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prologue.

NINETEEN YEARS LATER.

"Can I not come tomorrow?" Draco's voice came through his ears, sending quick and effective chills from the base of his spine to his nape. Harry raised his eyes, pushing the glasses against his nose. Draco was standing right in front of his desk, slightly leaned over it, his hair falling along his face like silver curtains; he had the nearest thing to smile in the corner of his lips and for a moment Harry could do nothing but stair, aware that his chin had just dropped. "I don't Astoria and Scorpius going alone to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. The boy has a wand now and God knows he is looking forward for a reason to use it."

Harry laughed, running a hand through his hair. Draco (was so weird to call him for the first name! In which moment they stopped begin "Malfoy" and "Potter"?) had told him a couple of times about the Civil War his wife and son had established in their home – and Harry had kept it in mind, so he could be grateful for having a quiet and peaceful family. Even if James and Albus spend most of their time bullying each other, neither of them had tried to destroy the silverware throwing it in one another, like the Malfoy.

Even because the Weasley family never had enough money to buy a silverware before.

"Alright." He scratched the back of his neck, sighting. "It is Albus departure tomorrow, too. I want to be there to support him."

"Is he still afraid of going to Slytherin? Looks a lot like his father on this…" Draco smiled, moving some papers from Harry's desk. Both knew the conversation could continue if Draco was in his own desk (which was right in front of Harry's), but there was less than five minutes left until the end of their shift, so Malfoy had the liberty to annoy him as much as he liked, without they ending up in a paper balls' war.

It had been weird, to work with Malfoy, during the first years. Draco's family hadn't been arrested during the hunting for rogue Death Eaters because Harry testified for them – but all of the Malfoy's property was confiscated and they were left a hand in the front and another one behind. After a year of judgment, Andromeda Tonks appeared to him, in the Aurors Section of the Ministry (where Harry was working then, helping Kingsley cleans the place of all the bad seed), asking for help: apparently, her sister (who had renegade her so many times before) had shown in her doorstep asking for shelter and Andy had no other option but help.

The problem was the fact that living under the same roof as a poor Lucius Malfoy could be the hardest thing to imagine – and Andromeda was about to lose her mind and make a slaughter, before turning to Harry. He, the Boy-Who-Lived,-Died-And-Lived-Again had enough credit on the place to get a fair job for her lazy nephew – which meant reach out for Draco Malfoy, the same one who almost killed him the in Room of Requirement. It was almost like the world was nailing a joke. And it wasn't a funny one.

But Harry could never refuse to help – he was too much good guy to do so. Before he had even noticed, Draco had a desk in front of his.

Ron freaked out, Hermione tried to find a way to resolve the situation, Ginny tried to make sure they wouldn't kill each other in the first day and Ron freaked out a little bit more – but in the end, there wasn't a lot to do about it. The first couple of years were rough: the atmosphere between them was so tense it could be cut with a knight; since they had to spend most of time signing papers and biddings (Harry wasn't exactly ready to go back to field just yet and as much as they tried to make it look different, no one trusted Draco enough to send him after Death Eaters), they had to spend a lot of time in together. As soon as it was proven that it was impossible for them to keep a conversation without the room ending up filled with smoke or explosions or flying papers, Kingsley decided to step in and do something.

The Minister knew the tendency was to get worse and worse, so he decided it was time for them to put the differences aside and start working together – and there was no better way if not putting them in a field mission, where they had to follow a couple of sellers of dark objects, probably things they get with former Death Eaters. No one ever knew exactly what happened in the three days Harry and Draco spend together watching the criminals, but they came back with something resembling a truce.

Or maybe a little bit more than just that.

"So I see you tomorrow, then." Draco leaned even closer, leaving their faces only inches away from each other. Harry closed his eyes, but before anything else happened, Draco jumped off the table, which creaked a little under his weight. "G'night, Potter."

"Malfoy…" Harry rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his hair again. No way would he let Draco go without a proper goodbye.

Picking up his briefcase, Harry left his room almost breathless, trying to catch Draco before he gets to the fireplaces. He was in such a hurry he didn't stop to apologize when bumped into someone, dropping all the other man's papers. Harry could still see the silver-like hair of Draco mixed up with the other Aurors going home and with a little luck he would be able to get to him before Malfoy hit the elevators; maybe even get one only for them, if you know what it means.

The person who Harry had hit, however, spend a lot of time watching as he moved away. His hands were shaking and he pressed the papers against his chest, biting his lower lip until it was almost bleeding. If Potter had stopped, even if only for a moment, maybe he could have seen that something was wrong there.

But it was better this way: he wouldn't even see it coming when it reached him for real.

Lowering his head, the man followed in the direction of the elevators as well – but he went lower than anyone else, until the last floor. During the way, no one stopped him or even gave him a second glance; maybe the keeper of the Department of Mysteries, but as soon as he showed him his badge, the man just shrugged and left him go, without even asking what the hell was he doing there when everybody else was leaving. It was almost like he was… invisible.

Well, it was better this way.

He stood in the crossroad of doors, spinning the wand in his fingers. A silver snake was formed in one of them, in high-relief, the same snake he had been drawing there every night. Pushing the door, he entered a dark, empty room, with no windows whatsoever and various layers of dust in the floor.

The man was familiarized with the place; he was the one who had removed all the furniture, tried to clean (but the room itself refused to let him do that) and leave it as good as he could. Even so, cleaning wasn't the reason why he was there: his attention was focused in a full-body mirror in the center of the room, where the words "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi" in husked golden letters seemed to shine.

As gently as possible, he kneeled down, the palms of his hands sweating just to be in the present of the figure reflected in the mirror. This one, with dark-scarlet eyes in slits, like a cat, and a nose as flat as a snake's, looked over him, twitching his lipless mouth.

"Good News, Crowley?" he asked, his voice sounding more like a hiss than anything else.

"Y-yes, Milord." The little man gasped, pointing to the papers in his hands. "E-everything is almost ready. I've already found you a new body, Milord, and I'll be going to the school tomorrow to get it."

"And what body would that be, Crowley?" the other man asked. Crowley searched through his papers, picking up a photo of a young boy with dark, messy hair and big green eyes, very familiar to the man in the mirror.

"His name is Albus, Milord." He stuttered." Albus Severus Potter, Lord Voldemort."