There's a pattern to their meetings, secretive as they are. Harry monitored the political section of the newspaper, waiting for news of whatever the politicians of the Wizengamot have cooked up this time. It is a particular name he looked for, and when he found it, and would hum all day, trial to trial to trial, smiling softly.
His clients - Muggleborns disgruntled with the conditions offered by their still quite prejudiced society and Pureblood ladies with contracts with so many rules that it strangled them half-alive to breathe - would say nothing, quirking an eyebrow at the sight of their lawyer smiling before the case even starts. Although, usually, they take it as a good sign that Harry had everything ready to absolutely destroy the other party, which wasn't far from the truth.
Harry was a very good lawyer, after all, specializing in ending or loosening up marriage contracts who depended on magic to thrive and enforce its clauses. Not that he did it because he found it the most interesting subject in the world - dry, boring and tedious, only made slightly better because apparently all books on magically enforced contracts were found right at his home, in Grimmauld Place -, but because Harry had a vested interest in it.
The second part involved a letter. A pressed flower would come, and a quick burning spell would reveal the location of their meeting. Usually, the small flat Harry rented in Knockturn Alley, small, cramped, and with only the bare necessities, always dusty because of how rarely they could use it.
This letter was no different - the aster flower, pressed, purple petals going skywards. Harry didn't even need to burn it, absent-mindedly feeding the carrier owl some of the treats he kept for them. He guarded it on the secret compartment underneath his desk, opened only with his magical signature, and let the owl go back to the mail carrier it had come from. Watching the creature go wistfully, Harry couldn't help but smile - soon , he thought to himself.
Grabbing his cloak and suitcase, Harry left his office, signaling to his secretary that he'd be out for the day, and she nodded, grabbing the magazine she kept underneath the table and reading it, waiting for her shift to end - there were always stragglers, calling in even when Harry wasn't, and he had had enough headaches with people complaining to know that it was better to leave someone in the office when he wasn't during commercial hours.
Harry Apparated to the flat, disrupting the dust, and he set his suitcase down with a sigh, taking off his wand from his holster. A few quick cleaning spells set that straight, though, and Harry, content with the results, beamed at the place with little in terms of future, but full of memories.
The place cleaned, Harry took off his cloak, setting it on one of the two chairs available, and going to the small bedroom to grab another set of clothes, ones that weren't too flashy, perfect for wandering around the Alley. Dressing himself in it, Harry clasped the innocuous silver clasps, and Apparated near a shady potion shop there, entering the shop. The window panes were sticky and coated with dusk, offering no natural light, but that was better; it hid a person's apparencies. A silent spell to his throat changed his voice, a necessity in these parts.
Harry approached the counter, taping the little golden bell - also sticky, and Harry thanked himself for the gloves. The man behind the counter appeared from a half-open door, and the thick smell of brewing potions hit his face.
"The potion in name of one Thomas Riddle." Harry smiled, voice soft and impossible to recognize. He still surprised himself with the results; even if it had been five years since this particular arrangement had started.
The man grunted and nodded, going to the back once more, and Harry absently tapped his fingers on the counter, waiting. As usual, it had been prepaid. She was so very used to this, prepared from the get-go. Harry assumed that the project that had been approved yesterday had been in talks for much, much longer.
The clink of glass against wood woke up Harry from his thoughts, and he looked up, the man already going back to the back. The potion shone a deep red, and Harry pocketed it, before Apparating back to the flat.
Step four was arriving while she was already there. Daphne sat on the chair were his cloak was, using it to cover herself, hands fisting the fabric and bringing it close to her nose, inhaling the smell that was Harry. Harry performed part five, which was to take a moment to breathe her in, burning in his brain the image of her tightly wound deep red braid, the high-collared robe she wore in white, the dark blue corset and the closed eyes which he knew were black in color.
And then, to break the illusion.
"Welcome home, Daphne." He called, and she stopped, frozen still, looking at him with big eyes, a deer in headlights. Then, a smile, and Harry set the potion on the table as he sat down, opposite to her. "Here you go."
"Thank you, but let us talk. It's been a while, hasn't it?" Her smile, shining in the dark flat illuminated it, and Harry smiled back, the two of them chatting idly.
They were in this secret affair for a while, now. It had started when she had come, veiled and cloaked, to his office, all but begging - her pride wouldn't allow her to beg - for him to find a loophole to end her marriage to Theodore Nott, magically enforced by contract, risking her losing her magic if she divorced him, and if he divorced her as well, then she also would lose her magic, for failure of complying with her wifely duties. It was a lose-lose situation, and Harry - at that point, fresh out of law school, more interested in defending the poor and defenseless than rich Pureblood ladies wanting to get out of their marriages - accepted it because he had been struck clear in the heart by her beauty.
It was a stupid, idiotic motive, but Harry was nothing but stupid and idiotic at the end of the day. He accepted her case, and read her contract carefully.
After that, his research and subsequent fame as a prolific divorce lawyer started, witches flocking from everywhere he could name and not name to him so that they could get away from husbands that, quite frankly, did not deserve them - but that was the society they lived in. Maybe in a distant future, away, it would be different, but in the 19th century it was like such.
"Well, my husband shall come back soon, and he'll wonder where I've been." Daphne smiled, rolling her eyes, looking at the clock, setting her wand on the table and reaching for the potion. She cracked the seal and inhaled the scent, smiling to herself like she was the only person in the world.
Harry watched and drank her.
There had been a loophole on her contract, which allowed this affair to happen: she could be in love with anyone else other than her husband, but having sex was off limits, as long as she was clear-headed. Therefore, false love, conceived out of potions, wasn't something that would make her a Squib, since she wasn't up to par in her mental qualities, clouded by someone's scheme as she was. That was their only respite, and Harry longed for the day that he would have Daphne as Daphne , not the lovesick creature the potion created.
At first, he had resisted the idea, but Daphne - who longed to have anything to spite her husband, to be herself again and not the thing her husband had molded her into - insisted, and Harry relented. He hadn't liked it, those first few times, but if it was the only way to have her, then...
She looked at him through her lashes and gulped down the entire vial in one go, and when she set it back on the table, her eyes shone in the deep red of the potion, a lazy smile taking her face.
"Dear." She called, smiling like she loved him. Harry offered her a constrained smile.
"My love." He replied. This would have to do for now.
The sixth part was, after she had gone, clean and bathed and sober, only the vial on the table a remnant of the night, was longing for the next meeting, Harry staring at the ceiling while fighting the urge to stay awake. He knew sleep would lie to him and tell him that the effects of Amortentia were real, that it wasn't an act of potion, but the guilty part of his brain, the one that told him to research and find a way to make hers his - if she would like, of course - was stronger.
Sighing, Harry rose up from his spot on the bed, dressed himself, and decided that maybe he should check once more the 15th century section on Grimmauld Place. Perhaps there would be something useful there this time.
