitchen counter.
It rang for a long time. Ron had just decided that Hermione wasn't home or he'd done the dialing thing all wrong when, finally, she answered.
"Hello?"
"Hermione! You're home!"
"Good one, Ron," she said. "Your observational powers astound me."
"Very funny. Would you like to come over for dinner?" Once upon a time, such words from him would have held a whole different meaning, would have been part of their on-again off-again courtship dance. But years had passed since then, and Ron had no ulterior motives. He valued his sanity too much to start any of that again, and didn't need to be skilled at Legilimency to know Hermione felt the same way.
Hermione sighed. "Ron, term just began. I have a thousand things to do before Monday. I have reading for three classes, two response papers to write, plus I want to do a bit of extra background research. . . ."
Some men might have been daunted, but Ron was both determined and experienced at dealing with book-mad witches. "Hermione, you have to eat. Your brain needs, erm, nutritional input to keep working at optimal studying levels. All your old famous Muggle thinkers ate a lot. I've seen the pictures."
Another sigh. "Why don't you get Harry to eat with you?"
"Because he's in Surrey. And you know what he's like when he gets back from there."
"Yes," Hermione said. "I do." She was quiet for a moment. "All right. I'll be there in a minute."
Ron hung up the felly-tone and pumped his fist into the air. He was going to have company, someone to laugh with and tease with, and hopefully cheer Harry up with. And he had convinced Hermione to do something she didn't want to do - always a bonus.
He dropped his arm. He was going to have company. Girl company. The type that would complain if there wasn't a space on the couch large enough to sit down. And the type that would probably demand a clear spot on the floor for her feet. Ron sighed, unpocketed his wand, and set to work.
She was as good as her word. Ron had only managed to unearth a section of the couch and coffee table before she popped into the flat. Hermione, on the other hand, had apparently had time to pack half the contents of her bookshelf into the bag she carried over her shoulder. "You brought work?"
"Of course," Hermione said, settling on the couch. "I told you I was busy."
Groaning, Ron slumped into the armchair beside her and picked up a Quidditch magazine he'd read twice already. He watched Hermione over the top of the pages as she wrote in one of the thickest school planners he'd ever seen. Ron had always suspected that Hermione was off her nut, but this Muggle university thing made it official. He and Harry had been thrilled to walk away from classes and note-taking in all forms a year ago. Only Hermione could have found a way to study even more.
The scritch scritch of Hermione's quill was a soothing sort of sound, and as the afternoon wore on and the light grew dim, Ron's magazine travelled from his lap to over his eyes, where it acquired a tent-like shape. Things were all quite cosy and comfortable - until the poking started.
Ron twitched. "Wha - what?"
"Didn't you promise me food?" Hermione asked, withdrawing her hand.
"Oh. Right." Ron stood, stretching. "Don't you want to help?" he asked hopefully.
"Not really," Hermione said. She meant it, too: she was already writing again.
"But I might get it all wrong. I need supervision."
"I certainly can't argue with that," she said, "but luckily, I can see you just fine from here."
That was quite true, given the size of their home. Flats in London didn't come cheap, and as Ron insisted on paying exactly half of the monthly rent, they weren't swanning around on Harry's inheritance. The tiny kitchen was separated from the lounge only by a stretch of countertop, currently buried under dirty plates, cups, and a tin of Owl Treats. Ron shoved enough aside to create a workspace, then pulled out enough noodles and canned sauce to make spaghetti for three.
There were leftovers that night.
*
An owl landed on Harry's shoulder before he made it out of the residence home's carpark. Brown and large, with fierce eyes and scraggly feathers, the bird could only belong to one person: his boss.
Harry had joined the Aurors shortly after his eighteenth birthday. He'd spent most of the summer after Voldemort's defeat in St. Mungo's; on the morning of his discharge, he'd been met in the hospital lobby by a representative of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It seemed experience in the field carried more weight than N.E.W.T. results, and the Aurors were very interested indeed in having Harry Potter embark on a crash training course. Since then, he'd learned that the job wasn't nearly as glamorous as he and Ron had once imagined. The hours were long and unpredictable; the paperwork staggering; and his immediate supervisor was an odd old man with a strange eye who stood for very few excuses.
Harry removed the message from the owl's leg, read it, checked his surroundings - good, no Muggles in sight - and set it on fire with his wand. He took out the handkerchief-sized square of cloth that was his Invisibility Cloak after a good shrinking charm. In a moment, he was ready to Apparate to the prescribed coordinates - in another moment, he arrived at the rear of a shop in Knockturn Alley. He knew that his partner, Dean Thomas, was watching the front of the same establishment, or would be very shortly.
A Saturday night behind the dustbins - and not his first, either. Nope, no glamour here.
When he'd signed his name in blood that warm summer morning, Harry had expected to spend a lot of time tracking down Death Eaters who had wiggled off the hook. Expected it, and looked forward to it. But while that was an important part of his job, much of Harry's work involved enterprising groups of wizards whose activities had little to do with pureblood supremacy or avenging Voldemort and everything to do with breaking the law. Harry wasn't certain which category tonight's assignment fell in, but from Moody's insistence that he and Dean were to observe only, not get involved an any way, he suspected that whatever was going on inside this shop was serious indeed.
He wished it weren't still raining.
Footsteps on cobblestones. Harry strained his eyes in the early evening gloom to see a figure in a head-to-toe cloak walking his way. At the shop's door, the person knocked in an offbeat rhythm. The door swung open, and Harry was left alone. He considered entering the building, but decided against it. He hadn't had time to check the building for warning spells - who knew what kind of magical alarms would go off if he made it inside? Instead, Harry cast amplifying and recording charms, strained his ears, and listened.
With the spell, the voices weren't hard to hear, but the words were indecipherable. That meant a distortion charm - standard practice for all conversations of a suspicious and secretive nature. Harry swore under his breath, positioning himself for a better view of the shop's door; the best he could hope for today was a glimpse of the visitor's face.
The door opened and the figure (it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman or even human under all that dark, heavy cloth) began walking away. Harry kept his eyes peeled. He needed to catch some idiosyncratic detail, something, anything that could lead to an identification.
No luck. He swore again, then went round to the front of the shop to collect Dean and Apparate back to headquarters.
*
The Ministry's artificially airy underground home was destroyed during the war. Stone and metal and spelled illusions all cracked and crumbled, leaving behind a hole in the earth filled with rubble and strange little pockets where the sun shone or thunderstorms raged. Now sections of the Ministry were scattered across wizarding London. Most were in old houses and shops, although the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had found for itself a large, solid stone building.
Harry and Dean climbed the stairs, their boots echoing on the flagstones. "I don't need to go in there, do I?" Dean asked. "I don't have anything to say. Everything was quiet on my end. You could tell him that as easily as I could."
"I suppose," Harry said. "But a right-thinking person would come anyway to show his solidarity."
"A right-thinking person would realise that West Ham is on the telly tonight, and cover for his partner."
Harry rolled his eyes, although he knew that if the sport in question were Quidditch, he would be much the same. "Go on, then." Dean grinned, turned, and took off down the stairs two at a time.
Moody's office door was open, and Harry entered to find the old Auror peering into one of the newest, strongest Foe Glasses on the market. Harry fidgeted politely in front of the desk until his boss looked up.
"Do you have one of these, sonny?" Moody asked, tapping the glass with a yellowed fingernail.
"No. No, I don't."
"You need two, at the very least. One for the wall beside your front door, and one beside your fireplace - ah, but you don't have a fireplace, do you? Smart lad, the less entrances to guard the better." He curled his lips into a crooked smile. "Put that second one over your bed then, so you can check it when you first wake up. Comes in handy when you're not so clear on what you brought home the night before, eh?"
Harry responded with a smile, although he wasn't certain Moody was entirely joking. "Ready for my report, sir?"
Moody nodded, hmmed, and made notes as Harry spoke and the recording played over and over. Finally, he asked, "Do you recognise the voice?"
Harry had been turning that over in his mind for an hour now. "It does seem a bit familiar. Like I've met him, heard him talk before." He shrugged. "But I can't put a name to it."
"Try." Moody waved a hand towards the door. "Go home, and try. Let me know something tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
*
The lights were on, there were plates on the table and books scattered across the couch, but the flat Harry came home to was empty. He shrugged off his cloak, wondering where Ron (and Hermione, he assumed by the books) had gone, and why they'd been in a hurry. En route to a cold drink, Harry found a clue, in the form of a note on the refrigerator door.
Don't worry, mate. We're taking care of it.
Oh, that was helpful.
Harry removed the magnet, hoping there was more written on the back, but the parchment didn't budge. Someone hadn't trusted the yellow smiley face to do its job, apparently, and had added a sticking charm for good measure.
Before too many curse words could be uttered, Harry spotted the blinking light on the answerphone. The message played twice, and then, with a pop, Harry was gone.
It was disorienting, Apparating so fast, and Harry rushed through the nursing home´s front door with his head spinning. Catching his breath, he walked over to the reception desk, where Hermione was speaking to a nurse.
"I'm sorry miss, we need a blood relative's permission to transport her to hospital."
"That may not be necessary," Harry said, stepping up beside Hermione. "Could I see her alone for a second, first? I'm her nephew."
The nurse frowned. "We really shouldn't waste any more time--"
"We won't," Harry promised, already walking away. This was one thing he was better qualified to handle than any Muggle doctor. They called it a seizure, and shook their heads because no medicine they knew worked quite as it should. He called it a side-effect of being too long under the Cruciatus Curse, and had been taught a charm that took care of things almost instantly.
Harry had become an expert in getting from Aunt Petunia's side to the corridor outside her room during the span of that 'almost´.
He returned to the lobby a few minutes later, leaving behind a pleased, if slightly confused nurse. Hermione was sitting alone on one of the couches; Ron was across the room, busily chatting up a girl about their age.
"Trust Ron to find the only female under fifty in this place," Harry said, joining Hermione on the sofa.
"I don't think he realizes how much trouble he's going to get into! How does he think he's going to pass for a Muggle?"
"That's the trouble," Harry nodded wisely, "the thinking part." He gave Hermione a sidelong glance. She didn't seem as amused as he was, and Harry wondered if she was truly worried about the implications for wizard-Muggle relations, or if there was something more to it altogether.
"Hmph. Hope you've been practicing your memory charms."
Harry couldn't help flinching.
"Sorry," Hermione said quickly, "sorry, I wasn't thinking--"
"It's okay," Harry said.
"Harry?" Hermione began hesitantly, "do you think. . .well, what happened today. . . ."
"I'm not putting her back in St. Mungo's," Harry interrupted. "What I mean is," he added, amending his tone, "she's happier here. She always cared so much about things being normal." He traced his fingers over a flower on the couch cushion. He didn't add that merely walking through the doors of any wizarding medical facility made him feel ill. The smell was something unique, something horrible, a mixture of antiseptic charms and cauldrons bubbling with medicinal potions that conjured up too many memories of time spent as patient, and even worse, as visitor.
Hermione placed her hand on Harry's, stilling his fingers. "You're right," she said quietly, "and we're always glad to help out, you know that."
Harry squeezed her hand, a quick, grateful gesture. "Think I should go check on Ron?"
"You'd better," Hermione said. "Tell him to get her phone number already."
He stood, smiling. "I might have to remind him what one is, first."
*
By the time they returned home, ate, and teased Ron appropriately, Harry was in no mood to do anything that resembled work. The next morning found him awake early, sitting at the table in the flat's little dining nook, coffee in one hand and wand in the other. Harry played the recording repeatedly, quietly, careful not to attract the attention of a still-sleeping Ron.
He was very still as he listened. Harry thought of every Death Eater and suspected Death Eater he possibly could - even people who were by all accounts dead. He tried to focus only on voices, to filter out words that had been said or atrocities that had been committed when he'd seen each person. Harry tried to organise little columns in his mind, like Hermione would, full of 'yes's and 'no's and 'maybe's. It would have worked, too, if the 'yes' one hadn't stubbornly remained empty.
Bang. Bangbangbang. Harry didn't pause to think, canceling the charm and pointing his wand toward the sound in a heartbeat. When he realised it was just an over-enthusiastic guest, he rose, checked the peephole, and let Dean in. "Couldn't wait to see me this morning?"
Dean brushed past him, heading straight for the table. "Got any more of that?" he asked, gesturing towards the abandoned coffee cup.
"In the pot," Harry said. He walked into the kitchen and fetched Dean a beaker. "Seamus make a cock-up of the shopping again?"
"Bastard," Dean said, trailing behind him. "How hard is it? I ask you, how hard is it? You go to the grocer's, you pick up a tin of coffee with caffeine. A child could do it. Ron could do it, for God's sake."
"He does, sometimes," Harry remarked. "And sometimes he goes to the grocer's and comes home with strange powdered things I wouldn't quite classify as food. He gets excited by all the insta-stuff in little packets."
Dean was too involved with his coffee to continue the conversation. Harry smiled, watching him. He was lucky to have a partner that he'd known for so long, that he felt at ease with. Not only that, but they complemented each other well, too. Dean had rivaled Ron for tallest Gryffindor in their year back at Hogwarts, and he'd grown, at nineteen, into someone imposing. His mere physical presence had been known to make suspects nervous, and the fact that his first instincts were often towards physical rather than magical methods of attack only added to the effect.
Harry didn't think of himself as scrawny anymore, although sometimes he felt that way beside Dean. He'd never exactly learned how to put on weight, but training in hand-to-hand combat had given him muscles he was rather proud of. But while Dean was about physical strength, Harry was about quick reflexes, quick thinking, and sheer magical power. All in all, they worked well together.
Dean finally lowered his mug. "How'd it go with the old man yesterday?"
"Well, I made a recording of the bloke's voice. I need to be able to identify him for Moody in precisely," he checked his watch, "forty-eight minutes."
"You don't have any idea?"
He shrugged. "Not really. The more I think about it, the more I get people's voices mixed up in my head."
"Go on," Dean said, "give us a listen."
Harry played the recording up to the moment he heard Ron begin thumping around in his room. "So what do you think?" he asked Dean quietly.
Dean shrugged. "I don't know. I do think that if it was someone important, we'd be able to recognise them, though."
Harry thought that Dean had a good point. But as he dropped his cup in the sink and buttoned up his cloak against the morning chill, he also thought that Moody would expect a more useful answer.
*
A/N: Many thanks to lightgetsin and hiddenhibiscus for beta.