"I'm leaving," says a familiar voice at around five in the evening, and Harry looks up into stern green eyes, adorned by greying, wispy hair.
Merlin, he's tired. He rubs his eyes and blinks stupidly at Luciana for a couple of seconds.
"You should too," his secretary barks again, "since you've managed to spill two cups of tea on yourself today, I think you should leave before any further damage is done to your robes."
He looks down at the brown stains on his right lapel, which he had thought had been rather conveniently hidden in the dark navy of the ministry's robes, but now he looks again it is rather obvious. He sighs, and rubs absentmindedly on one of them with his left hand.
"Have a nice weekend Luciana," he says, attempting a smile. She looks back at him, one eyebrow raised.
"Leave those on my desk if you have other robes to wear home," she instructs. "I'll have those wand-cleaned and pressed on Monday morning."
"Right. Thanks," he mutters appreciatively. He knows Luciana is only looking out for him, but her strict mothering of him reminds him of a dangerous combination of Molly Weasley and Minerva McGonagall, and he isn't sure he could spend much more than the ten to twelve hours a day he already does with her at the office. Being an Auror, he was warned, was a difficult job and involved perfecting the art of reading people. This was something Harry had found exceptionally hard, having a range of emotional intelligence only slightly superior to Ron's. However, he never anticipated the other challenges which accompanied having one's own secretary. A secretary whom preferred to act simultaneously as his surrogate mother.
"And don't spend all of your weekend at that cafe again," she continues, "or you'll come back just as sleep deprived as you are now. I know its almost Christmas, but we have to get all that lot back to Shacklebolt in just over a week," she chides, pointing to the mountainous stack of reports which were lumped in the middle of Harry's disorganised desk.
"Of course," he says, trying to be reassuring. "I've already looked at a few."
Not a lie, strictly speaking. He had looked at the front covers of a few of them over the last three days they had been inhabiting his office. Point was, he had other loose ends to tie up, and the reports wouldn't likely become a priority until they were within 48 hours of their due date. The due date happened to be the last working day of the year, upon which Harry would likely also be stressing about things like Christmas presents and how to convince Molly Weasley he was, in fact, eating enough.
Luciana gives him a reprising look and backs out of his cramped office. "Auror Potter," she says, curtly turning on her heel and striding down the corridor.
The stack of reports looks forlorn and limp, but Harry resists the urge to pick them up and pushes them roughly to the side of the desk. Future Harry's problem, he decides. He wasn't sticking around today to do them. If Luciana was ever right about anything, it was that a tea-related disaster might occur if he tried to push his exhausted mind any farther.
Ten minutes later, Harry pushes open the dark wooden door to Ron's office just in time to see the red-haired Auror shoving his stack of reports messily under his identical desk.
"Not going to happen tonight, is it mate?" he grins, shoving his floppy fringe out of his face. "Look, I know if we get desperate we can just hole up in here and do them together, right?"
"Right," Harry agrees, hoping to Merlin that things don't get to the level of desperation where he has to squeeze himself and his reports into Ron's office to engage in an all-nighter of report reviewing. He and Ron had only been out of the Auror academy for three years, but unlike the field work where their war experience had helped them outstrip their peers, their attention to their administrative work left something to be desired.
Strange as it might have been, entering into the workforce an assumed expert was very overwhelming, however he thankfully hadn't been the only one struggling in that surreal situation. When Ron had suggested moving towards specialising in tactic and strategy, Harry had been wary, as his natural inclination had been towards investigation and field work. He had felt a little lost without his best friend constantly by his side in the field, but at the same time he supposed this wasn't like school, or hunting horcruxes. He wasn't the assumed leader and there was no real difference in skill or power between them. In this new world, there was no Chosen One, no secret connection into the enemy's mind, and, thankfully, no personal threats to Harry's life.
"Look, I have to go home first and help Hermione make dinner," Ron says, roughly levitating and dropping various stacks of paper around his office, "but after that we should get a pint. Larkhill told me some very interesting stories today while we were waiting to interview one of the Kelley brothers. Not to mention," Ron's voice drops to a whisper, "Hermione's dead scary at the moment. This baby's getting to her brain I think."
Despite his fatigue, Harry grins. It was no secret that Ron had been ecstatic at the news of Hermione's pregnancy, but Harry had no doubt that Ron would not be the most well equipped person to cope with any sudden, hormonal outburst.
"Fine with me," Harry says, "I have to go past the cafe first to check on something, so just floo there when you're ready."
Ron fixes him with an exasperated look. "You're just about the only person I know who leaves work to go to work," he remarks.
"You know," Harry says, as a quill gets squashed underneath another mountain of levitated books, "I think they say parenting is a full time job as well."
~.~
The whoosh of the steam wand and the fragrant aroma of the Ethiopian Blend greets Harry as he pushes open the door of the cafe. The spot, hidden away from the remainder of Diagon Alley by virtue of it being situated behind the Apothecary, is one of his favourite spots on earth. Somewhere he could hide behind the ivy covered trellises, and become normal, a nobody.
The shop has only been closed for five minutes, but it appears there is only one staff member left. Harry knows instinctively who is on clean up.
Katie, his seventeen year old barista, darts around the shop floor, levitating stacks of coffee cups and side plates, whilst absentmindedly wiping the tables with a rag by hand. Although Harry personally likes all of his staff members, Katie Cresswell is by far his favourite. She is hard working and diligent, and always there to pull the extra shifts when necessary.
The youngest child of Dirk Cresswell, Katie graduated from Hogwarts a year ago, but has been working on her summer and winter holidays ever since her sixth grade. Harry suspects her hard working attitude is probably a combination of wanting to support her single mother, and trying to push the after effect of the war far out of her mind. He admires that; he's been trying to do the same thing for the last six years.
"You're late," she teases, cocking an eyebrow at him. Her hair is thrown up into a messy bun, which has a ridiculous number of fly-aways, and despite her dry sarcasm, it looks as though today has been a stressful one.
"Mad rush?" Harry enquires, stepping into the kitchen behind the main counter and flicking his wand at the remaining dishes in the large, commercial sink.
"Christmas has got to be the worst time of year," she sighs, now ardently scrubbing at the foam wand. "Meldrid came in again today you know, and I think this time she only sent her coffee back twice."
"You must have made a good one," Harry says smirking. The old lady who frequented his cafe always had a thing or two to say about the quality of her coffee, despite asking for a quarter shot cappuccino with milk so hot it was probably burnt twice over.
"Yes well, I frothed it to about one hundred and ten," Katie says, whooshing the foam wand again.
"Let me guess, not hot enough?" Harry says, openly smiling now. He can imagine the scene in his minds eye. Meldrid, coming in at precisely the same time as twenty other customers, demanding her coffee be sent out first and then demanding two more re-makes to her liking.
"Didn't know you were a whiz at divination," Katie says dryly, then adds somewhat dejectedly, "Martin says he cant come in tomorrow by the way. His little one is still sick."
Harry finishes levitating the dishes into their stacked position. "I was thinking about coming in tomorrow myself, actually. Maybe I can step in for him."
Katie rolls her eyes, "you do know the point of being the owner is that you can pay other people to do the dirty work for you?"
"Haven't got anything else to do," he says simply. He knows he would rather work the eight-til-three shift than do boring things like read the reports that were calling him from his desk at Auror office or help Kreacher tidy his perpetually dusty house. "Besides, sometimes its good to get your hands dirty and mix with the riffraff."
"Pleasure's all mine," she replies, tossing the tea towel on the bench and scrugifying it, "but I'm still working the coffee, so you can do till and floor."
"Yes boss," he smiles. "You okay to open tomorrow? Ron's going to floo in soon, so I can close this up."
"No problems," she says, ducking down to grab her coat and boots from under the cafe bench. "Don't forget the password change though, I don't fancy waiting out in the dark again because you forgot that you changed it."
"Noted," Harry says, waving her out the door.
With the jangle of the door swinging behind Katie, he slumps into one of the vacant cafe chairs and sighs heavily.
Opening a muggle cafe in the heart of wizarding England had been a risk, but the business venture had paid off. The wizarding world had once again returned to their curious infatuation with muggle artefacts, and the coffee he sources from various specialty shops in London is of good enough quality it can coax away even the most ardent butter beer and tea drinkers. The cafe is usually always full, and with Christmas shoppers inundating Diagon Alley in December, the business was struggling to keep up with demand.
The stress of effectively having two full time jobs is another thing entirely. Despite almost never actually working at the cafe, he is always finding himself making the short trudge from the workers exit at the Ministry to Diagon Alley. Mostly, he does various and somewhat pointless tasks such as rearranging the tables (much to Katie's dismay), or potting new plants to hang off the baskets and shelves he has around the place.
He really needs a life. Or a relationship. Or both. Despite being surrounded constantly by people, Harry feels terribly lonely, he admits. Things with Ginny were never going to work out after the war, he quickly discovered. He wasn't sure what had changed, but the young infatuation had dried up so quickly, like old flowers in vase, and the petals had all dropped off one by one until there was nothing but the shrivelled stem left.
He certainly has no hard feelings towards her, but then again, maybe he doesn't have any feelings at all. There is a part of him that worries, inadvertently, that there is nothing left of him to feel. After seeing so many horrors of the war, he hasn't found it easy to slip back in to normal life. Certainly not in the way that his other school friends have, not even like Hermione, who Harry knows still has night terrors and carries a bottle of dittany everywhere with her.
Harry still struggles to sleep sometimes, especially when the house he lives in creaks like it actually is every bit of its four hundred years. 13 Grimmuld Place isn't exactly what Harry had envisaged living in for his adult life, however the draw of it proved too hard to resist. It harbours memories of his Godfather Harry never wants to give up, and Kreacher's attitude change ever since the war has greatly lifted the liveability of the place.
Resting his head on his hands he wonders how long Ron is going to take getting ready. He has work tomorrow, and if he doesn't get to bed before eleven, he might just have to call in sick.
~.~
"Merlin, she's a pain!" Katie hisses, on her fourth Meldrid-inspired coffee. The spiralling, muggle coffee grinder whirls as Katie taps out the excess in the pan into the bin, a little harder than is strictly necessary.
Harry has to agree with her, the old bat has been demanding as ever today, and the shop had only just started to ease up after the mid-morning Saturday rush. He's cleared sixteen tables in the last twenty-five minutes, which is a miracle considering that every single customer, particularly the old ladies, want to stand and have at least five minutes of conversation with him. It's like he's a magnet for people who want to tell him about their garden gnome infestation or want to ask if the Auror Office has done anything about their neighbour who they believe to be breeding dangerous chimeras but whom Harry knows is really just setting off a set of muggle fireworks.
Katie is looking more flustered by the minute and if he's not mistaken, three cylinders of coffee need refilling. Katie shakes the Moroccan blend and frowns, flicking the tab more violently towards herself.
"Harry, would you mind grabbing another, it's awfully popular today," she says, now tapping the cylinder towards herself to get the last of the grind out.
Cursing Meldrid for her love of the Moroccan blend, Harry goes to collect plates from table ten before heading to the storeroom to get more of the coffee beans.
Levitating dishes left behind by the table of six he flicks them neatly into the kitchen behind him. "Watch it, Boss," Levi laughs, ducking beneath the flying side plates. The young cook swiftly moves to the other side of the metallic work bench, grabbing two tubs of ingredients from the fridge behind him.
"Bit out of practice I'm afraid," Harry says ruefully, setting the cleaning charm on the dishes and hurrying to the storeroom to get two more bags of beans.
Levi just chuckles and goes about putting together the order by whizzing ingredients from various parts of the pokey kitchen. Harry catches the carrots and puts them down on the bench as he makes his way down to the back of the shop.
He scours the shelves for a good two minutes before he remembers he can actually do magic, and accio-ing the Moroccan and Ethiopian blend, he grabs both black packets and hurries back out to the front of house.
When he makes it to the bench however, he stops dead. He almost forgets about the packets of beans in his hands. One actually drops to the floor.
"Alright there butter fingers?" he hears Katie say, but he only half registers it. He definitely doesn't turn to reply. He has no time to think about anything else because in that moment his heart leaps to his chest in a moment of panic as he recognises the back of the head of someone he never, in a million years would have thought would enter his muggle-inspired cafe.
In usual Harry fashion, his brain leaps to fifty different conclusions, most of them arousing various levels of suspicion. He isn't sure why he's suddenly so nervous about this turn of events. Maybe, he thinks somewhere in his racing mind, its the after effect of having not seen this particular person in over six years. Not since the battle of Hogwarts. Not since Harry had, quite literally, saved his life. Harry had testified at the trials of course, but he had been called to testify during the amalgamated sentencing hearings, before any of the defendants had actually been called out to face their fate.
The blond hair is slightly messier, slightly less perfect than he recollects. The clothes however, black on black, on more black, are exactly what he expects. The fine, thin limbs and tall stature are the cherry on the top. There's no mistaking it. Draco Malfoy is in his shop.
He has half a mind to tell him to leave. What would a former Death Eater want with an establishment like this? Harry half wishes in that moment the shop was as busy as it had been twenty minutes ago, then he feels as if he wouldn't have had the time to be simultaneously stunned and curious as to why Malfoy was currently sitting at table twenty-one and lazily flicking through the Daily Prophet.
"Hello?" Katie says, jabbing him in the side with her wand. "You dropped the Moroccan blend, for the fiftieth time."
Harry ignores her statement. "Why is Malfoy in my shop?" he blurts out, against his better judgment.
Katie cocks an eyebrow. "He comes in almost every Saturday," she replies, amusement flickering in her intonation. "Only, you wouldn't know that since you usually drop in at eleven and leave at twelve."
Harry pulls a face in her direction. "You're too bossy," he says, still looking over at the back of the blond head. Against his better judgment he asks, "what does he usually order?"
"Hmm, a double shot evil with a side of snob," she says, sarcasm rich in her voice. When Harry doesn't reply, she says "an Ethiopian blend soy latte. Whats it to you?"
"Malfoy drinks soy?" Harry says, eyebrows raised in surprise. He can't help it. His Auror training is going into overdrive and he's making a lot of assumptions about Draco Malfoy's personality right now. He doesn't necessarily need to, in hindsight, he has suffered from Malfoy's personality for years on end, however this piece of evidence doesn't fit the profile, Harry thinks.
"Yes" Katie, all matter-of-fact and tapping the milk jug on the bench to diffuse the bubbles in the foam, "now be a good staff member and deliver this to him won't you?"
Harry balks. He has half a mind to tell Katie where to shove the coffee on her person and go and do the dirty work herself, but he also doesn't want to appear afraid of Malfoy. She catches him staring.
"I forgot you were alumni" she muses, handing him the coffee mug balanced on a large saucer. The soy's nutty fragrance wafts up from the expertly poured latte art that stares at Harry as he accepts his fate.
Harry breathes heavily and wants to disappear into the coffee for a second, but then remembers that he has an investigation to attend to and makes his way over to the table in the far right hand corner.
Table twenty-one is tucked behind an overflowing pot of devils ivy which hangs in tendrils from a long shelf which runs the length of the exposed brick wall. Harry potted a lot of the plants himself, and this corner was particularly full of greenery to make up for the lack of a window. Harry could see the appeal of it, being tucked away in a dark corner but having the benefit of seeing everyone else.
Malfoy, however, isn't taking advantage of what Harry perceives to be a fantastic people-watching location. Instead, he has is back to Harry and is deeply engrossed in something and so fails to see him coming, even when Harry is right over his back shoulder and wondering how he should approach the situation.
"Your soy," he says, feeling very awkward in his own shop.
Malfoy simply waves his hand to the exposed table next to him and doesn't look up from the stack of parchment he's reading.
It's a very Malfoy-esque move, simply waving people and not acknowledging their existence, Harry thinks. He places the soy down a little rougher than anticipated and lingers longer than is probably necessary.
Malfoy doesn't look up. Twat.
So Harry does what Harry does best, and says something that later, he will attempt to kick himself in the face for.
"What are you doing here?" he blurts out, immediately regrets the awkwardness of it, and then realises one cannot literally eat their own words.
Malfoy looks up, appraising him. Harry thinks he can see a flicker of surprise in the pale grey eyes that meet his, but he second guesses himself because in an instant, its gone. The cool, collected gaze that meets his reverts back to its stoic indifference.
"Drinking coffee," Malfoy says, simply, raising a blond eyebrow. "And you are?"
"I work here," Harry says. He's not sure why he didn't say something impressive like "I own this place," which would be true and would also make him look like less of an idiot, but the moment has passed and he just lingers.
To interrupt the awkwardness, the crosses over to the couch opposite the coffee table Malfoy is sitting at, and leans precariously on the arm of it, praying that he isn't too heavy and the whole thing topples over.
When Malfoy says nothing but gives him a somewhat disbelieving look, Harry fumbles onward, "I've never seen you here before, thats all."
"Would you like me to leave?" is the reply. A somewhat surprising one, thinks Harry. He wasn't expecting it, but then again he wasn't expecting to see Draco Malfoy in his shop either.
He pauses, appraising his former classmate. There really isn't much thats changed about Malfoy at all. Perhaps his hairline has receded a minuscule amount, and his hands appear slightly thinner, but aside from that he's still slim, tall and angular.
"No," Harry says, and then thinks about it again. Would he like Draco Malfoy to leave? It is obviously uncomfortable having him there, but then again, Harry has always liked keeping tabs on Malfoy, and from here it would be easy to see what he was up to. A tiny part of Harry's brain also wonders how many people have asked Malfoy over the years to go away. The thought makes Harry feel slightly guilty.
"Do you mind if I get back to these then?" the cool voice replies, gesturing to the pile of papers next to him.
Harry ignores the question, gazing across at the pile of papers stacked up on the table next to Malfoy. "They look as welcoming as the stack I have on my desk at the moment," he says, then realises he's just told Malfoy he works in a cafe and isn't sure if the other man is going to be able to follow his somewhat disorganised thought process.
"At your desk…in a cafe?" Malfoy asks, sarcasm rich in his voice.
"Er no, my other job" Harry replies.
"How many jobs does someone like yourself need?" Malfoy retorts, then adds, "surely people are falling over each other to give you their first born child, let alone anything else you may need."
The reply hits a nerve with Harry and he feels irritation flicker through him.
"Surely you don't need to work, Malfoy" he says, with a slight undertone, "your family Gringotts vault could buy you anything in Wizarding England."
"So it could," Malfoy says simply. Infuriatingly, Harry thinks.
Malfoy could at least show simple niceties to him. After all, there's a good chance that if Harry hadn't chosen to testify at the sentencing hearings, all three Malfoys could be spending their days in prison. In which case, Malfoy wouldn't be able to be annoyingly superior about his suspicious desk job, and file through his precious reports and sit in Harry's coffee shop just to ruin his day.
Harry realises that he is being somewhat dramatic, but there is something about his former school rival that has had the ability to irritate him by mere presence. Malfoy wasn't the sort of being that could just pass through one's life unnoticed. He was more of an an annoyingly consistent character who knew the best ways to prod and poke and infuriate Harry at every conceivable occasion. Somewhat like a mosquito, really. Except taller, more aristocratic and less likely to actually suck your blood, although that wasn't conclusively ruled out.
He pushes himself up off the arm chair and is relieved when the furniture doesn't tip. Those extra kilograms Molly had force fed into him really hadn't done too much damage.
"Well," he says slightly tersely, looking for a way to escape the situation which his curiosity had led him into, "I hope they're not as tedious as they look."
Its a very boring and lack lustre reply, Harry thinks. He never had Malfoy's wit, after all. But he did have much better flying skills, and he didn't have a Death Eater as a father, and that was something to be thankful for.
As he turns to leave Malfoy to his papers however, Malfoy calls out "Potter, did you make this?" He flourishes his hand toward the soy latte sitting in the mug.
"No" Harry replies, somewhat intrigued, "why?"
"Oh," Malfoy says, and Harry thinks he can detect a hint of disappointment in his voice, "because the milk is lukewarm."
A wave of irritation crashes over Harry and suddenly he doesn't give a damn about professionalism. He has to nip it in the bud, because the cafe simply couldn't afford Meldrid 2.0.
"Sod off, Malfoy" Harry says over his shoulder and stalks back to the kitchen.
This time, he hopes Malfoy really does sod off.
He doesn't.