Found Me Yet?
"Potter." Harry's eyes were still closed, and a shiver ran down his spine and raised the hairs on his arms at the sound of Malfoy's sweet, soft whisper right next to Harry's ear. "My gorgeous idiot, wake up."
Harry's lips stretched into a grin. "Oh, yes, I love it when you talk dirty to me," he joked and rolled to his back, opening his eyes and looking up at his beautiful husband.
Draco rolled his eyes, but he was smiling, too. "Don't get cheeky with me," he replied. "I woke you up twice already. If you're late, then that's not my problem anymore."
Malfoy was definitely the best alarm Harry could wish for in the morning. He never failed to get him to wake up; whether it was by force or with love. He was already dressed today, but Harry knew exactly that he could undo that in a heartbeat. He wasn't, however, going to do that today, because he could feel that Malfoy was already tense about Harry being late to work, so he didn't want to risk Draco being late, too.
"Fine," Harry groaned, "but just because I love you so much."
He lifted his upper body off the mattress just so he could reach Draco and kiss him. The blonde grinned against Harry's lips and grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt, making Harry's heart flutter. That definitely woke him up. Harry jumped into the shower to get rid of the last seeds of sleepiness with ice-cold water, wishing his husband were in there with him.
When he got out of the shower and looked into the mirror, Harry realised that he desperately needed to shave. His beard had reached a length that was no longer flattering. Malfoy had said that he liked Harry with a slight stubble, but this was already more than just a stubble, so Harry opened the drawer and pulled out the razor.
In the living room, Malfoy looked up from his Daily Prophet and almost spilt his cup of tea when he saw Harry. "I can see your face!" he pointed out the obvious. "Your stupid face!"
Harry rolled his eyes with a laugh, but Malfoy set his cup and paper down and got up. His lips felt smooth and amazing against Harry's clean-shaven jaw. The kisses were careful and soft like a feather, and they lingered against Harry's skin even after Malfoy had already stepped away, making him long for more. He was so in love with this man in front of him. Harry sometimes looked at Malfoy and couldn't believe that he really was his husband. After all they had been through, after all the many ups and many downs, they stood there together in their living room, kissing before heading to a hard day of work.
Malfoy held his hands to the sides of Harry's face and looked him so deep in the eyes like he sometimes did, in a way that made Harry feel all warm and fuzzy and safe and protected. In those steel-grey eyes, he didn't see hatred and anger anymore, but love and a home. It had taken them a long way to get here, but Harry felt that it was definitely worth it.
"I'll see you tonight," Malfoy said. "Don't stay too long. At least today."
Harry nodded his head yes and put on a wide smile. "I won't," he promised. "At least for today." He was certain that today was all he could promise because the case he was working on with Ron was too big, too complicated, and too much of a priority to spend only a few hours a day on.
They kissed one last time, Harry whispering that he loved him and Malfoy saying, "I love you too, you insufferable prick," before separating. Draco stepped backwards into the fireplace, his hand full of Floo Powder. He was going to Headmistress McGonagall's office because last year when she had offered him the teaching position, she had allowed him to come home in the evenings as soon as his time management was as impeccable as she knew it would be. Malfoy had never, not once, shown up too late or not managed to finish something in time; not even when he and Harry got carried away. This was one of Draco's many things that Harry loved about him: his need for punctuality. Even when they were going to more casual things like dinner at the Burrow or meeting Ron and Hermione, Malfoy always got them to show up on time, and if they weren't, then they always had a very good explanation (that no one wanted to hear).
Harry, however, found that he was late when he arrived at the Ministry and found Ron already in the big briefing room, the large desk exactly the same way they had left it: covered in stacks and stacks of paper, and a larger version of the same map with the red, blue and green dots hung up on the wall. Ron was on his feet, bent over a document, a quill between his lips. He looked up at Harry, and his grin cracked the quill, resulting in ink dropping all over his lips.
"Shit," Ron cursed and instinctively wiped his lips with the back of his hand before coming to his senses and reaching for his wand. "Hi, mate."
"Hey," Harry replied, putting his bag down and wiggling out of his coat. "Where's Chris?"
Ron rolled his eyes. "I sent him to get coffee," he replied, then waved his wand to fix his quill.
Harry laughed and sat down opposite Ron. Christopher came with the steaming beverages as soon as Harry sat down and straightened his glasses. He still had the same kind smile as the first time Harry had seen him, but now his formerly shoulder-long brown hair was shorn down to only a few inches. His face reddened a little when his eyes fell on Harry, who he clearly hadn't expected to be here already.
Harry had a rather complex evolution of relationship with Christopher. He hadn't known the man before the Minister had assigned Harry's case to him last year because Harry's workload had already been too big and he had needed a week off when his godson came to visit him. Solely because of that, Harry had been sceptical towards Christopher and would have rather gone behind his back to get the case back than to try to be nice to him. Maybe Christopher had sensed Harry's antagonism towards him, or maybe he just was a nice person like that, but on Harry's first day back after Teddy had left, Christopher had come up to him and apologised for taking his case. He had wanted Harry's help, and Harry had decided to give it to him (which he sometimes regretted now).
They hadn't talked a lot since the new year had started except for smalltalk between the cubicles, and now, for the past week already, Christopher and Harry had to see each other every day because he was, unfortunately, their assistant now. Malfoy had laughed for quite a long time when Harry had told him that Kingsley hadn't accepted his request to transfer Christopher to another case, and every time he remembered it, Malfoy started to snicker again.
"Morning, Harry," Chris said, setting down a coffee cup in front of Harry, who picked it up and put it away from the documents because he certainly didn't want to go through the same thing as last time when Christopher had knocked over his tea and ruined a dozen documents just because Harry's t-shirt had ridden up when he had taken off his sweater.
"Morning, Chris," Harry replied. He took a sip of coffee, then put it away again and started sorting through the documents before him that he hadn't managed to go through last week.
The briefing room was silent for a long time; the only sounds heard were the shuffling of paper and the careful sipping of hot drinks. Moments like these made Harry realise how much he really loved his job; especially because he could work with his friends. Though the case they were working on was giving him many sleepless nights, he still wouldn't want to do anything else. They were doing something good: catching bad guys.
Not currently, though, because the bad guy they were looking for was somehow smart enough to keep slipping through their fingers. Cassius Avery had kept the Aurors on their toes for quite some time now, but he had only recently become enough of a priority for the Ministry to put together a team. Many of the Dark Lord's followers had run from the battle when it had turned out that Harry was still alive and still willing to keep fighting back. Avery was one of them. He, too, had vanished from the Ministry's radar after Voldemort's fall. He wasn't the only Death Eater still at large, but he was the one who was currently the biggest thorn in their eye because - after working underground for Merlin knew how many months already - he was back with followers and striving to continue Voldemort's work. He was toying with the Aurors, sending them on a wild goose chase across the country.
"Chris, can you hand me the Carrow file?" Harry asked, reaching his hand out without looking up from the map he was studying.
Christopher lay the file into his hand, and Harry thanked him before whipping his wand at it so it levitated in the air in front of him and flipped the pages on its own. Harry's one hand reached for his coffee cup while the other hand traced his index finger from one red dot to the next on the map of London. Ron was mumbling something on the other side of the room, but Harry wasn't paying attention to him; Ron mumbled to himself a lot when he was concentrated. Seeing him like this was such a big contrast from him at Hogwarts: he was focusing for more than ten minutes without complaining or asking Hermione to get him out of whatever pile of work he had been putting off. Harry was, too, if he was being honest, and he was incredibly proud of them.
Hours and hours passed, all three of them quietly looking through things or discussing something out loud. Harry didn't even know what time it was when Dean arrived, entering the briefing room with a face that made the three fall silent and look up at him. His face made Harry instantly think that something was wrong, and when Dean raised his hand holding a file, they all knew that something was incredibly wrong.
"What is it?" Ron asked, sounding exasperated. They had, quite frankly, had enough of bad news already.
Dean dropped the file on the desk that was barely visible beneath all the paper they already had. "He sent us a message."
Harry, Ron, and Christopher leaned in and opened the file. There was a picture of a wall that Harry and Ron had walked past about a million times on Diagon Alley. They knew it like the back of their hands and could re-create it brick by brick from memory alone. Only in this picture, there was writing on the wall, made with a spell that burned the letters into the stone. It said, "Found me yet, Potter?"
"That bastard," Ron mumbled.
Even while keeping his eyes fixed on the picture, Harry could feel the others looking at him. Of course, he knew what this meant. Harry had defeated Voldemort, the worst Dark wizard of all time. That had caused a ripple effect amongst the other Dark wizards, like when a world record is broken and everyone steps up their game to shoot across that. They believed there was space to be filled; Voldemort was gone, but Harry was still there, and someone had to bring Harry's downfall. He had defeated their master, so now they had to defeat him in order to continue Voldemort's work. Harry knew that, and he had hated himself for that for a long time after he had realised that he was the reason for Dark wizards showing up again not to make peace or seek redemption, but to defeat him. But he had stopped hating himself months ago and decided to do the only thing he could do: keep going.
"Was someone able to remove that?" Harry asked Dean.
"Yes," he replied with a nod, his face uncertain. They were all friends here, but Harry sometimes worried that they weren't saying what they were thinking. "Williamson was there to get rid of it. He put the file together as soon as he came back about an hour ago." Dean nodded at the folder in front of them. "There are some witness testimonies and the comments of some people who talked to him. You might want to hear that."
Ron took the picture out of the folder and fastened it next to the map on the wall. Beneath that were several letters that looked like Howlers, and Harry knew from enough experience at the Ministry that this was for them to listen in on the interviews Williamson had done.
"He was here, I saw him," a woman spoke out of the letter in a frantic voice. "I saw him from my window over there. He was dressed in black robes, and his face was cloaked, but I'm sure that it was him. I saw him use his wand to write on that wall!"
"Was there anyone with him?" Williamson's voice asked.
Harry and Ron looked at each other when the woman replied, "Yes. They were four men together."
"Was there anyone on the street when you saw them write on the wall?"
"I didn't see anyone," the woman replied. "I think everyone went inside when they heard the sounds."
"What sounds?" Williamson asked, and Harry, too, furrowed his brow.
"The sound of Apparition," the woman said as if she was annoyed that she even had to explain that to an Auror. "And then there was a loud bang. I don't know what that was."
The letter ended but didn't explode like an actual Howler, and silence filled the room again while the four men were speechless. Harry kept repeating in his head what the woman had said: four men, meaning Avery really had gained followers. They didn't yet know if it really had been him in Diagon Alley or if he had only sent someone, but Harry was confident that they were going to find that out somehow.
"You said some people talked to Williamson?" Christopher asked.
Dean nodded. "Yes, that's..." He stopped himself, making Harry frown. "Just listen."
The next letter unfolded and out came the voice of a man, clearly older and angrier. "Harry Potter should take responsibility!" Harry felt the colour drain from his face. "He's the reason these men even came to Diagon Alley and put all of our lives in danger."
There had been very few moments in Harry's life where he had been ashamed of himself, but this was definitely it. He wished for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. He had known that Avery must have had a personal grudge against Harry, but he hadn't expected people to start to realise that too and holding him accountable.
There were a few more letters, and even though a lot of people were showing confidence in Harry and the rest of the Aurors, Harry couldn't get that man out of his head. He had to step out of the room for a while, and when they decided to call it a day, Harry couldn't wait to get home.
Malfoy was waiting for Harry on the sofa, a glass of wine in his hand, but his smile dropped as soon as he saw Harry's face. Draco put the glass down and got up, his arms around Harry in an instant. Harry burrowed his face into his husband's shoulder and took a deep breath, inhaling the calming scent of home. His fingers were gripping the back of Malfoy's sweater, and it felt as though this kept Harry grounded, as if he was actually holding onto his sanity.
"You're okay," Malfoy said softly against Harry's hair, stroking him in the back of his neck. "You're okay, love."
A shaky sigh was all Harry could manage in reply. Draco took Harry's face in his hands, and his eyes flickered across Harry's face, taking in every little thing and trying to find out what's going on. They moved to the couch, and Malfoy handed Harry the wine he had just been drinking. Harry took a sip, then put it back down.
"I know you can't tell me about it," Draco said, and Harry thought that this might be the first time that he said that seriously, "but if you-"
"It's my fault," Harry broke him off. Malfoy's face changed in an instant. He crossed from worried over about ten different emotions until he ended up at confused. "The Dark wizards. They're all after me. It's my fault," Harry elaborated.
Draco shook his head, suddenly angry or mad or maybe just irritated. "It's not your fault, Potter. It has never been your fault. You're here because of them, not they because of you. This would always have happened; you're just the unlucky one who's catching the heat."
Harry kept shaking his head and avoiding Malfoy's eyes. He had believed for such a long time that he was indeed the one stopping the bad guys, but maybe it was time for him to accept that he was the one attracting them. He didn't know if he could handle the pressure of the public judging him on top of Dark wizards playing games with him.
"They said it's my fault," Harry argued.
"Who said that?"
"The people who were there in Diagon Alley where he was."
Malfoy tucked his index finger under Harry's chin and lifted his head so their eyes met. Malfoy's eyes were grey and fierce and overwhelming Harry's senses. "That's just what he wants," Draco said. "He wants to turn the people against you, but that won't happen. You're fireproof, honey, and he won't get to burn you down."
Harry sniffed and smiled. He rolled his eyes, making a tear escape and roll over his cheek. "You're so good at this," he grinned.
Malfoy let out a laugh and wiped away Harry's tear with his thumb. "Shut it, Potter."