𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 2

1.

It’s not the Leaky Cauldron, but the pub Harry has crawled into this evening is just as warm, if a bit sketchier. It’s further down Diagon Alley. He’s been noticed a few too many times this week for comfort, so Ron suggested the Bat’s Beak instead.

He eats his chips and curry and watches patrons wander in and out. The pub seems to do a brisk business, perhaps even more so because of the frost outside. When the door swings open, Harry catches the draft. His curry has solidified and his chips have gone stiff, but the butterbeer still tastes all right.

He drinks it down and nods for another drink. He picks up a chip and swirls it in the curry, breaking it up to better coat the chip. He chews and chews and is glad to be able to sit in peace.

If only for a moment, it seems.

Someone sidles up next to him, in the booth he sits in by himself. The bartender sets two glasses of butterbeer down. The other person takes the one and pushes the second to Harry.

“Harry Potter?” a low voice asks.

Harry closes his eyes and sighs. “What do you think?”

There is a small plinking noise. The other person chuckles. “I thought so…”.

2.

Being an Auror means, amongst other things, constant vigilance, at all times and in all places. Being an Auror requires the mind to push itself, always.

There is one thing that nags Harry as he sits in his tiny cubicle, filing cases. It’s there, in the back of his mind. It’s been there for months. He walks home, with his hands in his cloak pockets, scuffing the autumn leaves in the gutters of London, and it never really leaves his mind.

He thinks of it when he passes the Bat’s Beak. He thinks of it when he passes out the doors of the Leaky Cauldron into Muggle London. He even thinks about it sometimes on the Underground.

That night- he has no memory of it.

He also has no memory of his defeating Voldemort, destroying the last horcrux, in the battle where Neville killed Bellatrix Black, where Hermione and Ron chased Peter Pettigrew to the Malfoy mansion and cornered him for Harry. He doesn’t remember this, but he has his friends to tell him what happened, he has seen their Pensieve memories, as awful as they are. He doesn’t need more.

But that night, that one night he visited the Bat’s Beak- he has no memory of it.

He shrugs it off, because he reckons it’s nothing. He’s had a few nights of a few too many drinks. He’s old enough to regret it, but not old enough to stop. Twenty and he’s in the prime of his life. Good job- better career prospects. A decent flat in a suburb of the city that’s not too dingy, but not completely full of mums and buggies, either.

He has take-away Mexican for dinner in his flat and has heartburn by bedtime, a midnight crawl between cold, rumpled sheets.

3.

When Harry dreams, he dreams of making love to a woman. She is blurred, his glasses have fallen off and her skin is like a Monet painting- blotches of pink on her cheeks, expanses of thick paint, pale and uneven, rising here, dipping there, the oils still pliable under his hands. Her nipples are the finest points from a camelhair brush, small and tan.

She rides him, bouncing and swiveling her hips. His cock throbs within her. He moves his hands down to her folds, intent on pleasuring her, too, but she pushes them away, so they remain on her hips, kneading the thin skin over her bones. She’s thin, but she weighs a decent stone or two.

“Do you like this?” she whispers. “Do you like being inside me?”

He never answers, never. He wants to, but his words are slurred moans when she rocks her hips, squeezes her thighs, tightens her vagina around him. His shirt is opened, sprawled across his chest as her hands explore. She presses her palms into his breastbone, her breath hot on his neck.

She never kisses him. He can’t kiss back. He reaches for her, but she laughs at him, something low and mocking, sometimes something more rich and slower.

The only words he ever says are “Why me? Why me?” He wakes with a stiffie and the unmistakable scent of tuberoses and cologne linger in his mind. His throat burns from the burritos and his mouth tastes of refried beans and cheap lager he keeps in his fridge.

He crawls to the loo and hangs his head in the toilet before he drags himself in for work.

4.

It is in early December, and Harry is walking home, the usual way. He doesn’t like to Apparate directly from the Ministry home. He prefers, on the first Monday of each month, to instead Apparate to Diagon Alley, pick up his pay from Gringott’s and purchase the newest copy of Quidditch Illustrated from the shop in Diagon Alley. He spends a lazy stroll wandering the winding road, his collar upturned and his hood down over his eyes, just enjoying himself.

After all, he lives alone. His nights are spent watching a footie match on the telly, or maybe going over to Ron and Hermione’s semi-detached in Devon for dinner, but on the whole, he’s rather bored. He has all the time in the world, now that no Dark Lord is after his blood.

A shadow passes by. Harry blinks and glances up from his magazine. He sighs and thinks, Not another photographer.

But it isn’t.

Shadows don’t lumber slowly like that. Shadows don’t dart behind a rubbish bin like that. Shadows don’t have thick robes that swirl and whip around ankles, quite like that.

Harry shoves his magazine into his pocket and follows. It’s not hard to catch up with something moving that slow, even if it does try to dart across alleyways behind shops. There are puddles in depressions of the cobblestones and the footprints tracking out from them tell Harry more than enough. Heavyset, average sized feet. The strides make him think the person is male, yet they have a strangely uneven gate, as though…the man totters somehow.

He wonders if Crabbe or Goyle are still alive. He never bothered to think about them, even during the war, but this is the sort of thing they might do.

The puddle splash underneath his trainers as he moves, tracking a suspect as though he would in the field. He grins, the rush making his chest pound and his blood race. It’s exhilarating, with the crisp, cool air on his face. He’s close now, close enough to grab a hold of the suspect; Harry spins them around, but they weigh more than he thought.

He freezes for the briefest of moments when he catches sight of straggly, limp blond hair and wide, grey eyes.

“Toxicodendrus!”

Harry shrieks as his body is enveloped in a burning, itching rash. His face blisters as he tries to claw at the skin, furiously itching himself. He drops to the ground, moaning and writhing, trying to peel off his clothes and scrape his body on the rough stones. Everything, everything burns, like a thousand ants, biting him everywhere at once.

He doesn’t have time to regret losing sight of Malfoy until he’s lying in St. Mungo’s, covered in poultices from head-to-toe.