Chapter Text
June 2017
It was early in the morning on a Saturday when Harry left London for Edgewater. The sky was still black except for the glimmer of deep blue near the horizon. He kept the radio off in favor of the rare peaceful quiet that blanketed the streets, and watched as the few stars visible against the city’s lights winked out one by one, chased away by the impending sunrise.
He could have—probably should have—apparated to Luna and Pansy’s beach house. But yesterday afternoon, after he’d dropped his suitcase down with a thunk in the entryway to Grimmauld Place and trudged upstairs to take the world’s longest, hottest shower, he’d decided that he needed the drive to unwind and mentally prepare himself for the week ahead.
Prepare himself for what, he didn’t know. Luna’s note had only said that there was to be a celebration at Edgewater, the girls’ seaside retreat. Harry had been in Budapest when the note arrived on the leg of Luna’s little owl, Petey, and he’d had no time in the weeks since to talk to her and find out any of the details. He hadn’t even told her he was coming until yesterday.
He was agitated, still, which he supposed made sense, given the week (honestly, the year) he’d had. His every waking hour for the last thirteen months had been dedicated to making sure that Elik Balough never saw anything beyond the four walls of a cell for the rest of his goddamned life.
Balogh was a young, charismatic, handsome wizard who just happened to be completely psychopathic and utterly committed to the genocide of Muggleborn and half-blood witches and wizards in Eastern Europe. In the few short years since his rise to prominence, Balogh had managed to work the old aristocracy into a frenzy and convince the Eastern European Magical Coalition to pass a litany of disturbing laws and regulations, such as registration requirements for Muggleborns, a tax on mixed-magic marriages, and a near-elimination of longstanding exceptions to the Statute of Secrecy.
None of which amounted to criminal activity, of course. At least nothing that the MUN (Magical United Nations) could use as an excuse to go after him. Free speech existed, after all. And the rest was being done by perfectly legal, democratic means.
But after months of surveillance, Harry and his team had managed to find evidence that Balogh was embroiled in illegal potions dealings, and that those dealings were financing his political endeavors, all of which was prosecutable. And then they’d managed to sneak a mole into Balogh’s inner circle, and the mole had uncovered a nefarious plot to blow up the Swiss Magical Peoples Institute, which was the world’s leading research institution on magical genetics and evolution. It was, along with the potions dealing, more than enough to put Balogh away for good.
Unfortunately, Balogh had gotten wind of his impending arrest and gone on the lam, and Harry’s team had spent most of the spring chasing him down. The whole fiasco ended in a brawl in the labyrinthine changing rooms at one of the biggest, most crowded bath houses in Budapest. After the fact, half the damn city had to be Obliviated.
Harry had enjoyed his little post-showdown chat with Balogh, though. Seeing the arrogant prick in ratty prison garb, seeing cuffs on his ankles and his wrists and the black eye some guard had given him had been nice, and delivering the news of his prison sentence had proved to be extremely cathartic.
“You think you’ve beaten us, but there are more. I am only one man, Potter,” Balogh had said, leaning back in his chair, shark-like eyes glinting under blond fringe.
“That’s true,” Harry’d replied easily. “You are only one man. One man who’s going to be spending the rest of his life in a high-security detention center in the Netherlands.” He’d tossed the MUN judiciary panel’s ruling onto the table. “You know, we’ve nailed most of your arsehole friends, too. Your operation’s dead, Balogh. And yeah, more of you’ll pop up, I’m sure. Your lot are like cockroaches in that regard. But when that happens, guess who’ll be there every damn time? Me. And I have to tell you, I like my fuckin’ odds. More than a decade of this, and none of you scumbags have been able to best me yet. Not even Voldemort. And you, you piece of shite, were no Voldemort. You were easy.”
“Fuck you,” Balogh had growled, lunging at Harry and losing his composure entirely.
“Now, now. What would mummy and daddy say about that nasty language?” Harry’d said, standing up and stretching luxuriously. “Anyway, I’m off. Have fun in jail, cocksucker.”
Yeah. That had felt pretty good.
But after the initial adrenaline rush, Harry’d sunk into his typical post-mission slump. He’d spent his last day in Budapest in a dark hotel room, chain smoking and chugging tiny bottles of vodka, and his last night at some dirty club getting his dick sucked by an anonymous blond twink who’d let Harry come all over his face in the loo. Which had been nice and all, but then he’d woken up yesterday morning with his head feeling like it was stuck in a vise, blood throbbing in his ears and his guts on fire. Even today, after a good night’s sleep in his own bed, he still felt like hell.
And honestly, he was too old for it. Way too old to be drinking all night and getting strange from a man a decade younger than he was. It wasn’t exciting and edgy anymore; it was just sad.
He reminded himself that he always felt this way after a mission wrapped up. It’d go away after a few days, or when the next big thing came in, which it inevitably did, usually sooner rather than later. Until then, he’d just be a mopey cunt, the way he always was during these lulls.
He tried not to think about the fact that the downtime hadn’t been so bad back when he’d had Draco waiting for him in London.
Besides, he couldn’t be a mopey cunt because he was going to Luna and Pansy’s house to see all his old friends, and he’d have to smile and make small talk and act like he gave a fuck who was having another baby and who had gotten divorced.
He wished he knew who was going to be at the beach house, but he didn’t. He didn’t know much of anything. He didn’t know what they were celebrating or even why they’d bothered to invite him. Pans and Luna hosted a group every summer, and yes, Harry had been a regular on those summer trips once upon a time. But he hadn’t attended in years. Three, to be exact.
The beach house was beautiful, built on a hill, a tall stone wall circling the property, a door in the wall that led to the sea. The beach was rocky and private, and Harry could picture the shape of the boulders that rose up above the small, smooth stones like dark, jagged teeth poking up out of grey gums.
The getaways lasted a week, sometimes two. There were group dinners every night, out on the lawn if it was nice, in the oversized dining room if it wasn’t. Luna always made the cocktails, laden with homemade liquors and verdant herbs. Pansy always made the dinner, extravagant, involving things like Dover sole poached in butter or rack of lamb. Zabini usually brought the wine, something from one of the vineyards his mother had inherited from husband number eight (or was he number nine?). Ron, who’d inherited his mum’s baking ability, was in charge of desserts. The dinners lasted late into the evening, into the morning, everyone drunk and happy to be together again. They culminated in soaks in the chilly sea, or with people passing out on the sofas, or, in their younger years, inadvisable couplings in one of the house’s many bedrooms.
Harry wondered if it was still like that, or if the dinners had become duller affairs in the years he’d been away.
The day was shaping up to be a brilliant one, which was putting him in a slightly better mood. It was difficult to be too much of a gloomy cunt when the sky was a bright cornflower blue, and the breeze was fresh and light and smelled of lilac.
While coasting through a stretch of road that sliced through New Forest National Park, he slowed and then stopped his Volkswagen, staring, awestruck, as two wild horses crossed the road no more than five meters from his front bumper. They were lean and graceful, with wild manes and dark flanks, and they sauntered across the blacktop like they hadn’t a care in the world. Watching their natural, graceful canter, the proud tossing of their heads, the dark flash of their eyes, Harry couldn’t help but feel a bit lighter.
Maybe the week would be all right. Fun, even. Maybe he wouldn’t have to pretend to enjoy it. Maybe Malfoy wouldn’t even be in attendance. Or if he was, maybe it would be good to see him, even if he’d dragged his new husband along.
March 2001
Everything was deliciously blurry, streetlights smearing across the darkness overhead, the moon a slitted eye in the distance. The pulse of music from somewhere nearby was making Draco’s heartrate kick up a notch, tugging him out of the hazy fog of exhaustion that had swept over him after they’d left the last Muggle club. All he’d wanted was his bed, but now he was thinking there was a little more life in him yet. “Maybe we should go to Z Bar. Remember that hot bartender we talked to last time, Pans?” he called up to her.
She turned back from her conversation with Blaise to grin at him, her typically fire-engine-red lips faded to a tepid pink at this late hour. “I could be convinced,” she said.
“Let’s go to the Leaky,” Blaise said.
“Hilarious,” Pansy said.
“I mean it!” Blaise insisted. He was a bit pissed, his words indignant and slurred. “What right do they have to keep us from getting a drink there?”
“Every right,” Draco pointed out. “And even if they didn’t, I’ve no desire get a hex thrown at my bollocks.” It was one thing to face the wizarding world in the daytime, in the Ministry atrium as he made his way to the lifts. It was another entirely to walk into a bar full of intoxicated witches and wizards in the wee hours of the morning.
“Coward,” Blaise said, pouting. “You’re both cowards.”
Say what you would about Blaise, but the man knew how to get Draco to do his bidding. “I’m not a coward!” Draco cried.
“No, of course you’re not, sweets,” Pansy said, reaching over to pat his arm.
“Don’t placate me, you horrible wench!” Draco said, snatching his arm away.
She smacked him, not gently. “Rude! I’m not placating you, you wanker! I’m trying to agree with you.” She turned back to Blaise. “We’ll get our arses hexed off if we step foot in there.”
“We won’t,” Blaise insisted. “And if we do, we’ll fight back. Self-defense.”
“Like the Wizengamot would care about that,” Draco muttered.
“Come on,” Blaise said. “You can’t tell me you plan to never, ever enter a wizarding pub for the rest of your lives.”
“I had planned on that, actually,” Pansy said, looking unimpressed.
“Draco, come on,” Blaise said. “I know you’ve got it in you, old boy. Seriously, it’s been more than two years since the war. We can’t avoid them forever.”
Draco stared past Blaise to the cheery windows of the Leaky, where golden light was spilling out onto the street. The door opened and a burst of laughter and noise drifted towards them, and a man came tumbling into the alley and tottered away in the opposite direction.
Draco sighed. “If I’m injured, you’re taking me to Mungo’s. And make sure Granger is the one to treat me.”
“Granger? As in Hermione Granger?” cried Pansy, looking appalled.
“Yes, that one. The bint’s too noble to refuse to heal me, or even to give me subpar treatment. She’s handled a few of my previous, ah, mishaps.” He cleared his throat. “She’s actually quite a proficient Healer.”
“Ew,” Pansy said. She turned to Blaise and stuck out her lower lip. “We’re not really doing this, are we?”
“Come on,” Blaise said, grabbing at both their arms. “Let’s live a little.”
Despite his uneasiness, Draco let Blaise drag him into the once-familiar pub. It was crowded, and it felt, to Draco, like every eye was on them as they made their way to the bar. Draco looked straight ahead, refusing to cower but also trying like hell to avoid the other patrons’ gazes.
It was only when he was halfway through the room that Draco remembered he was traipsing about in a cropped ermine coat belonging to Pansy’s mother, black leather trousers, a rather see-through t-shirt and Doc Martens. It was a typical thing for him to wear to the Muggle clubs they liked to frequent, not so typical for him when he was among magical folk. “Oh, fuck,” he whispered.
“What?” Pansy asked.
“I forgot how I was dressed.”
“You look gorgeous,” Pansy said, waving this away.
“One, you have to say that, as my friend, and two, everyone’s looking at me like I have two heads.”
“No, no, darling,” she said, turning to look at him fully. “They’re simply overwhelmed by your beauty.”
He snorted. “I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that you and Blaise look just as mad as I do.”
Pansy was wearing a cinched, black lace bustier and a silky green skirt. Blaise, who was ordering their drinks, was in gold lamé and black jeans.
“I look incredible. No need to smear your low self-esteem all over me, for fuck’s sake,” Pansy said, hoisting up the bustier.
“Of course, you look incredible,” Draco amended, and she brightened. “I just mean that we stand out in a place like this. A non-Muggle place.”
“Oh, fuck all of them,” Pansy said, taking a gin and tonic from Blaise, who had returned. “Right?”
“Always,” said Blaise. “Cheers.”
They clinked their glasses and Blaise chuckled. “Pansy, I think Luna Lovegood is coming over to talk to you.”
“Loony?” Pansy sighed. But she nabbed a tube of lipstick out of her purse fast as anything, and expertly applied some before Luna materialized.
“What’s going on there?” Draco asked when the two women were chatting behind him.
“Oh, they had to work together on something or other a couple of weeks ago, and Luna asked Pans out to dinner,” Blaise said.
“What?” Draco cried. “Pansy didn’t tell me that!”
“Well, she said no. So, it would’ve been a bit pointless to tell you.”
“Why’d she say no?”
Blaise shrugged. “Not sure. Probably because she’s still pining away for Tony Bloody Goldstein.”
“That twat,” Draco growled. Tony had been rather likeable, really, when he’d been hanging around with them right after the war. But then he’d up and dropped Pansy like a hot potato when word of their romantic entanglement reached the Prophet. Pansy had been devastated, but lately, Draco had sensed she was getting over it. She needed to get over it, honestly.
“Luna’s not bad looking, really,” Blaise mused. “If you take away the whole…”
“Loony thing?”
“Well, I was going to say crimes against fashion—I mean, that jumper with that skirt, sweet Salazar—but sure. The ‘whole loony thing’ works, too.”
“Luna’s not a bad sort,” Draco said. “She’s rather nice. Did I ever tell you that she started writing me during the trials and all that? Saying me she wished me well and was thinking of me?”
“Really?” Blaise said, frowning. “Why?”
“Well, we’re some sort of cousins, you know. And honestly, I think that’s just how she is. Very decent. Sweet.”
“Huh,” Blaise said. “Maybe Pansy should go for it, then.”
They looked at each other. “Oh, she’d never,” Draco said.
“Not a chance in hell,” said Blaise, taking a swig of his gin.