Snarry One Shots

A Lesser of Evils

Summary: Harry received the letter at half two. Nothing good would come from ignoring it. Nothing good would come from opening it either, but in this case, it was the lesser of two evils.

Ships: SeverusSnapexHarryPotter

All credit goes to Anonymous

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Harry received the letter at half two. It sat on the kitchen table until that evening when he ate his dinner.

He didn't want to open the letter. He wanted to toss it into the fire and never spare it another moment of thought, but he knew better. Nothing good would come from ignoring it. Nothing good would come from opening it either, but in this case, it was the lesser of two evils.

Harry was tempted to put it off until breakfast, but if he did that, he'd be tempted to put it off until lunch, and then perhaps dinner.

Silas Runcorn, the recently-elected Minister of Magic, did not take well to being ignored, something Harry had been forced to accept, along with all the other things he had been forced to accept upon Kingsley's death.

No, putting it off wouldn't do, so Harry finished his dinner, washed his plate, and took the letter into the front room, where he sat on the overstuffed couch, tucked in the corner by the huge windows overlooking the front garden.

The letter was less of a request and more of a summons. Even if it was worded politely, it was not an invitation that Harry could decline. He would be expected to arrive at the Ministry at the appointed time to answer the Minister's questions, and if he did exactly as instructed, it might be the last such summons he received.

However, that didn't seem likely considering how the last year had gone. Kingsley's death had been a shock – it wasn't often that gun violence took so many lives in the UK, let alone the life of a wizard. With the news of his death, a host of nasty sentiments bubbled up within the Wizarding world, sentiments that Harry had hoped had been buried for good when the war had ended nearly four years ago.

It hadn't mattered that Kingsley wasn't the target of the attack – the Muggles were still to blame. Although according to Muggle papers there hadn't been a target per say. Rather, the timid-looking young man had simply wanted to cause as much harm as possible, before turning his gun on himself.

The reports said he'd had his reasons, but those weren't based in reality; Harry had looked into them, they were a tangle of muddled beliefs that hinged on the notion that the government wanted nothing more than to cause harm to its people. The shooter had been a warning; he had wanted to wake the masses, to protect them from the shadowy tendrils of a corrupt government that had been left unchecked.

All of it made Harry sick. It wasn't long after the attack that he left London for what he'd thought would be the last time.

But with the way that politics worked, an ardent supporter of those same nasty sentiments now ran the Ministry, and with him came a host of other outdated ideals. Ideals that Harry hadn't spared much thought, until they landed on his doorstep along with a letter.

He'd thrown that one in the fire. By then, he'd already had it with Runcorn's government, and they had only just taken office. Besides, it had been an invitation, and there was no reason that he was required to respond.

That had been a mistake. One that resulted in a deluge of never ending letters that poured out of his fireplace, filling his cottage in towering piles, until finally Harry relented and opened one.

The Minister saw Harry as a problem, and if Harry planned to stay in England, which he did, then he had to play along. If he didn't, the Minister might cause problems for the people he cared about, and that wasn't a risk Harry was willing to take.