Chapter 1
Harry cannot for the life of him remember why he agreed to work with a junior auror.
Claire Creevey is absolutely brilliant, he’ll give her that. She graduated Hogwarts a year early, earned top marks in all of her NEWTs, and got promoted from desk work only a month after finishing auror training. Hermione Granger is the only person who comes to mind that could rival her.
Creevey is, though, for no better word of description, very much a Creevey. That starstruck look in her eyes when Robards assigned her to work with him, the unmatched enthusiasm that gets irritating after only five minutes of it, her devout optimism that Harry knows will be crushed after a month or two of field work.
There’s also the fact that he sees Colin every time he looks at her. She looks exactly like he did, even more than Dennis does, and Harry hates that he has a living reminder of all the people he couldn’t save now sharing an office with him now. Putting a familiar-looking camera at the front of her desk that Harry has to fight off a wave of nausea from when he recognizes it.
Not to mention, she’s a junior auror. Creevey may be a genius, but that doesn’t change the fact that she has little field experience and limited knowledge of how the Auror Department works.
“That’s why deskwork is so important,” Ron had told Harry back when he’d been stuck filing reports all day. “You have to understand how the department works before you can efficiently work a case. It’s not just investigating, Harry, it’s filling out paperwork and getting the correct forms…” Harry tuned him out after that. Hermione had rubbed off on him; he was starting to sound like her and explain things in far greater detail than they needed to be. (“Or maybe he finally has something he’s passionate about,” Hermione had said when he told her this, giving him one of those looks he’d been subject to all eighth year, when Ron was off at Auror training and she kept shoving brochures about Brazil and Egypt at him.)
Harry can, begrudgingly, understand now what Ron meant. Creevey is eager, yes, but she also filled out their paperwork all wrong and now he has to go back through a seven page report and fix it. Hence, his newfound hatred of junior Aurors.
Ron never had to work with a junior Auror , he grumbles to himself as he rifles through the paperwork.
That’s because Ron’s a better Auror than you , his brain supplies.
This is true; Harry can’t deny that Ron is far better at their job than him. He’s been doing it for longer, since Hermione didn’t bother trying to convince him to go back to Hogwarts, but Harry also suspects it’s because he’s used to working hard. Harry entered the training program after his eighth year at Hogwarts with the expectation that he’d fly through, and the memories still mortify him (it was a learning experience, Ron liked to say); his guess is that they only let him stay because of his name. Ron, on the other hand, had known right off the bat what it would be like and decided to forgo eighth year at Hogwarts altogether.
“Well, if you’re this sure, I can’t get mad at you for jumping into it without a second thought,” Hermione had told him when he broke the news that he wouldn’t be returning to Hogwarts with them. Ron had been quite shocked to get such an understanding response, as was Harry; why did Hermione still think being an Auror was such a bad idea for him after a year of thinking about it when it wasn’t even a question for Ron?
Because Ron’s a better Auror than you , his brain had told him.
Well, if Ron’s that much better of an Auror then nobody will mind if Harry finishes the report after his lunch break, he rationalizes.
He steps into the hall, glancing quickly into Ron’s office to check if he’s there before making his way over to the lift and taking it down to the exit. If Ron’s not working, he’s already gone down to find Hermione for lunch, so Harry is free for his weekly walk to the sandwich shop in Muggle London. He glances at the paper on his way out the door, a dragon roaring on the front cover. The headline reads Wizard Found Dead at Romanian Dragon Sanctuary . Harry doesn’t pick it up.
Harry is well aware that his friends find it ridiculous of him to walk half an hour to a sandwich shop that sells relatively subpar sandwiches. He’s still slightly afraid of the Tube, though, after accidentally riding it all the way to the outskirts of the city once and having to apparate back to the Ministry entrance, and he finds that the time on his own gives him a nice outlet for thinking. Or in this case, for getting a breather from Claire Creevey.
There also happens to be a cute blonde guy who works at the register (he looks slightly familiar and Harry can’t put his finger on it), but Harry’s not really one to make moves on muggles. He learned his lesson after trying to date one a couple years ago, a King’s College student named Jess. He thought it might be nice, being with someone who didn’t know anything about his past or his fame. But there was too much hiding, and the Statue laws were very clear about what justified a muggle’s knowledge of the Wizarding World.
Harry has found it’s easier to just be alone, which he knows would make Hermione and Ron very upset to hear. He doesn’t mind so much, though, enjoys getting brunch with Luna Lovegood once a month and letting The Daily Prophet speculate about their “on again off again relationship.” Nevermind that Luna has never really seemed to be interested in anyone romantically, much less Harry; they like to laugh about it when they get back to his apartment afterwards and he returns whatever book he’s recently borrowed from her.
Harry opens the door to Stu’s Sandwiches, hears the familiar jingle of the bells, and makes his way through the regulars to the register.
“Hiya, Herman,” says Marge, the old lady who might as well be glued to her seat in the corner. Harry has never not seen her there.
“Hullo, Marge.” He waves over at her.
“The regular, then?” Cute blonde register guy grins at him.
“Cheers, yeah,” Harry says, pulling out his muggle wallet.
He loves this place, where he comes in every week after “visiting his grandmother down the block.” Where everyone knows him but doesn’t, where he doesn’t have to be anything but a person. He’s not an Auror, he’s not even a wizard. He’s Herman.
It’s different for Ron and Hermione; sure, they’re famous, too, but not in the same way as Harry. They don’t get what it’s like, to have reporters watching his every move and speculating about his mental stability. Muggle London feels like a refuge, a place where he can hide from the spotlight even if it’s just for an hour a week. But even then, he can never stay too long. He doesn’t belong there, never has, and he learned that lesson the hard way.
Harry feels a little stuck, honestly, has since the war ended. First he thought it was about Ginny, and a year after he graduated Hogwarts, they broke things off a year. It had become apparent that their schedules, lives, and overall personalities just weren’t cohesive. Then, after many long discussions with Charlie Weasley, Harry came to the conclusion that his stuck feeling was a result of only dating women. And being with men helped a little, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling. He tried dating Jess, which failed, so he decided his stuckness wasn’t really about people. He moved out of 12 Grimmauld Place and found a flat in London, wondering if the dusty old house and all its ghosts were the source of the issue. But moving didn’t change the fact that Harry still prefers to hide away there when he’s not at work or the Burrow or brunch with Luna.
He’s pretty much resigned himself to this fate.
Harry sits with Marge as he waits for his sandwich, chatting with her about the weather and her thirty-year-old daughter. “How old are you, Herman, thirty-two? I could give you her number, you’re a lovely young man…”
Harry raises his eyebrows. “Come now, Marge, I don’t look that old, do I? I’m only twenty-five.”
“Right, dear. Well, you’re a bit too young for her, aren’t you? Shame, you’re the nice kind of bloke she needs. Always gallivanting off to France, she is, instead of visiting her dear old mum… Anyway, handsome man like you probably has someone special already, yeah?”
Harry shakes his head, feeling a pang of wistfulness for Herman, for the person he only gets to be in Stu’s Sandwiches. “No, nobody special at the moment.”
His mind is quiet when he walks back to the Ministry, holding a half-eaten sandwich in a takeaway bag.