Sentience

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Goldensnitch18

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Rated M

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Summary: When the Room of Requirement returned to its place on the seventh floor, the Headmistress and Deputy Head were hesitant but excited. They quickly discover that something is wrong and call in Auror Potter to help them figure it out. No one knows why the Room of Requirement seems to be sentient and seeks to please, but Harry and Pansy are going to find out.

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Disclaimer: I am not profiting from this story.

Anything you recognize belongs to the great and mighty JKR.

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Chapter One:

The foreign room was black, but a small amount of light filtered in from the window beside the bed. As the sound of cars met his ears, Harry Potter, Deputy Head of the Auror Office, Boy Who Lived, and twice defeater of Voldemort, fumbled around on the ground on his hands and knees, searching for his trousers. There was a beautiful woman asleep in the bed - her bed - not far from where he crawled. A white sheet wrapped lazily around her body as she slept, letting out soft breaths. She was nice. At least she had been over the last several hours since he had met her.

Dean and Seamus had forced him out the night before, insisting that he needed the break, and it had been too long. He appreciated their concern, but time with them seemed to nearly always end with him scrambling around on the floor of some Muggle woman's flat searching for his trousers. Not that he could really blame them for that. He was a grown man. He made his own choices. It was just hard to miss out on the opportunity to be with a woman who had no expectations of him outside of that night.

His fingers met jean, and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He did not want to have to turn on the lights. He wasn't interested in giving her lame excuses about work when they both knew they weren't going to be seeing one another again. She thought he was a detective, which was near enough to the truth, but he had no intention of telling her who he really was. His name meant nothing in this world. Even after all this time, the idea of anonymity was extremely attractive to him. This woman would all but forget about him soon enough. That would never happen in the Wizarding World, which was why he kept these nights to himself.

The papers had been after him for years, ever since the break up with Ginny. They had been together seven years after war. Through her last year of Hogwarts, Auror Training, and her first several Quidditch seasons. They had been happy, or so he thought. He hadn't been ready to get married, to settle into children and a real home. He imagined one day those things would be appealing, but for now, they held little weight. At first, Ginny hadn't been interested in them either. They would tease her mother about her wedding jokes and shiver in dissatisfaction their friends would announce they were expecting. A baby seemed like a ridiculous amount of work, especially for an Auror and a Quidditch player. Half the time they weren't even in the same country.

But, slowly, Ginny started to hint that she might be ready to risk some of her freedom in exchange for deeper commitment. She began to talk about the children they might have one day, or the house they would buy after they were married. The night Ron proposed to Hermione, they had gotten into a screaming row about whether or not they were ever going to settle down. Harry hadn't been ready, but he had tried. He bought a ring. He talked to Ron and Arthur. He nearly even gave it to her, and then he hadn't. They were sitting at dinner in her favorite restaurant, and he had looked across the table, and been unable to give it to her. She had moved out of Grimmauld the next day, and that was that.

The papers followed the break up with fervor, as well as Ginny's rebound turned husband, Blaise Zabini, and her quick pregnancy with their first child, a girl that seemed to be adored by everyone who knew her. Harry even adored her, despite the awkward tension that seemed to exist between him and her parents, but his interest in children continued to run no further than helping to ensure his godson was a happy, well adjusted kid who happened to be spoiled just enough to not turn him the way of Dudley as a child. Harry was pretty sure he had been over Ginny before that night in the restaurant, but it was still odd to see her with someone else three years later. The papers played it up as unrequited love on his part, but it was truly disinterest and awareness that women still looked at him now the way Romilda Vane had looked at him back at Hogwarts. His name meant something, and he prefered to not let it have a role in his love life, so he just didn't have one.

Harry regained his footing, pulling the trousers up off the floor as he moved. He slid them over his feet and pulled at them, shaking the jeans up his legs before he snapped the button shut. He had to get to work. His days started early and ended late. The Deputy Head of the Auror Office never slept, at least not since he had accepted the job two years ago. However, he did drink coffee like water and imbue the occasional Pepper Up when caffeine alone failed him. He hadn't been to Grimmauld to sleep in three - or maybe four - nights, choosing instead to nap on the couch in his office for short intervals and live out of his closet. He would crash sooner or later. His bed would become his home for three or four days, and the cycle would begin again.

Once his jeans were in place, resting securely on his hips, jumper pulled down over his chest, Harry double checked that his wand was still safely tucked into the long pocket that ran down the side of his thigh. He spared one last look for the sleeping woman before he shuffled across the floor and out the door of her bedroom to hunt down his missing shoes.

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By the time Harry had used the shower, which was supposed to be a rarely utilized convenience, changed into his Auror robes, and made it back to his office, the chair across from his desk was occupied by one of his best friends. Ron looked up from the file he had been looking at as Harry entered before tossing it back onto the clutter of the large desk in front of him.

"What are you doing here so early?" Harry asked. Ron usually rolled in several hours later than Harry, when normal people were showing up for work in their department.

"Hermione wants to go look at a house tonight," Ron told him. "Gotta get out of here early." Ron and Hermione had been living in a small one bedroom flat for four years now, and they both hated it. Hermione had no room for her books, and Ron wanted a garden. He hated being stuck inside. Harry had also recently learned that they were deciding when to start trying to have a baby, hence the house hunting. It was odd to think that one day his best friends, now married for going on two years, were going to have a baby of their own. It hadn't escaped his notice, or the reporters, that he was a very elite member of a dwindling number of their classmates who hadn't settled down.

"Think it's the one?" Harry teased with a chuckle. They had looked at nearly thirty houses now, and Hermione was apparently increasingly difficult to please with each one.

"Prolly not," Ron grumbled. "We'll be seventy and still in that damn flat if she doesn't stop with the direction of the breeze flowing through the windows in the bedroom nonsense. I'm tempted to just buy one without her and be done with it."

"That would go over well," Harry agreed, inwardly thinking that Ron would be living at Grimmauld for a month if he ever had the nerve to go through with such a plan. As he spoke, he fell into his desk and started to pick through the mail that had been deposited there since he left the night before.

"Anyway, wanted to know if you want to get lunch today?" Ron asked, but Harry was frowning down at the pile in his hands.

"Post from Neville," he told Ron, ignoring the lunch invitation.

"Neville?" Ron asked. It wasn't that they didn't see Neville. They did. When the lot from Hogwarts would get together he would be there, and that was once a month or every other month, but it was odd to get post from him. He was busy at Hogwarts. He'd been either training under Sprout or teaching Herbology for all of the ten years since the war, and McGonagall had picked him as her Deputy Head just this year.

Harry set down the rest of the letters and pulled open the seal on Neville's, scanning the words quickly. "Wants me to come out to Hogwarts. Something urgent he needs help with."

"That sounds great," Ron mused.

"Yes. Urgent and Hogwarts always makes me feel like it will be an easy day," Harry said. His mind was racing, trying to figure out what could be happening. Hogwarts made a point of not involving the Ministry in their day to day operations. There had been moments, mainly when Harry had been in attendance, that the Ministry had tried to intrude anyway. This kind of move had never ended well for them. Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Minister of Magic, and Professor McGonagall, current Headmistress of Hogwarts, seemed to have a very clear understanding of where the Ministry belonged and where it did not when it came to the students and their care.

Actually, Kingsley had proven to be a great leader in the past ten years in more ways than just his understanding of the need to let Hogwarts be Hogwarts. He had pushed Hermione into positions of power that she would have otherwise avoided, finding herself much more comfortable in support positions where her power could be wielded behind a curtain. Kingsley had rid her of this notion, displaying with clear determination evidence of his reasoning for her to take over leading the Care of Magical Creatures Department just last year. He had begun to encourage her to look higher and to reach into other departments as well. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Kingsley had already decided who he would like to see himself replaced with when the time came for such a transition of power. Harry hadn't mentioned it to Hermione yet, but he and Ron had discussed the possibility. Ron seemed open to it, if just a bit hesitant about whether or not she would want the job.

"You going out there then?" Ron asked, and Harry sighed. He really didn't have time to spend the day at Hogwarts, but he didn't have much of a choice. If Neville was writing and claiming it was urgent, there was something that needed addressed.

"Suppose I have to. I'll have to let Carlin know I'm leaving for the day." Harry looked at the rest of the mess on his desk. All things that needed his attention; cases, people, paperwork. Some of it was red tape, but a good majority of it was important. He hated pushing work off that needed done. He stood, pushing his body up with is hands on the edge of the desk. He looked around the piles, reaching for a few things, considering what he needed taken care of the most. "You have time to look at some of this for me?" he asked, glancing up at Ron.

"Yeah, of course," Ron told him.

"Just get to what you can, leave the rest back on my desk, and I'll try to make it back tonight to finish up what's left." Harry handed him a small stack of papers and files, and Ron stood, pulling the pile against his side.

"No problem. Hope everything is okay out there," Ron told him before he moved to leave the office. Harry looked around, trying to decide if he should take anything with him. In the end, he decided not to. Neville's note had been short and lacking any detail that may have led him to pack any materials or tools. Perhaps it wasn't really a big deal after all. He would have liked this to be true, but something tickled at the back of his neck and shot down his spine, making him feel a way he hadn't felt in over ten years. Something was going on at Hogwarts, and it was calling him back to deal with it.

A/N: I'm insane and starting another WIP because I love the plunnie, and I want to share it with you !

Hansy is not a ship that I have ever read or sought out, so I hope that you enjoy this and aren't disappointed if there are traditional expectations of this ship that I am not aware of and fudge a bit. Hopefully it will be new and unique? We shall see!

Glad to have you as always !

xoxo

Meg