Albus (A Next Generation Harry Potter Fanfiction)

Talk

"I know when you're lying, Harry," she threatened.

Harry tiredly dragged his eyes from the newspaper to look at his wife. She was tired, too. When James and Al first came home it was always chaos for a couple of days. Ginny slammed the mug full of pumpkin juice back down onto the table she'd just picked it up from, making Harry jump and his glasses fall almost off his face. "What?" He asked, but upon noticing her cross glare, he realised he probably should tell her.

"Fine," he said irritably, putting the newspaper back down and calmly laying his hands on top of it. "You know, my job isn't entirely your business," he said, under his breath because he knew she wouldn't like that.

She didn't. Wiping down her dirty hands on the ripped, old jeans she was wearing, her expression annoyed and exhausted, Harry couldn't help thinking how beautiful she was. Even like this, with unbrushed flyaway hair and old clothes, she still had those piercing eyes and a long, slender figure that was accentuated by the yellow lamplight in their small, wooden kitchen. His heart beat out of his chest everytime he saw her, the hours in his day were counted down in his mind until he could come home.

"Harry!" She snapped. "It is my business when you're talking about it endangering the kids!"

Breathing in and out slowly, Harry ran a hand through his tangled hair, getting stuck halfway through it. "You weren't supposed to hear that," he sighed. He'd been talking to Ron about the whole thing earlier, when he and Hermione had come round to see them, like they often did. Ginny and Hermione had both been 'accidentally' listening in, and now Ron was probably also being questioned back at his own house. Some crickets chirped outside in the darkness, as Harry gazed out the into the dark window so he wouldn't have to look his angry wife in the eye.

Their house was small, largely wooden, but homely. It reminded Harry somewhat of the Burrow that the Weasleys used to live in when they were kids, and he suspected that was part of the reason Ginny had liked it so much when they first decided to buy it. The previous tidiness and organisation had been utterly trashed after having three fairly young kids, who'd each made their share of mess and mayhem. Now they had come back for a few weeks, and trunks and uniform, red and green alike, were strewn over Harry and Ginny's colour coordinated sofas which were supposed to look good in their house but in the end made it look a little cluttered. Their kitchen was warm and messy, pans piling up in the sink waiting for Ginny to start the spell, which she wouldn't do until the end of the day, leaving all the mess there for the whole evening. Their ceiling was low and their chairs covered in patchwork cushions. They could hear Al, James and Lily chatting and laughing upstairs through the thin floorboards, and as glad as Harry was that they all (kind of) got along, it was frustrating when they were trying to have a serious conversation.

Ginny flopped down on one of their dark wood chairs, and it screeched across the floor. "Come on, Harry. You know I won't tell anyone, and I want to know if you and Malfoy are going to have to storm Hogwarts in secret while they're there."

Harry kept forgetting Malfoy was still included. After finding out his only son could be in danger, he'd insisted, turning up at Harry's office every couple of days for an update, and he was so insufferable to be around that Harry just gave it to him so he would go away. "Hogwarts is a last resort. We don't know yet if it is in there, but I swear I will not harm a hair on any of those kid's heads if we have to go in. I'll alert McGonagall about it first, and maybe she'll put them all in the Great Hall or something. Then we'd dispose of it and hopefully there wouldn't be a big battle," he explained. There. Now she knew pretty much everything.

"Dispose of what, Harry? What are you looking for?"

Harry sighed. Well, if Malfoy knew, his wife might as well know too. "It's a book. Called Liber Periculo. We all believed it was fake until signs started showing otherwise, and now we believe somebody else is looking for it, somebody who could go the same direction as people like Voldemort," he said. Ginny slowly sat down, listening intently, so Harry continued.

"They say Voldemort put all his knowledge into it, when he was quite young, probably before I came along. It has everything he knew in it, the exact way to make a Horcrux, more curses he used for torture, other methods of cheating death that he used, and we don't know the exact stuff, but it's stuff like that. Dangerous stuff, and if it gets into the wrong hands..." He trailed off. Ginny had got the point. "Voldemort intended for it to be something for other people to use, to pick up where he left off if he ever died. A legacy. He hid it carefully, probably so carefully that it doesn't look like a book anymore, but he couldn't hide its intense power so wherever it is it can still be detected, I think, now, we've homed in on it some more," he finished.

Ginny frowned, nodding along with his story. "You think it's in Hogwarts?"

"Seems fitting. Nobody would think to look for it there, a kid could stumble upon it and have no clue what it is and start to use it, perhaps. Or it would just stay safe and hidden for a very long time, considering how enclosed Hogwarts is," Harry told her. There, that was everything, he thought, but she still had questions.

"I don't understand-" she started. Harry sighed. "Why was Malfoy included in this before I was?"

Harry shrugged. Malfoy had come to him first, or he never would have even said a word to him, let alone told him about top secret Ministry business. "Malfoy's Dark Mark started bothering him, so naturally, he thought Voldemort was coming back. He came to me, and wouldn't leave until I told him what it was, this book. Somebody has been trying to recruit the old Death Eaters, hoping they will want to continue Voldemort's work, but it hasn't been working out for them. Most of the Death Eaters are either dead or in Azkaban."

"Except Malfoy," Ginny realised.

Harry agreed. Malfoy probably should be in Azkaban, but without his Dark Mark Harry would be struggling a lot more. "You remember the second-hand bookshop raid?" He asked Ginny, and she nodded. "Somebody looking for it. If you ask me, this guy's pretty stupid for not realising the Death Eaters weren't going to join in and looking for something that won't look like a book in a bookshop. He just made it obvious to us what he was doing," Harry chuckled. "But we still need to beat him to it. He's getting close, I can tell, and this book in his hands could make him a whole lot smarter."

Ginny smiled, nodding. "Okay. So now you've told me," she said, satisfied, standing up and collecting the empty cups on the table. "Thank you."

A/N: bit of a short chapter, but now you know!! 😱 Everyone's thoughts, critiques and comments will always be received with much love, and I hope if you've got this far you're enjoying this book as much as I enjoy writing it!! Love you all loads as always.

Also, I've just published the start of an original short story called detention, any feedback etc would really be appreciated!! Thanks guys <3

Lots of love, clatoforeverx ❤️