Stuck With You / drarry

Harry Potter

Harry stood in front of a full-body mirror in his house, straightening his work robes. They still felt too tight every time he wore them, too fancy. His wardrobe had always been on the modest side, first using Dudley's old rags, and even after that he rarely went shopping for clothes, except for the two times Hermione had dragged him out of the house to freshen up his closet. The only nice clothes he had were work robes, and he didn't choose those himself. Harry was glad that wizard fashion was just differently cut darkly coloured capes, basically.

Normally, he would show up to work in smart, simple robes, because his usual workday consisted of meetings and tall piles of paperwork. Sometimes, however, when he wanted to seem more authoritative than he was, when he left the Ministry on official business, or when, like today, he was personally interviewing witnesses, he opted for the official Head Auror robes.

Harry straightened the flowerpot sitting on a side table next to the mirror. The kitchen and the living room of his house were painted golden by the morning sunrays. After the trials Harry didn't want to burden the Weasleys by staying with them indefinitely, so he made the difficult decision to sell 12 Grimmauld Place. It had too many memories attached to it for Harry to ever be happy living there. With the money he purchased his current home, on the other side of London, in a peaceful neighbourhood. It was a two-storied terrace house with neighbours on both sides, but he had a back garden where Neville had helped him plant some low maintenance greens. The entrance hall was narrow, but Harry had managed to fit a closet and a neat little chair left of the door against the stairs. Charlie Weasley had sent him an exotic looking rug from Romania, which was now decorating the hardwood floor of the hallway. On the other side of the house were the living room and the kitchen with its little dining area with huge windows facing the garden, upstairs were Harry's bedroom and a large bathroom.

Now Harry tried to loosen the tight collar of the robe with his finger, peering into the mirror, and just opted to open the uppermost button in order to breathe. The silver embroidery of the jacket was scratchy against his neck, and he thought that the decorated buttons were too much, but the black robes also made him look official and esteemed. He picked a hair out of the outer robe and strode over to the fireplace in his living room. Harry grabbed some Floo-powder from a decorative pot on top of the sill, and was quickly off in a flash of green fire.

Harry was in the habit of taking the Floo Network to the Atrium of the Ministry instead of his private fireplace, because he didn't want to seem too distant, and frankly favoured the muggle way of mingling and saying good mornings to one's co-workers, instead of just going straight to sulking in his office. Now he was walking across the space doing just that, asking people how they were and making his way into level two of the Ministry, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Ever since in Hogwarts, Harry had wanted to be an Auror. In his seventh year, when they were hunting Horcruxes, and he couldn't take his N.E.W.T.s, he had pretty much given up on that dream. To be fair, at that time Harry was barely thinking about surviving another day, or seeing his eighteenth birthday, let alone juggling career choices. It was all about defeating Voldemort, the rest would come second. And then, after the Battle of Hogwarts, when Kingsley Shacklebolt as the new Minister for Magic relaxed the entry requirements to allow anyone who had participated in the Battle without changing sides to make up for the lost Aurors, Harry was the first to apply to the three-year training right along Ron and Neville. However, a few years ago Neville was poached from the Aurors by McGonagall to start teaching herbology at Hogwarts. Harry couldn't blame anyone who had had enough of fighting for one lifetime.

In the training, as difficult and strenuous as it had been, for the first time ever Harry had felt like he was actually good at something. He wasn't just being lucky or surviving by the grace of friends more intelligent than him, but he was actually good. He felt like he was back in Dumbledore's Army, but now there was someone teaching him new useful spells, how to be faster, stronger, more cunning, how to duel and how to use magic as an extension of oneself. Harry had always been kind of lanky, but the training had made him want to get stronger, to be stronger in battle. This had prompted him to join an honest-to-Merlin muggle gym, and after eight years, he wasn't lanky anymore. Not only was he stronger and felt better, but he had gained a regular person hobby that he desperately yearned for after not having the opportunity to fly anymore.