Oh yeah, I almost forgot my disclaimer: I don't own any of these
characters or the story of Harry Potter itself.
Chapter 1: The Famous Mr. James Evans
Harry had never been so thankful to see his chair and desk before in his life. He dragged his exhausted body through the doorway of his office- resisting the urge to merely collapse right there in the doorway itself- closed the door with more effort than he ever would have thought necessary, and plopped himself down onto the hard wooden chair behind his desk. He felt the mud of his robes splatter all across the floor as he did so. Normally he would feel sorry for leaving such a mess for the Magical Maintenance Department but, at the moment, he cared little for what trouble he caused the maintenance crew. He had just returned from vanquishing the "Grey Lord" Apographon, which had proven to be a much more difficult task than he had expected. So, as Harry put his muddy feet up on his desk, smudging the print on the countless pieces of parchment littering his desk, he remarked with a crooked grin spreading from the right side of his lip: "Cleaners be damned!"
He had never expected Apographon to pose much of a threat to the Wizarding World, not much more, anyway, than the legions of other Death Eaters who had been springing up to take the newly vacant position of Dark Lord now that Voldemort had finally met his doom. When Harry had finally killed the true Dark Lord in his final year at Hogwarts, he was certain that it would mean an end to the troubles that had plagued Wizards throughout England, and throughout the rest of the world, since Voldemort's initial rise to power. Alas, this tranquility was simply not meant to be. In the wake of Voldemort's death, Lucius Malfoy, one of Voldemort's supporters, had stepped up to lead the Death Eaters in their efforts to rid the Wizarding world of impure, Muggle blood.
Malfoy-despite the power and influence he had always held due to his wealth, and despite his pompous claims to be a wizard of truly pure blood- had proven to be a rather weak wizard and was easily apprehended by the Aurors at the Ministry of Magic. Unfortunately, however, Malfoy had set a most dangerous precedent that was still being followed to this day. Now, four years after Voldemort's second and final fall, Harry had just finished doing away with Apographon, the seventeenth wizard to take up the Dark Lord's place.
"Well if it isn't the wonderful Mr. James Evans?" came a voice from the doorway to his office. The voice came from Harry's boss, June Meretrix, a lusty harlot of a woman who had risen to her position based mainly on the number of dicks she could suck, rather than hard work or talent since she was barely more than a squib. Harry smirked as he thought of this and found it strangely comforting to realize that some things were the same in the Wizarding world as they were in the Muggle world. He stared up at June in her skirt that was hiked up far too much and her blouse that revealed far too much cleavage. Her fiery red hair danced over her pale white neck and her forehead, nearly covering her deep blue eyes. Harry thought she could have been a very beautiful woman if her looks weren't tainted by her disgusting reputation.
Harry knew that June was addressing him, though she did not use his true name. When Harry had begun Auror training four years before, the ministry had decided that the name Harry Potter would draw far too much attention to him, being a household name to most witches and wizards, and would make Harry a target for any Dark Wizards and Death Eaters seeking to avenge Voldemort's death. Thus, the Ministry fabricated a story of Harry's death which they printed in the Daily Prophet (some sort of bilge about his final confrontation with Voldemort driving him to madness and eventually to suicide) and allowed Harry to choose a new name for himself. He chose to take his father's first name, James, and his mother's maiden name, Evans, and was forever more known to the world by this name. Few people knew of his real identity, and those few people were high ranking officials in the Ministry of Magic.
"Returned from disposing of petty You-Know-Who impersonators?" Meretrix asked with a disdainful tone in her voice. She had been jealous of Harry since their first meeting. They had both started Auror training together (how she managed to fulfill the academic requirements to begin Auror training was a mystery to Harry), but Meretrix was quickly forced to leave the course because she simply did not have the power to complete any of the tasks set before her. She had been jealous of Harry's success as an Auror ever since, and Harry got the distinct impression that she had only slept her way into this position to spite him.
"Apographon has been captured, yes," Harry replied, ignoring the tone of her question. After the day he had just had, the last thing he needed was any crap from June Meretrix, and he would not let her get to him today. "I escorted him to Azkaban myself," Harry continued. June snorted as if laughing at the name of the Wizarding prison. Most witches and wizards laughed off the name of Azkaban these days, and not entirely without good reason. The jail no longer held the power it once had now that the Ministry vowed never to employ Dementors again. The Ministry had put a Depression charm on the prison to simulate the presence of Dementors, but it simply did not have the same effect. But Harry remembered how much his former headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, had distrusted the Dementors. Anyone who knew Dumbledore, even by reputation, knew that, if someone didn't earn his trust, they were truly not someone you wanted to deal with.
"Ministry's got a special assignment for you, Evans," said Meretrix coldly. She seemed to avoid ever suggesting that she had any part in giving him his assignments, despite the fact that she was his boss, and she also avoided referring to him by his first name, unless she was using it to mock him.
"Oh, and what kind of an assignment is this?" he asked. He really had no desire to begin on his latest assignment now, not after the day he had. He had already put one dark wizard in jail today, hadn't that been enough?
"Something to do with Beauxbatons," she said, as if she did not want to be giving him information that would actually help him. "Seems that the school has reported three student deaths in the course of this school year. They've been trying to cover it up, but it gets hard to hide the fact that three kids have died of unexplained causes."
"Why is Beauxbatons calling on Aurors from England?" Harry asked, confused.
"Don't know," Meretrix replied, "I guess the Ministry of whatever country they're from-,"
"Oh come off it!" Harry interrupted. "I'm sick and tired of Beauxbatons' bullshit! Trying to hide their school's bloody location! Every witch and wizard in the world knows that that damned school is in France, why don't they just come out and admit it?"
"True," Meretrix replied. Harry was taken aback by the fact that she had actually agreed with him, but then again, perhaps it was just that there were some things she actually despised more than Harry. "Regardless," she continued, "the school asked specifically for the help of James Evans. Don't ask me why-," she rolled her eyes as if frustrated at Harry's reputation, "-but you're who they want, and Fudge thinks that, since our relationship with the French Ministry of Magic is so weak at the moment, it would be good for International relations to do as they ask."
Harry was disgusted. After all he had done for the Ministry, they were now sending him on a simple mission to improve international relations. A lesser Auror straight out of training could handle this mission easily enough. He was the great James Evans, only a year out of the Auror academy and he had already arrested nine Dark Wizards, and allowed none to escape his pursuit. How could they dump such a petty assignment on such an obviously talented Auror as he? As fury built up in the pit of his stomach, he glanced up at Meretrix who was now smirking at him. She looked quite pleased. Harry figured his frustration and anger must be showing through visibly in his expressions. A new rage washed over him, this one directed at June Meretrix herself. He was not happy with what the Ministry was doing, but he would not let Meretrix laugh at his insult. He would hold his head up high as if this did not bother him in the least, and smile as she watched him in helpless frustration.
"Very well, then," Harry replied, his facing developing a smirk as Meretrix lost hers, "when do I leave then?"
Meretrix paused for a moment, as if hoping that Harry's new, more optimistic outlook on his mission would change. Seeing that it would not, she continued on with her short briefing, albeit grudgingly. "You leave in the morning," she replied. "Beauxbatons wants to maintain the guise of secrecy, so they've arranged a portkey for you and your partner-,"
"My partner?" Harry interrupted. His tone and mood changed abruptly. It had been a month since the death of his partner, Jackie Parvus, and the Ministry had still made no mention of providing him with a new partner. He cast his eyes down in shame. Unfortunately, the only pang of pain he felt over Parvus's death was the guilt he felt for not being more hurt by the loss. He had been far too busy with work to truly grieve over her untimely passing, but he still felt like the poor woman's death should have had a much deeper impact upon him than it seemed to be having. Then again, considering the amount of death Harry had seen in his life, it would take the loss of someone far closer to him than Parvus to truly leave him crestfallen.
"Yes," said Meretrix, "the Ministry has found you a new partner." She pronounced the last word with contempt, as if this was a gift that should not be given to swine like Harry. "He's waiting down the hall in the lobby."
Harry stood up from his desk with moderate curiosity. He found it strange that the Ministry had made no mention of a new partner until now, and now someone was being thrust upon him from out of the blue. Then again, Harry was quite accustomed to the Ministry acting in strange ways. He sometimes wondered why he continued to work for such an inept Ministry, but he knew that, as inefficient and corrupt as the Ministry of Magic was, the Wizarding world needed Auror's to protect the people from the wrath of Dark Wizards and those who would use the gifts of Magic power to do harm rather than good. His services were needed, and the Ministry of Magic allowed him to do the job he was best at. The role of the Ministry in his life had become a necessary evil.
He stepped out of the doorway of his office and moved cautiously down the hallway of the Aurors' office. The hallway was made of stone and was only wide enough for two, single-file lanes of traffic to move through. The walls were decorated with enchanted windows which, despite being underground, showed the city of London in the midst of a torrential downpour. The weather outside was, in actuality, nothing like this, but it was the job of the Magical Maintenance crew to decide what whether they had each day, and apparently the crew had been in a bad mood this morning. The corridor opened up to a large lobby, adorned with only two lifts, a visitor's bench, and a plaque inscribed with some obscure motto in Latin.
Harry's jaw dropped. He ripped his glasses off his head and ran his fingers over the lenses to check for cracks, then returned them to his face to make sure that he truly had seen what he thought he saw. His vision became blurry yet again, though, as his eyes welled up with tears. Still, through the tears that distorted his vision into a mess of colors with no coherent shapes, he could still recognize the form of the man he saw before him. He would recognize that red hair and those freckles anywhere. There, sitting on the visitor's bench, was Harry's new partner and old friend from Hogwarts, Ron Weasley. Harry could have sworn he saw the sun poking through the imaginary rain clouds in the enchanted windows.
Chapter 1: The Famous Mr. James Evans
Harry had never been so thankful to see his chair and desk before in his life. He dragged his exhausted body through the doorway of his office- resisting the urge to merely collapse right there in the doorway itself- closed the door with more effort than he ever would have thought necessary, and plopped himself down onto the hard wooden chair behind his desk. He felt the mud of his robes splatter all across the floor as he did so. Normally he would feel sorry for leaving such a mess for the Magical Maintenance Department but, at the moment, he cared little for what trouble he caused the maintenance crew. He had just returned from vanquishing the "Grey Lord" Apographon, which had proven to be a much more difficult task than he had expected. So, as Harry put his muddy feet up on his desk, smudging the print on the countless pieces of parchment littering his desk, he remarked with a crooked grin spreading from the right side of his lip: "Cleaners be damned!"
He had never expected Apographon to pose much of a threat to the Wizarding World, not much more, anyway, than the legions of other Death Eaters who had been springing up to take the newly vacant position of Dark Lord now that Voldemort had finally met his doom. When Harry had finally killed the true Dark Lord in his final year at Hogwarts, he was certain that it would mean an end to the troubles that had plagued Wizards throughout England, and throughout the rest of the world, since Voldemort's initial rise to power. Alas, this tranquility was simply not meant to be. In the wake of Voldemort's death, Lucius Malfoy, one of Voldemort's supporters, had stepped up to lead the Death Eaters in their efforts to rid the Wizarding world of impure, Muggle blood.
Malfoy-despite the power and influence he had always held due to his wealth, and despite his pompous claims to be a wizard of truly pure blood- had proven to be a rather weak wizard and was easily apprehended by the Aurors at the Ministry of Magic. Unfortunately, however, Malfoy had set a most dangerous precedent that was still being followed to this day. Now, four years after Voldemort's second and final fall, Harry had just finished doing away with Apographon, the seventeenth wizard to take up the Dark Lord's place.
"Well if it isn't the wonderful Mr. James Evans?" came a voice from the doorway to his office. The voice came from Harry's boss, June Meretrix, a lusty harlot of a woman who had risen to her position based mainly on the number of dicks she could suck, rather than hard work or talent since she was barely more than a squib. Harry smirked as he thought of this and found it strangely comforting to realize that some things were the same in the Wizarding world as they were in the Muggle world. He stared up at June in her skirt that was hiked up far too much and her blouse that revealed far too much cleavage. Her fiery red hair danced over her pale white neck and her forehead, nearly covering her deep blue eyes. Harry thought she could have been a very beautiful woman if her looks weren't tainted by her disgusting reputation.
Harry knew that June was addressing him, though she did not use his true name. When Harry had begun Auror training four years before, the ministry had decided that the name Harry Potter would draw far too much attention to him, being a household name to most witches and wizards, and would make Harry a target for any Dark Wizards and Death Eaters seeking to avenge Voldemort's death. Thus, the Ministry fabricated a story of Harry's death which they printed in the Daily Prophet (some sort of bilge about his final confrontation with Voldemort driving him to madness and eventually to suicide) and allowed Harry to choose a new name for himself. He chose to take his father's first name, James, and his mother's maiden name, Evans, and was forever more known to the world by this name. Few people knew of his real identity, and those few people were high ranking officials in the Ministry of Magic.
"Returned from disposing of petty You-Know-Who impersonators?" Meretrix asked with a disdainful tone in her voice. She had been jealous of Harry since their first meeting. They had both started Auror training together (how she managed to fulfill the academic requirements to begin Auror training was a mystery to Harry), but Meretrix was quickly forced to leave the course because she simply did not have the power to complete any of the tasks set before her. She had been jealous of Harry's success as an Auror ever since, and Harry got the distinct impression that she had only slept her way into this position to spite him.
"Apographon has been captured, yes," Harry replied, ignoring the tone of her question. After the day he had just had, the last thing he needed was any crap from June Meretrix, and he would not let her get to him today. "I escorted him to Azkaban myself," Harry continued. June snorted as if laughing at the name of the Wizarding prison. Most witches and wizards laughed off the name of Azkaban these days, and not entirely without good reason. The jail no longer held the power it once had now that the Ministry vowed never to employ Dementors again. The Ministry had put a Depression charm on the prison to simulate the presence of Dementors, but it simply did not have the same effect. But Harry remembered how much his former headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, had distrusted the Dementors. Anyone who knew Dumbledore, even by reputation, knew that, if someone didn't earn his trust, they were truly not someone you wanted to deal with.
"Ministry's got a special assignment for you, Evans," said Meretrix coldly. She seemed to avoid ever suggesting that she had any part in giving him his assignments, despite the fact that she was his boss, and she also avoided referring to him by his first name, unless she was using it to mock him.
"Oh, and what kind of an assignment is this?" he asked. He really had no desire to begin on his latest assignment now, not after the day he had. He had already put one dark wizard in jail today, hadn't that been enough?
"Something to do with Beauxbatons," she said, as if she did not want to be giving him information that would actually help him. "Seems that the school has reported three student deaths in the course of this school year. They've been trying to cover it up, but it gets hard to hide the fact that three kids have died of unexplained causes."
"Why is Beauxbatons calling on Aurors from England?" Harry asked, confused.
"Don't know," Meretrix replied, "I guess the Ministry of whatever country they're from-,"
"Oh come off it!" Harry interrupted. "I'm sick and tired of Beauxbatons' bullshit! Trying to hide their school's bloody location! Every witch and wizard in the world knows that that damned school is in France, why don't they just come out and admit it?"
"True," Meretrix replied. Harry was taken aback by the fact that she had actually agreed with him, but then again, perhaps it was just that there were some things she actually despised more than Harry. "Regardless," she continued, "the school asked specifically for the help of James Evans. Don't ask me why-," she rolled her eyes as if frustrated at Harry's reputation, "-but you're who they want, and Fudge thinks that, since our relationship with the French Ministry of Magic is so weak at the moment, it would be good for International relations to do as they ask."
Harry was disgusted. After all he had done for the Ministry, they were now sending him on a simple mission to improve international relations. A lesser Auror straight out of training could handle this mission easily enough. He was the great James Evans, only a year out of the Auror academy and he had already arrested nine Dark Wizards, and allowed none to escape his pursuit. How could they dump such a petty assignment on such an obviously talented Auror as he? As fury built up in the pit of his stomach, he glanced up at Meretrix who was now smirking at him. She looked quite pleased. Harry figured his frustration and anger must be showing through visibly in his expressions. A new rage washed over him, this one directed at June Meretrix herself. He was not happy with what the Ministry was doing, but he would not let Meretrix laugh at his insult. He would hold his head up high as if this did not bother him in the least, and smile as she watched him in helpless frustration.
"Very well, then," Harry replied, his facing developing a smirk as Meretrix lost hers, "when do I leave then?"
Meretrix paused for a moment, as if hoping that Harry's new, more optimistic outlook on his mission would change. Seeing that it would not, she continued on with her short briefing, albeit grudgingly. "You leave in the morning," she replied. "Beauxbatons wants to maintain the guise of secrecy, so they've arranged a portkey for you and your partner-,"
"My partner?" Harry interrupted. His tone and mood changed abruptly. It had been a month since the death of his partner, Jackie Parvus, and the Ministry had still made no mention of providing him with a new partner. He cast his eyes down in shame. Unfortunately, the only pang of pain he felt over Parvus's death was the guilt he felt for not being more hurt by the loss. He had been far too busy with work to truly grieve over her untimely passing, but he still felt like the poor woman's death should have had a much deeper impact upon him than it seemed to be having. Then again, considering the amount of death Harry had seen in his life, it would take the loss of someone far closer to him than Parvus to truly leave him crestfallen.
"Yes," said Meretrix, "the Ministry has found you a new partner." She pronounced the last word with contempt, as if this was a gift that should not be given to swine like Harry. "He's waiting down the hall in the lobby."
Harry stood up from his desk with moderate curiosity. He found it strange that the Ministry had made no mention of a new partner until now, and now someone was being thrust upon him from out of the blue. Then again, Harry was quite accustomed to the Ministry acting in strange ways. He sometimes wondered why he continued to work for such an inept Ministry, but he knew that, as inefficient and corrupt as the Ministry of Magic was, the Wizarding world needed Auror's to protect the people from the wrath of Dark Wizards and those who would use the gifts of Magic power to do harm rather than good. His services were needed, and the Ministry of Magic allowed him to do the job he was best at. The role of the Ministry in his life had become a necessary evil.
He stepped out of the doorway of his office and moved cautiously down the hallway of the Aurors' office. The hallway was made of stone and was only wide enough for two, single-file lanes of traffic to move through. The walls were decorated with enchanted windows which, despite being underground, showed the city of London in the midst of a torrential downpour. The weather outside was, in actuality, nothing like this, but it was the job of the Magical Maintenance crew to decide what whether they had each day, and apparently the crew had been in a bad mood this morning. The corridor opened up to a large lobby, adorned with only two lifts, a visitor's bench, and a plaque inscribed with some obscure motto in Latin.
Harry's jaw dropped. He ripped his glasses off his head and ran his fingers over the lenses to check for cracks, then returned them to his face to make sure that he truly had seen what he thought he saw. His vision became blurry yet again, though, as his eyes welled up with tears. Still, through the tears that distorted his vision into a mess of colors with no coherent shapes, he could still recognize the form of the man he saw before him. He would recognize that red hair and those freckles anywhere. There, sitting on the visitor's bench, was Harry's new partner and old friend from Hogwarts, Ron Weasley. Harry could have sworn he saw the sun poking through the imaginary rain clouds in the enchanted windows.