All Harry wants to do is drag himself through the dark, chilly entryway of Grimmauld place, up the stairs, collapse into his bed, and stay there long enough for him to feel less hollowed out when he gets up. He can’t do that. He has to get his wounds checked out by the scene mediwizard first, a process that involves a painstaking examination and deluge of diagnostic spells on the red lines of just-mended flesh making their way up his left arm. Then he has to debrief with Shacklebolt, who’s waiting for him in his office. Despite everything, it’s still business hours now, and the second floor buzzes with aurors and admins going about their work as harry passes through to the corner office on the furthest from the elevators.
“Harry,” says Kingsley softly, looking up from the densely printed parchment on his desk. “Sit down.”
Harry sits. He feels strangely like he did in second year, his first time in Dumbledore’s office. Of course, he’s been in this office countless times before, and it’s nothing like Dumbledore’s. It's boxy, dimly lit, and contains shelves occupied primarily by a multitude of tomes detailing ancient wizarding law.
“You’ve had quite a month.”
Harry thinks back to the beginning of all of this. The bright green of the grassy grounds at the abandoned Rosier estate. Him and Ginny on a routine job, joking around as they gathered specimens, getting those hummus wraps from the muggle place a few blocks down from the entry to the office on Great Scotland Yard. The abnormalities, Bill called in to consult, the return trips, the great fountain that kept drawing their attention. It had seemed even then like a procedural sort of job. Bill had worry in his eyes after he hadn't been able to identify what was going on with some of the samples they'd given him, knowing only that something was wrong, but Ginny said he always got intense like that about work.
Then, things happening more quickly. Neville saying she'd gone missing, checking the burrow, firecalling everyone, finding her on the grass at twilight, entranced.
"Harry?" asks Kingsley.
“Yes,” Harry says.
“I’ve got Auror Tenneman’s notes on the situation, and your previous reports, so I don’t need you to walk me through the whole thing from the beginning. Just go over last night and this morning, as well as any key observations about the magical artifact at the center of these events." Thinking about Auror Tenneman, the first of many to pore over the situation and pick apart what went wrong, makes Harry feel sick, and suddenly Kingsley's gentle tone feels like a harsh reproach.
"I should've known," he bursts out, "—right from the beginning, the fountain, it was like you had to keep looking at it. We didn't even mention it in our initial field reports, because we were focused on the Arboretum."
"We all wish we'd realized what was going on sooner, Harry, but right now I merely am grateful that both of the lead aurors on this case were not more seriously harmed and are on track to make a full recovery. When did you first suspect the fountain was involved in the dark magic?"
“Look at that ,” Ginny had said. From the first glance, the fountain had a transfixing quality that Harry couldn’t put his finger on. All he knew was that it was deeply satisfying to watch the water move. Then he'd realized what it was—the fountain ran backward. Droplets rose up out of the pool and converged above it in a shimmering sheet, condensed still more into two sleek streams coming out of the mouths of the huge entwined stone snakes at the fountain’s center.
“Come on, Gin, let’s go,” he'd said. He'd felt headachey from the glare of the sun beaming down and reflecting off the bright green grass.
Now, in Kingsley's dark, enclosed office, he wonders if that feeling was the start, if it hadn't been the glare or the five hours of sleep from the night before but his magic already fighting an insidious force Harry wasn't yet aware of. Or maybe it wasn't. Harry doesn't like the idea that he'll probably never know.
"It was obviously magical, but it was only when we found Ginny there that we knew it was involved with the strange results from the plants in the Arboretum."
"And she was..."
"Her arm was in the water. And by the time we pulled her out..." Harry lifts the left sleeve of his robes up to his elbow to show the deep red cuts winding their way up his arm, closed up and scarred over but vivid in a way the mediwizard had said was likely to be permanent.
"And did you feel any effects of the fountain at this point? Were you injured?"
Harry thinks of the fountain, its transfixing quality. The headache was probably just a headache. Those days before they'd found Ginny like that he'd been, he'd felt normal. He'd gone to work, had lunches with Ginny, stopped by Bill's temporary office to discuss the case. When he wasn't thinking about work, he was thinking about Bill's bright blue eyes, how he'd go, "hmmm," after Harry would come to him with new information or a new theory—it was impossible to rush him, it seemed like, someone so careful about taking their time. Harry feels guilty for the silly preoccupation, of course he does, but surely he couldn't have been all that time under some sort of dark spell, wouldn't he have noticed?
"No," he says. He wasn't injured. If the thing was in his head, he honestly had no idea.
"I have Ms. Weasley's account of the situation here," at this Kingsley taps to indicate one of the many file folders on his desk. "An increasing awareness of an intense draw, a decreasing level of control, a confusion around the final memories leading her to touch the water." Harry makes himself keep looking at Shacklebolt while he says these things, even though he wants more than anything to look away.
"Is this similar to what you felt?" Harry doesn't want to discuss it, he doesn't, but it's his job. He has to do his job.
"Yes."
"When did this start?"
"Erm..." that's the crux of the matter, what Harry was dreading. "I don't know. I just know I ended up there last night, and then Bill got to me, and then the emergency response team. It was like... an imperious, but less specific. Not tied to one person. I can't tell you when it started, I'm sorry."
"That's fine Harry," says Shacklebolt on a sigh. "I think we can go into more detail later if need be. Right now, I specifically want to make sure we address the…” Shacklebolt pauses, but his face remains stoic, unawkward, like he’s been put on pause. “cerebral situation,” he resumes.
“What?” Harry says. “I feel fine, honest, I’m just tired—”
“My concern, Harry, is unfortunately not about how you feel, but about your performance in the field. You and Ms. Weasley both have a history of intrusions of dark magic upon your psyches—" the comparison Harry has tried his best to avoid, that he hadn't been able to get out of his head when they'd found her at the Rosier estate, burns over Harry's brain with a vengeance. Little Ginny, slumped over in the Chamber of Secrets, life draining out of her, drained by a dark force that had overtaken her mind. Ginny in 2004, strong, trained, but still Ginny. Harry's partner, his responsibility, again taken over by dark in a way he should've seen coming. "I should have never allowed you to be paired in the first place. It was an oversight, one that given the situation cannot be allowed to continue.”
"What?" Harry says. It wasn't him possessed by a diary.
"With your history, and hers, I cannot allow you to continue to be field partners."
"What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing is wrong with you, Harry. You, like Ginny, have a history of being influenced by dark forces disturbing what is happening inside your head." At this, Shacklebolt's eyes flick up to the mark on Harry's forehead, and Harry understands. Right, of course.
"So you think that because of things that happened—" Kingsley seems to sense he's working himself up, and cuts him off.
"We think that there's reason to suspect that you two may have been more susceptible than average to dark magic working its way inside your heads. Ginny succumbed first, which fits with accounts of her initial interest in the artifact, and then you a while after, which makes sense due to your innate ability to resist magic that attempts to control your actions, such as the imperious curse."
The meeting proceeds, but Harry’s checked out. His mind is a jumbled together mess, flashing from one memory to another too fast for him to get his bearings. Ginny in the Chamber, asking the shade of Tom Riddle for help when he didn't know any better. Ginny laughing as he kept writing jokes in the "Reason for appearance" field on the standard field report paperwork they'd had to do. Wanted a walk, he'd written. Fancied seeing some dark magic. Occlumency lessons with Snape, because his dreams could endanger everyone. Then, too, he should've focused harder and someone else ended up payng the price. Bill shaking his head over a stone sample isolated in a bubble in his office, saying, "I don't know what it is yet, or how to undo it. But the diagnostics team was right, there's something seriously wrong and potentially dangerous here." Bill after Ginny was found, taken away to St. Mungos, his face stern while Harry was out of control, his warm hand on Harry's shoulder. "They think she'll be okay. Can't get too distracted now," his eyes boring straight into Harry's, "it's up to us to figure this thing out." Those same eyes, that same hand, on him as he was torn from the fountain, an unbearable pain like his own flesh being torn asunder.
Finally, released from Shacklebolt, Harry goes to drop off another folder of case-related paperwork to Bill in the temp office down the third hall.
“Hey,” he says. The door’s already open, so he knocks on the edge of the door frame.
Bill turns to face him from where he’d been sitting facing the window, and Harry’s reminded again of being young, how he first saw Bill. He remembers thinking how impossibly cool Bill looked then, with his earring and his long hair and those dragonskin boots. No earring now, but the hair’s still kept long and up in a high ponytail. It’s a style Harry’s only ever seen on girls besides Bill, and seems to highlight his rugged appearance, the jut and stubble of his jaw, the deep scars on the left side of his face.
“Got a present for you,” Harry says, takes a few steps into the room so he can toss the folder onto Bill’s desk. He pauses, looking around the space that Bill's kept mostly empty. “How much longer are you sticking around here, anyway?”
“Got to finish what I started with the first series of runes, then train a few around here to do the disenchantment. Plus paperwork, so a few weeks at least.”
“Then back to Armenia?” Harry’s not sure why he’s asking. All he wanted was to just go home, but his head’s started doing the mental math, and if they really do make him take a month of leave Bill might be gone by the time he’s back. He won’t be able to pop round the office anymore to—well, to freak out about the death eater magic messing up Ginny, as he's been doing lately. He guesses it'll be good for both of them to move on from the past few weeks.
“Just about wrapped up in Armenia before this, so not for long,” says Bill. “Mum’s been on about never seeing me, so I might spend a bit posted up at Gringotts headquarters.”
“Ah,” says Harry, feeling his tired mouth break into a smile. It feels good, after everything that's happened, that this is one thing that isn't moving faster than he wants, that something—Bill—is just going to stay put.
“Speaking of Mum..." Bill starts and Harry cringes. He doesn't really want to get into his complicated, estranged relationship with Molly Weasley right now. "When are you going to make a reappearance at the Burrow? It’s been ages, Harry,”
“You’ve heard about that…”
“Maybe it made sense in the beginning, but Harry, you and Ginny spend almost all of your time together. It’s clear there’s no bad blood." Easy for Bill to say. He wasn't there when Molly burst into tears upon hearing about the breakup. Even two years later, Harry still feels guilty and regretful about it. Not the breakup, necessarily, but what it had meant, to him, to Ginny, to Molly and even Ron. It had seemed like such a sign that things were working out, that the war was really over, him and Ginny being together.
“Your mum wanted—” Harry starts, but is cut off.
“Mum misses you," Bill insists. "And she’s getting her grandchildren from Audrey and Perce anyway, which has helped ease the disappointment.”
“Ginny hasn’t said anything so,” Harry tries.
“Harry, you've been partners the past year and you were the first person she told when she got engaged. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know you're waiting for her to formally invite you to socialize with her family again.” Bill pauses, says softer, "Really, Harry, she's doing fine. Whatever happened between you before—"
“Sure, she’s great now, with her singed arm, still on bed rest. She had that thing in her head, Bill,” Harry said. He doesn't understand how Bill, Shacklebolt, everyone is being so casual about this.
“So did you!” Bill explodes. “Look, this isn’t school. Ginny is an auror, and she’s perfectly capable of handling herself. She knew the risk when she took this job, just like you did.”
“She’s got scars all over her arm! She’s got to go through life…” Harry stops himself too late.
Bill swallows. Harry can’t tell if he’s hurt or still angry. The air between them feels tangible, full of a quivering energy. When Bill speaks, his voice is quiet, a powerful juxtaposition from their loud interchange just a moment before.
“Since when do scars,” says Bill, “mean anything to you?”
“They don’t,” says Harry quickly. “I mean—you know they don’t.” After everything that happened, Harry can't tell if he's imagining it or if Bill's bright blue eyes really can tell that he's not quite telling the truth. Scars do matter, as long as he's insisted to everyone that they don't. It was a scar that entwined him and Voldemort, that pulled an eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley into a dark story she hadn't belonged in.
Bill steps away from his desk and toward Harry. Suddenly self-conscious, Harry looks behind him to the office floor, but he's surprised to see that the door's been shut. Did he do that? But no, he realizes as he looks back at Bill. It was Bill, wordless or wandless magic. The thought makes Harry want to look at Bill closer, wishing he'd noticed when Bill had done it.
"Do you care that I've got scars, Harry?" asks Bill in a low voice. Harry isn't sure what the right answer is. Bill steps closer.
"Does it bother you, me going through life, like this," he asks.
"I mean," says Harry, "I'd rather it hadn't happened, obviously, what are you—"
"But do they bother you?"
"No, no, I'm used to them."
"See?" says Bill. "This is the world we live in. People have scars, and everyone," he speaks slowly, deliberately, "just gets used to them. And it doesn't mean I don't get tetchy near the full moon, or crave that duck blood at the Hog's Head. I do." Bill's close enough Harry has to tilt his head just slightly to maintain eye contact. It's so tempting to just believe Bill, to just give in, let his body sink into the door and stop fighting about this.
"It's Ginny," says Harry. He can't let it go.
"She's my sister," says Bill, a bit of intensity finding his voice again. "I know."
"I just..." What is it? Harry thinks to himself. What is it that makes me so much more upset than everyone else about this. "I didn't want her to have to have a reminder." A reminder that he'd failed, he thinks, but doesn't say because he knows it'll sound stupid. Maybe it is. "Just—not a reminder, not something permanent, like that."
He's forgotten, again, who he's talking to. Bill's mouth is flat, neither smiling nor frowning.
"It's not your choice," says Bill.
Harry thinks of Ginny, of her choices, to be auror, to marry Neville, to look at a stupid fountain on the way to a stupid greenhouse. Right now, she's at home on leave with her doting husband. She's been sending Harry owls late every morning the past five days complaining about the Hollywood Harpies' opening lineup and the potions they're making her take. She's still healing, sure, but she's not standing in the auror office flipping out about her best friend getting scraped up in the line of duty. Which, Harry reflexively glances down where the left sleeve of his robes cover his arms, he technically did as well.
"Yeah," says Harry, "You're right."
"I know," says Bill. Harry's shoulders are touching the heavy wooden door now, backed into it. He wonders how it happened at the same time as he relishes the solidity. It's just what he needs right now, better than cushy chair in his office or his bed at Grimmauld place. This: Hard wood at his back, Bill's hand reaching out to touch Harry's side. Harry's mind goes back to that night they'd found Ginny, the relief when they got word they'd found a spell to stop the bleeding, the delirious relief and exhaustion, there with Bill somehow apart from everyone else, Bill's hand on his shoulder. He'd wondered then, if maybe—but the moment had passed, of course it had. They were worried about Ginny, a dark fountain, dark plants and who knew what else. It was up to them to figure it out. Harry comes back to this moment, Bill's body barely apart from his so Harry can just feel the warmth, is aware of the surface of his skin, all the places there would be pressure if they were touching. Out on the lawns, so late last night it was technically morning, it had been so bright. A full moon, it must've been, or something close. Waxing gibbous? Harry's eyes find Bill's, which are already fixed on his own as they so often seem to be these days.
Harry opens his mouth to ask a question, what question he doesn't know, and then feels Bill's mouth on his. Harry hurries to keep up, to move his lips against Bill's, to grasp at Bill's back when he's pushed firmly so that Bill's body is pressing along his just like his skin had been begging for. The tension in the air between them has collapsed with the closeness into a fevered urge to move. Bill's mouth moves to kiss half of Harry's mouth, then the corner of his mouth, then down his neck, then he sucks, holding Harry's skin in place with his teeth, and moans.
Bill pulls back, leaving Harry breathless with a cold, wet patch on his neck.
"It won't do anything," he says, confusing Harry until he continues. "If I bite you." Harry shivers at the the thought. A part of him waits for Bill to say that he wouldn't bite Harry anyway, but it doesn't come.
"Alright," he says.
"Quietus," Bill whispers before putting his lips back on Harry's. Harry feels unbearably warm, thinking what that charm's for, what sorts of things Bill doesn't want everyone outside the office to hear.
Now that he has license, Bill grinds his hips into Harry's, and simultaneous relief and thrill run through Harry's blood when he feels Bill's hardness against his. Taking initiative, Harry worms his way into Bills robes, under his pants, to his cock. Under so many layers, the soft skin is hot to the touch.
"Ah-" Bill lets out, clearly surprised. "Harry," and moves his hips forward, into Harry's grip. He kisses Harry sloppily while his hands shove various parts of Harrys robes to the side, up, then down, exposing him to the air of the office. Harry's eyes flit to the window, but it's nighttime, and the view is partially obscured by the horizontal stripes of the window shade.
It doesn't matter, Harry thinks, as Bill's hand starts jerking him off. It doesn't matter if the shades aren't turned all the way closed, it doesn't matter what's happening with the dark ancestral Rosier magic, it doesn't matter that Bill cast a charm so the noises from this room don't make it outside to the greater office. He lets out a moan that he's pretty sure would've come out charm or not as Bill twists his hand cleverly. He struggles to remember to make his hand work on Bill, rewarded by sudden little intakes of breath from Bill's mouth. He's ashamed that he himself is almost to the point of coming, but only superficially. He imagines Bill smirking in satisfaction when he does and it only gets him closer.
"Close," he lets out, and Bill says,
"Good," and Harry's relieved that his voice for once isn't completely steady. Bill's mouth is sucking on his neck again, but his teeth stay mostly clear of Harry's skin in a way that's maddening.
"Why haven't you..." Harry trails off, because he's embarrassed and because it's hard to string together a sentence when a someone you fancy is showing off the extra nine years of sexual experience they have on you. Bill breaks away obligingly, eyes dazed and eyebrows a little furrowed.
"What?" he asks.
"Bitten me," Harry says dumbly. At his words, he can see something in Bill's eyes shift, intensify, and when he leans into Harry's neck, this time his teeth are very much involved.
"Okay," Harry says, later, as they sit against the door catching their breath. "I'll come by the burrow for tea this weekend."
"I'm worried you'll develop a complex," says Bill, "about only coming by when you're sleeping with one of us."
Harry feels himself blush hotly. Hopefully, he'll just keep dropping in to see how Bill's work is doing and not have to worry about it.