Never wish for more than you can handle.

By kage66

Harry thinks he is not happy with his life. But he shouldn't have wished for the change.

In the year 2008 England is peaceful. Voldemort had been vanquished, and in the following years the aurors persecuted every single Deatheater. Even some sympathizers were put to the ever busy mill of courts. Almost a bit like Nazi-Germany in the forties. But this story is not about the wrongs done to get rid of a big evil. It is rather about a single wish. And what came from it.

Great Britain was irenic, as Hermione would put it. It was pacified, quiet, ... in short: boring. Especially when your'e job was to hunt evildoers. And Harry never new anything else. His whole life started with war, that bloody prophecy forced the fight on him, and now? Some people might get tired after decades of fighting. But they new peaceful childhoods, they know different. Harry does not. To him a year without a confrontation seems empty. As the dark forces, or rather dispersed darklings as the perpetrators had been becoming younger every year, became few and fewer Hermione did her trick again: she studied all there was to dark magic, pure-blood legacies, and later even member lists of certain nightclubs, to supply Harry with ever new fights to be fought. But this year she finally had to admit it:

"Harry?" she asked him over lunch at the ministry.

"Hmm?", "You're almost finished with that coven I dug out last November, I realize?"

That made him listen up. Hermione usually didn't ask rhetorical questions. And as she herself was handling the paper war at the ministry, should know better than him that they had sprung the small circle of darklings last month. No one even of age, but a dark coven nevertheless. Something must bothering her, something she felt uncomfortable to talk about.

"Yea, finished that last month. Why? Is there some problem with the paperwork? You know I'm not good at it, but I got nothing better to do, so I might as well help out..."

Her face darkened, that answer said everything she feared. Harry was bored. He never did paperwork. Since Hogwarts she had to drag him to everything that included parchment, or even worse, a quill.

"No, its just..." she hesitated.

"What? Tell me? Another coven? A few kids playing blood sacrifice? Or some Death Eaters wife teaching dark magic?" He somehow got fired up. Anything was better than this... this... waiting and doing nothing...

"None of that. On the contrary, I didn't find even a hint of anything to do. I even triple checked all former Slytherins and relatives to the 5th Grade..."

"You what? I thought you got enough from that Club 'Sal'..." he was flabbergasted, when Hermione hit the 'Books' she always came up with something, right?

"No, that club has enacted some old blood magic to enforce its members to not go bad. True, allmembers pure bloods and Slytherins to core, but to protect the clubs existence they made all members do a blood contract to not go against the anti Voldemort laws. After some spontaneous incinerations they are now clean as they can be. Barbaric these blood contracts, but there is no law against it. They are too much of a custom in old pure blood families..." She trailed a bit off topic. Any topic was better than this after all. But... Sometime she had to go through this, she should have gone through this 2 years ago...

"But what about next months work? That third squad of aurors will be ready to go on a mission, and its become kinda customary to go on the first mission under me..." Harry said with mixed feelings. After all he didn't like being the center of affection, especially with the girls (last 4 years worth of new aurors were over ¾ girls). But on the other hand he had found the arrangement soothing. After one mission he was rid of them and could do his thing. And when things got messy he already knew who not to take on a large scale mission. Not that there had been one in the last 3 years or so.

"Sorry Harry, but... " she hesitated, then finished in a rush: "icantfindanythingforyoutodoanymore"

"Sorry?"

"Were done... The department for prevention of dark magic is doing their job well, nothing to do... Except you might want to do some desperate housewife hunting, or break up some bar fight..." Harry had always refused to do anything auror like that didn't have to do with dark magic. He was a top notch auror after all, and not some kind of empowered muggle police officer. But Hermione teased him with this far too often to actually respond.

And to make things worse, Shacklebolt, the head of the magical law enforcement choose just that moment to drop by and congratulate:

"Ah, Mr. Potter! Good work! Were finally there where everything should be. You can finally relax. Only thing left to do is a bit publicity. Now that you don't have much else to do, how about that reception next month? We expect some VIPs from Germany, France and Italy who still have a lingering problem with leftovers from Grindelwald. Who better to talk to than the famous Chosen One that rid us of ours?" he laughed, "The reception is on the evening of the 25th but the diplomats with their dark arts specialists will be arriving the day before. I'll expect you at 13 hundred hours at the international portkey area." And not waiting for an answer he was gone again.

Silence.

Hermione found her voice first: "That... that was audacious..."

She looked at Harry. Knowing all to well, that he hated this whole publicity stuff. But, that one thing was true: he had nothing else to do, she herself had looked into it, and if Hermione Granger did look into something, what she found out was how it is. Not knowing what to do, unbidden old feelings came up. She had loved Harry for a long time now, but somehow always found a way around starting anything serious. After all, he was taken, somehow, right? First Cho, then Ginny, but as both didn't work out, and all these fan girls freaked Harry out, he stopped dating or rather dated his work. Well she was always with him. OK she tried that thing with Ron, but after the war they started to fight more and more. He complained her job was taking too much time, and she, well, she couldn't get with his idea to become professional. He was Captain of the Cannons and toured the world... So they parted. After that she was always with Harry, as his researcher, his supporter, his friend.

Theirs was a professional relationship right? That being said there was no room for romance. Logic forbid it, and what logic forbid, Hermione would not do. Its as easy as that. At least at first glance. But then. On days like this, when he looked so... Lonely, unloved, unneeded. And finally somehow perused as some figurehead. She couldn't help but feel. She grabbed for his hand like she had done so often those many years back when they faced danger together. All those years before, when Hogwarts, a school that should be totally safe, became a place of evil that Halloween night the Troll surprised her in the girls toilet. She looked in his eyes and, was smitten. Those eyes looked lost. Active fight was his purpose, his reason to be. And now they wanted him to be what? Some 'celebrity' as Snape had put it in their first year? Holding his hands tight, and looking in those green pools, these empty green pools she made a wish. A wish right from her heart, bypassing her intellect. A wish often regretted, although not only bad came from it:

"I wish it would not be over like that. I wish we could move on. I wish I could find something for you to do."

And brightest which of her age called forth some ancient magic without knowing what she was actually doing. As she spoke this threefold wish a flame appeared in those green eyes. Well, not fire as such, but they were not empty any longer, although Harry still looked lost. Something was happening. And soon they should find out just how painfully true her threefold wish should become. The reception was on the 25th right? Well, before that, you need to get through the 24th...

TBC

kage: well... That's what happens if you want to start slow and do only a One shot... You get an introduction to a long storyline. Hope you didn't fall asleep half way through. It's just that my head is so full and this page is so small, that I cant really fit everything on it.

Situation in short: Harry won the war, but lost his reason to live in small portions. Ron and Ginny got bored and went playing Quidditch. They didn't get why Harry could not be happy now that he could stop playing hero. Only Hermione stood her ground and helped him as she always did... (If all things go well I might write some Story about how this situation came to be. Bear with it for now.)