Harry Potter sat in his office, the four foot by twelve foot prison only large enough to house a desk and the small spinning chair that Ginny gave him as a gag gift last year. Before shit hit the fan.
He sighed as he slumped forward over the massive amounts of paperwork (filled with questions such as: Time, Place, Reason for Dispute, Magical leanings, and, for some strange reason-he suspected Hermione was behind it-the presence of magical creatures) that theoretically had to be done ASAP. His fingers ran nervously through the graying curtain of black hair as he thought about the way his life had unexpectedly started to deteriorate even as he rose admirably through the ranks of Aurors and gained unwarranted, unwanted prestige as the man who finally beat Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody's record for most captured but least killed.
Ginny Potter, his wife, up and left him at the end of last month-taking all of his children-with her, refused to let him see them, immediately informed him that she two-timed him for eight years with Dean Thomas, and that a divorce was forth coming. When he'd begged, pleaded and attempted to connive with his mother-and-law to see the children, Ginny had stomped up to him, wove her wand in his face, threatened him and finally broke.
According to her, Lily hadn't even been his child having been conceived during a rather raucous three way between Dean and his life partner Seamus Finnigan. She had gotten so close to his face that their noses touched as she snarled how that had been the most aroused she'd ever been before describing the encounter in vivid detail. He remembered being rather more preoccupied that her face had gone charmingly red and made the mistake of telling her so.
He smiled as he remembered how she spluttered to a stop, before he asked her why she was doing this to him. She had shoved him several paces back because he'd gone to tuck a string of hair behind her ear where it had escaped from her pony-tail. He could see the children behind her in two of the Burrow's lowest windows as her eyes narrowed in rage.
"Because," She had screamed at him, "Because you are so stupidly self-involved that everything you touch breaks, because you've always wanted to touch me but wanted to keep me from self-destructing- don't you even dare try and deny it Potter, I saw it in your eyes-because all I've ever wanted was your money... Not because I've ever loved anyone as much of a spoiled brat as you..." He had taken a step back as if he'd been slapped. She continued and moved forward as she brandished her wand. "Then there's your drinking problem. And the fact that you named all of the children that I'd carried in my womb after dead people and that your hair never behaves. Because it was all your fault that every single member of your family and half of the wizarding population are dead and..."
Harry put his head in his hands again. He remembered the rage that had filled him as he turned on the spot and apparated away from the premises with the feeling of having just been punched in the stomach by something that resembled a large battering ram. He'd appeared at some strange hill-side that he vaguely remembered from the Horcrux Hunt Fiasco to keep himself from either starting a duel or yelling back at his wife. He hadn't wanted the kids to see him loose his temper.
He sighed as he ran a hand through his hair and then returned to his paper work as resigned as he could possibly be. Work wasn't cutting it lately. As much as Ginny would have loved to claim a workaholic problem, his job wasn't his main purpose in life... Yet again, he wasn't sure if even he knew what his purpose was. The adventures of his job staled from exposure and the helplessness of the jobs he worked (mostly homicide, missing persons, and abuse cases) invaded his soul with the corrosive poison of survivors guilt. Especially, as this month tended to be one of the worst for him.
Since his school days, May gave him nothing but pain. Quirell in first year, the Basilisk, the Dementors and time turner, then Cedric and the Graveyard, Sirius, Dumbledore, and (perhaps the worst of it) the entirety of the next year: May never gave him pleasant dreams. All it did, it seemed, was bring him pain and loss. He rummaged in through the bottom drawer of his desk.
At least, Ron and Hermione found solace in each other. They'd married, had their two point five children, and lived very well for their salaries. He often wondered how they'd done it, but he knew not to ask. The superior pitying looks would come back, and he wondered vaguely if they were also making money off of him. He didn't want to know. They, at least, went through a lot of the things that he had and stayed with him despite his upcoming divorce, his problems after the war, Teddy.
He took a deep breath as he dragged out the small bottle of Firewhiskey from his desk; he set it on the top of fifty different reports he had yet to finish that all looked the same. Harry took to buying small bottles of the stuff because he knew if he brought the large ones to work he would be under the influence more often than not. Teddy would probably kill him if he found out about this stash and Harry wasn't quite sure if he wanted to be proud he raised such a good kid, or annoyed that he now had another baby-sitter. Most of the time, he was pleased.
Often, Hermione asked him about how he felt and whether he was getting enough sleep (she relished when she was able to use the stuff she had learned at muggle University about Psychology, or something that sounded like that) or would get Ron would take him out for a drink so that the two of them could talk. He appreciated it, most of the time, as the chronic self-hate generally impeded the work he did and made it hard for him to continue when he constantly wondered if he had done the right thing by coming back.
To top most of his anxiety, something-or someone-kept breaking into Grimauld Place.
After the war, he refused to live there-though he occasionally visited while Kreacher had been alive, but that was some years ago-because the house convinced Harry that Sirius still haunted the rooms of the place as he had in life. The thought tended to be more bitter than sweet.
But Harry wanted to make sure that Mundungus Fletcher refused to come to the place. A small smile grew on his face as he remembered one of the many times he threatened the thief and it made him feel just slightly better.
Despite his dislike of the air when he visited, the house still belonged to him and he supposed he wanted to make sure that James inherited something that meant a great deal to him. (James liked the thought of living in someplace that held significance to one of his namesakes and the fact that it was haunted simply made it better. Harry often wondered whether the genes of being impossible skipped a generation.) So, keeping his inheritance safe seemed to be one of the more important things lately since Harry wanted to do right by at least one of his children.
Last week's annual visit showed him recently disrupted dust footprints through the foyer, a slept in bed in the room theoretically still belonging to Sirius, and more rat skeletons than he remembered from his last visit. But he couldn't find the intruder, even with the skills that he'd lately gained from his job. So he set up sensory spells to see if the intruder returned, with the thought of trapping them. He cast his eye toward the clock on his desk which told time, the locations of all his children, and happened to be the thing he tied an alarm to the sensory spells.
The intruder had yet to return. He sighed and replaced the Firewhiskey back where it belonged. Harry had a sneaking suspicion they would return tonight. Besides, he wasn't the only one in the Auror office tonight.
"Potter."
"Speak of the Devil and he shall appear," Harry thought glumly as he returned his quill to the large stack of reports and scratched a little bit more into the parchment's surface. The only other person in the office descended upon him and he decided to ignore him as long as possible.
"Potter... Potter!" The voice called again.
Harry slowly turned his head toward the source and distinctly wished he was somewhere else. Tahiti, maybe.
The Head Auror stood over him and glared at him from his place by the door of Harry's cubicle. He was taller than Harry with a significantly messy honey blond head that looked quite different from his—accomplishing the impression that he'd just been shagged rather than had stuck his finger into an electrical socket—and his face looked sharp though more dainty than the usual pure blood male.
"Scamander," Harry said as he returned to his work. He often wondered whether he made the wrong decision when he refused the job last September, and the September before that.
This prat, while previously married to his late friend Luna Lovegood, tended to be one of the worst that he served under in his 17 years in the Auror department. He could have handled blatant favoritism or dislike (in this case, the feeling would have been mutual), but Rolf Scamander micromanaged everything. It reminded him vaguely of what he imagined the teachers at Hogwarts faced during the reign of Dolores Umbridge.
"Have you finished the reports on the Xenophilius Amourwell case yet?" Scamander phrased most of his demands as questions, though Harry couldn't really be surprised about the nature of this particular question.
Three weeks ago, Luna Scamander nee' Lovegood had been found murdered in her kitchen beside a bloody kettle that at one point held the tea of the Plimpies. Despite his practice at seeing dead bodies, Harry almost threw up when asked to begin an investigation and he saw his school friend on the checkered laminate floor.
She was beaten bloody, bruises littered both her face and shoulders that could barely be seen underneath the now matted, bloodied blonde hair. Marks that looked like bites lined her legs and issued puddles of blood onto the multicolored skirts that Luna loves... Loved... wearing. Some of the damage seemed spell created, like the partially healed lacerations on her back, but the rest seemed to be similar to some of the cases he remembered from the few times he had gone out on the job with Dudley. (It still seemed strange that even after the hard reconciliation between the two of them, that both he and Dudley were attracted to Law Enforcement jobs. After so many years of being very different from Dudley, it surprised him that the two of them were so alike.)
It was brutal. His inquiries felt like he was perpetually running in circles: none of the household staff would tell him the truth, the twins (Lorcan and Lysander) decided that neither of them had been in the household that day (and he was sure that there was nowhere else they could be as Hogwarts had sent them home three days previous), he could make neither heads nor tails of his boss's statement, and even less of Luna's little sister that he had no idea existed.
They all told the stories of having business out of the house that day and that only two persons had been at the house during the few hours the murder had taken place. One of these people was Luna Scamander's sister Sol and the other had a significant relationship with the lady of the house that seemed to most of the staff as sexual. (Harry didn't believe this, and figured that the suspect simply had a small crush on her. After all, Luna had been ethereal and utterly too beautiful for her own good that her uniqueness spread over too well.) Luna and this person fought the day before over something that nobody really knew because all that saw it seemed to be too far away to hear anything. Sol Lovegood claimed to have caught the other person beating Luna over the head with the kettle before running out of the front door, then Sol attempted to chat to Harry about fresh-water Plimpies.
And Harry couldn't find the subject to get his statement. The tales seemed to gel too well, which seemed a bit fishy, but the best suspect seemed to have disappeared.
Scamander's assistant, a small looking boy that looked to be a fifteen year old by the name of Xenophilius Amourwell, usually followed Rolf Scamander around like a lost little puppy whenever Scamander showed his face in the office. He reminded Harry of a younger Teddy, but where Teddy had morphed his hair into a light brown because it reminded him of his father—Remus Lupin—young Xenophilius's seemed like they belonged to him. Actually, a lot about the lad reminded Harry more of Remus Lupin than Teddy.
Where Teddy was boisterous and loud in his mischief making, Xenophilius Amourwell seemed to be quiet but Harry caught the boy setting one of Teddy's perpetual whoopie cushions on the Head Auror's seat before a press conference that led to exactly thirteen articles about Scamander's incontinence. And Teddy never allowed anyone else near his prank stockpile, which meant that the lad had probably stolen it. But petty thievery was much different than murder.
"Potter."
Harry sighed, he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "Rolf, it's two-o-clock in the morning. What does it look like?"
"You better have it on my desk by Monday morning... War-hero or not," Scamander snapped as he moved from Harry's cubicle to the apparation point down the hall in a way that reminded Harry eerily of Professor Snape.
As soon as he was gone, Harry's head hit the table as he groaned at the lack of progress. Why did Amourwell run? It made no sense. If he was indeed involved in the murder, surely an intelligent fifteen year old boy would realize that running would implicate him? Maybe panic had gripped him. But that didn't explain why he hadn't run when he realized Sol Lovegood watched him murder her sister. He curled his hands in his hair as he tried to think even harder why the kid would even murder Luna. And Harry hadn't pegged him as a killer, which was strange as he tended to have a second sense about those things.
Maybe if he had more information, he could find the reason for Amourwell's perceived guilt and more about a child he hadn't really thought about. He'd ask one of the twins as they would probably be closer to Xenophilius's age, and when he could not find a suspect... Asking their peers seemed to be the best option, he'd contact Lysander tomorrow before he returned to Hogwarts; he seemed to be the weaker of the two.
The lights began to dim in the office and Harry supposed that he should probably head home. It was only Friday night, or rather Saturday morning, after all; he could sleep and not think about the case. But the thought of his little home on the edge of London-dark and cold without his family—made him pause. It reminded him a little of Grimauld now that Jamie had joined his siblings at the Burrow as Ginny had gotten to the platform before he did.
A small breath of air issued from his nostrils as he returned to the preliminary reports. They were more style appealing than an empty house.
The sound of a quill scratching idly against parchment echoed through the empty office for the next hour as he recorded all of the statements in order of time. He glanced up at the clock every-so-often to make sure that his children were still where he thought they were (the clock was more advanced than Molly Weasley's that told her more what the children were doing than where—his pinpointed their exact location, for example, James's line said "Burrow- Top Floor, Bed" while Ted's read "Leaky Cauldron- Corner of Bar, Barstool" it was rather more useful) before returning to work.
His hand had just penned the last period of his final statement when the alarm went off. It was shrill against the sudden silence and Harry stared at it briefly as he stretched. He then remembered what it was for, threw down the quill before grabbing his cloak and running at full-speed toward the apparation point where he disappeared with a crack, leaving the office in darkness.