Chapter Text
Harry Potter was a reasonable bloke, he thought. He never said that to Ron, because obviously, that’s not a thing you say to your mates. Blokes, especially war veterans who’ve done serious things involving going Horcrux hunting don’t say ‘I’m a reasonable bloke.’ That’s the sort of thing you say just before you suggest something really unreasonable, because you’ve gone mad. And Harry Potter was quite fine, he was just cross with certain people and some organizations. Well, and the people that sent him scam letters.
Harry and Ron also, for reasons that might be completely related to Horcrux hunting, also no longer went anywhere without pouches with undetectable expansion charms on them.
Harry had given his old Mokeskin pouch to Hermione to make his out of, and when he got it back, he had an undetectable, space expanded pouch you could fit a couple of cubic yards into.
Harry packed it with a chest of potions, a bag of galleons, a wallet stuffed with twenties, and enough pot noodles to re-float a decent sized row-boat. Oh, and because Harry was ‘cautious’ now, a jumbo first-aid kit, and a dozen plastic barrels of clean water. And a bottle of firewhiskey, because you never knew.
There had been ‘problems’ with Gringotts bank that led to Harry only having what money he walked around with, but Ron had made some very pointed comments to Kingsley about Harry’s sacrifices for the war effort, and the Ministry had given them all a thousand galleons. Each. Ron had looked a bit shocked for a day, but, as Harry thought, at least it wasn’t Acromantulas.
Harry lived, as you did when your bank sent you letters demanding that you present yourself to the bank – so they could execute you, in the house he had inherited from his godfather, Sirius Black.
(Gringotts bank was one of the organizations Harry now had the pip with.)
As the Death Eaters had raided Grimmauld place after the trio had escaped, it was substantially more messed up than when Ron’s mum had been keeping house there. (You could say the Death Eaters were another organization that Harry had a grudge with, but they were either in Azkaban, or the mass grave at Hogwarts, with a few obvious, craven exceptions.)
And that was the key reason for living in a five-story high derelict building. Ron’s mum was, well she had killed Bellatrix LeStrange, and that made you think a bit when finessing your hands up under Ginny’s shirt. Namely, Harry felt that he’d be doing that at HIS house, where Mrs Weasley wasn’t. And Hermione and Ron were getting up to unspeakable things that involved a lot more than snogging, and Harry was not lying in the next bed over of Ron’s room at the Burrow when that happened. Nor, it turned out was Ginny that keen on being Hermione’s alibi at the Burrow.
But at Harry’s house, well, number twelve Grimmauld place, there were multiple floors. Harry and Ginny stuck to the fourth floor, having cleaned out Sirius’s old things, and Ron and Hermione stuck to the second floor. That meant there was enough space between rooms not to hear anything.
And judging by the detritus Sirius left in his bedside drawers, Harry was fairly sure that was what Sirius would have wanted him to do. (Harry disposed of all that stuff in a fire, for hygiene reasons. Without letting Ginny or Hermione know, out of a desire to save them from… stuff you didn’t show girls.)
Grimmauld place wasn’t simply a place to sneak off to snog, (and stuff.) The old Black family house-elf, Kreacher had taken it on himself to act as Harry’s valet. That led to a lot of Harry’s older clothes being destroyed by Kreacher, but Ginny saw no problem with Harry having new trainers, a jacket ‘That didn’t stink of fire and blood’ as Ginny said, and new jeans.
Kreacher didn’t cook. That seemed outside his limited abilities now, and he was, as far as Harry could tell by reading the plaques on the house-elf heads, actually quite old. Over a hundred. It was okay, because Hermione had worked out a scheme, by spending an entire week in the library, and coming out calling herself ‘a stupid stupid idiot’ where they duplicated frozen pizza and other foodstuffs, and kept it in the ‘cold room’ in the basement. The duplicated food tasted okay, and cost basically nothing, so that worked out pretty good.
“I mean it’s not that different to how mum cooks anyway,” said Ron casually, and after that, Harry had been forced to learn the spells, as Hermione had gone off to drink cheap spirits and pass out.
Harry understood – everyone had the odd bad day when drinking seemed better than nightmares, and that included Ginny. If she didn’t go home at night, to the Burrow, her mum or worse, and more embarrassingly, her father would come looking for her. On occasion, Ginny would go with the boys to the cash and carry, and come out with a bottle of Creme de Cacao, or Irish cream, and take it home to ‘have a bit of a sulk.’
Ron even arrived in the upstairs parlour sometimes, with the only explanation “Hermione’s on a bit of a thing.” Which Harry would immediately decide not to think about.
Ron would sit and read the day-old Daily Prophet’s, and pretended to be anything but frustrated, and finally drink firewhiskey and pass out in his favourite chair. And then snore.
Harry had an exciting variety of nightmares, so the bit where Ginny couldn’t really sleep over wasn’t as bad as all that. Harry didn’t want to spend all night waking from nightmares covered in cold sweat either, and felt that Ginny might not like it if he was doing that in bed with her. Call it intuition, if you will.
One morning, at the late hour of eight in the morning, Harry was making tea in the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, every day and by the time everyone was awake, it would be all gone. Tea, as Ron said, fixed everything.
A Daily Prophet owl dropped off a newspaper and flew off, out the open fanlight the looked out into the front steps; the ones that led down the side of the house to the servants entrance. Hermione had cracked the curses on them with help from Bill a few weeks back, and it made getting in and out into muggle London easier, specially when you had big bags of frozen goods. And that happened a bit, as you’d expect. For variety, if no other reason.
Harry idly checked the Daily Prophet’s front page. The headline was, as usual, complaining about Kingsley, and reforms. Harry ignored that, and looked below the fold.
‘Scandal as Potter’s love child found!’
Harry sighed. That would be the fourth this month. He eyed the photo; a black hared baby with, implausibly enough, wire-rimmed glasses, a scar shaped vaguely like his, and a tiny black corduroy coat. That was, even by the gutter standards of the Daily Prophet, a new low. Harry snorted. He scar was, he was quite sure, not genetic. It was possible he might one day have a child or children, and they might, like him, inherit his father’s rotten eyesight. And possibly cursed Potter hair, as that seemed to be a thing; he’d found a photo of his great-uncle Charlus, and he’d had the same messy hair as dad, and he supposed grandad, though the only time he’d ever see his grandad had been in the Mirror of Erised, so he took that one with a grain of cursed-object-induced-vision flavoured salt. Of course, the photo of great-uncle Charlus had been a wedding photo with his Great-aunt Dorea, because she’d been a Black, and he’d found that photo stuck between the pages of a book in the library. Great Aunt Dorea’s picture had reminded him of almost every other Black he’d ever seen – tall and thin with black, wavy hair, and silvery-grey eyes. If anything, she looked a bit like Andromeda Tonks, but there was some variation in the Black family, so not exactly. His great aunt and great uncle both died in the massive Dragonpox epidemic that had also killed his grandfather and grandmother a year before he was born. And a lot of the older Blacks, who otherwise would have been cluttering up the place. (And, as Harry had thought bitterly to himself, he could have been brought up by his grandparents, or even great-uncle. But no, all dead. Bloody typical, really.)
The Black family lawyers (Snatchitt, Grabbit and Runne) had finally got Harry in a room and executed Sirius’s will; they’d gleefully told him that very little of the family wealth went to him, because he was a half-blood, and therefore ineligible to inherit it. Harry had been slightly rude, and they’d told him he could come back in the unlikely event he married a pureblood witch ( Harry had kept in a slight grin at that) and had pure-blood children; they could inherit the other houses.
(The Black family lawyers were on Harry’s mental list too.)
Harry also got a lot of letters from people claiming he was the parent of their love-child; which were clearly scams, that the Potters owed them money; which were, not so obviously scams, but he got Arthur Weasley to check, discreetly who they were, and in every case, they were scam letters.
The only letters that weren’t scams that Harry got, were the ones addressed to ‘The Householder’, well, okay, some of them were scams too, but a small percentage were just the Ministry sending whoever was at that address a message. Nothing, Arthur Weasley assured him, that needed him to pay anything; if he got a bill from the Ministry, it would have his name on it. And Arthur had smiled apologetically “And the Ministry would never dare bill you for anything,” he’d added. Harry still paid his Floo Network bill, both galleons, per year. That, he felt, was the principle of the thing.
Harry read through the rest of the paper, well, skimmed everything anyway. The usual rubbish about war settlements being too expensive, speculation about his apparently numerous relationships, and the scandalous state of older families which were the blameless victims in the post-war dust settling – Harry ignored that, as the Death Eaters had recruited from those very families; the purebloods were where the support lay for blood bigotry.
All in all, apart from a promising looking Quidditch match with Tutshill tomorrow, nothing much.
He was quite sure that he could please one witch (their initials were G.W.) but he found the ridiculous idea that he’d somehow be able to keep a harem onside ridiculous. He didn’t even manage to keep Ginny happy with him, not exactly one hundred percent of the time. Ron did point out, once in a while, when Ginny stormed off home, that his sister wasn’t the most even-tempered witch alive.
Harry mentally added ‘but is the best one.’ in his head, as he was quite sure Ginny was the most brilliant, fiery, awesome, quidditch-playing girlfriend. And even bloody Blaise Zabini had stared at Ginny’s arse. Which was, Harry smiled smugly, very excellent indeed.
Harry drank tea, and contemplated the sorcererous majesty that was duplicating frozen toast. He didn’t feel quite up to it yet. Time, and tea had yet to do their magic on him.
The day proceeded, with toast eventually.
The summer passed in relative comfort with occasional snogging ‘and stuff.’ (Carefully managed to avoid pregnancy, because he felt Molly Weasley might get upset, and Ginny just wanted to play professional-grade quidditch right now, not have a kid.)
Hermione was studying for a Ministry entrance exam, Ron was trying to distract her, and avoiding doing anything even vaguely related to studying. Till Hermione mentioned, not casually at all, that Ron should be an Auror, as the Ministry were very short of reliable wands.
“Well, I have got a quite reliable wand,” said Ron, and Hermione went red in the face.
“Kingsley would probably be quite pleased to have both of you,” she added.
“Well yeah, but I think he’s seeing that bloke from International Magical Cooperation,” said Ron blandly.
Harry held in a snort, and Hermione went still redder.
“Ronald Weasley you are a very naughty man!” said Hermione, but she didn’t sound like she was complaining, not exactly. Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to see what happened next, so he casually got a hooded cloak and went off to see the Ministry.
To say that they were pleased to see him at the DMLE was an understatement. He had an Aurors badge and cloak on before he really knew what was happening, and was providing ‘Security’ for Wizengamot hearings after a half-hour short course that could be summarised as ‘the badge is a communicator, don’t abuse being able to apparate in the Ministry, and act like a responsible Auror.’
It was a good kind of boring really, and the Wizengamot Warlocks stumbled when they saw him standing in a mimicry of his senior Auror – Gibbons. Auror Gibbons only had one arm, so Harry felt he, personally, was going to be all right as long as he stood up straight.
Ron joined the next day, and got Azkaban prisoner escort, which was, as Ron said ‘Crap but at least you got to show off a Patronus.’
Within the week, the Prophet had run a front-page ‘Man who Won now Auror!’
With an editorial titled ‘Why I’ll sleep well tonight.’
Ginny read it aloud, with much giggling. Ron was even mentioned, which Ginny found funny enough to re-read it.
“See Ron, you’re not just the side-kick,” said Ginny.
“Yeah,” said Ron, casually stretching out in his favourite chair. “Auror, Order of Merlin, first class. Nothing much.”
“He’s taller than Harry too,” added Hermione unhelpfully. “Personally I’m very proud of you both. Even if you skipped the normal training course.”
“Oh come off it,” said Ron “Some of the Aurors can’t cast a patronus, and none of them have ever killed a Horcrux.”
“So arrogant,” said Ginny mildly.
“Eh. You’re just jelly. Mum would never let you join,” said Ron.
“It might have skipped your mind,” said Ginny. “But I’m over seventeen. Old enough to join of that’s what I wanted. Actually, would it help if a whole load of the DA joined?” she added.
“Probably,” said Harry. “Before the war there weren’t enough Aurors, that was when they had nearly thirty.”
“Just the good fighters from the DA,” said Hermione.
“Well, the ones still alive,” said Ginny.
The room fell silent, because there were fifty-five people on their side dead after the Battle of Hogwarts, and the world sort-of reminded you of them sometimes. Not, thankfully, by haunting.
“We need to make sure Hogwarts has a decent Defence Teacher,” said Ron. “That’s half the ruddy problem.”