Chapter 2

A paper airplane circled above, skimming along the surface of the ceiling occasionally which made it change trajectory. Eventually, it would come floating down where someone would snatch it and either file it, toss it, or direct it to the place it was supposed to go in the first place. It was all horribly inefficient, in Harry's mind, but he'd grown used to the way the Ministry worked over the past few years of working there.

The office was quiet for the moment and Harry leaned back in his chair, wincing when his back popped loudly. He was only twenty-two, but some days he felt so much older.

The office was a familiar clutter of piles and odd things tucked here and there. It looked similar to the first time he'd ever seen it, in his fifth year, but somehow there always seemed to be a steady stream of stuff that disappeared into every nook and cranny. Harry supposed that's just how it was with magic. And his partner seemed to know where everything was, or at least had a decent idea of where to begin looking.

It seemed strange to say that he had a partner, even though he'd spent so many of his years with Ron and Hermione at his side. This, however, was different.

After defeating Voldemort, Harry'd been offered his pick of positions at the Ministry. Kingsley had offered to walk him through Auror training personally, but something had made him hold back. The year of chasing clues, hiding from Death Eaters and Snatchers, and fighting for his life had drained any desire for being an Auror.

Ron'd suggested trying out for a Quidditch team, but Harry hadn't been sure that he could really spend his time playing a game while everyone was working to rebuild the Wizarding World.

Hermione had suggested a Muggle University, like she was attending, to broaden his education. But Harry was tired of studying.

When Arthur had casually joked that he could use a new associate in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, Harry's interest had been piqued. He'd never seen himself in the position, honestly, but he and Arthur seemed to work together well. The atmosphere in their office was casual and very rarely stressful, which Harry appreciated. And there were cases that came up that honestly baffled him.

It was the mystery in it all that had him completely enraptured with his job, even three years after he'd taken the position, more out of loyalty to Arthur than anything else. He'd spent enough time-wasting after leaving Hogwarts, and it was time to get on with his life, or at least that's what Hermione kept telling him.

Another airplane joined the first one, but Harry noticed it was a golden color, meant for the Office of Magical Transportation.

"Be off," he told it. "Get to the right place, you ruddy thing."

It hesitated before ducking back out through the window at the top of the door and disappearing down the hallway.

The sound of the door opening made Harry turn in his chair. They rarely got visitors in their cramped little office, but occasionally one of the Weasleys or Hermione would drop by to say hello and lecture Harry about how he was letting his hair grow too long, or hadn't been out with the boys for a drink in too long.

This time, however, it was Arthur who backed into the office, a large cardboard box of something balancing precariously in his arms.

Harry jumped to his feet and scooted around to help balance the box.

"Look what Smithson in Sports gave me!" Arthur's cheeks were flushed as he wrestled the box onto his desk, causing a cascade of files to slide to the floor in a sort of paper avalanche.

Harry was afraid to even look. Smithson was always coming across strange things on his days off and foisting them off onto their office.

"Are they charmed?"

"No idea." Arthur beamed as he clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. "Shall we see?"

Harry fingered his wand, just in case, as Arthur lifted back the flaps of the box with a flourish. He hummed in appreciation and cast a few charms of his own, looking for anything of danger, before reaching in.

"Goodness," he sighed. "What will these Muggles come up with next?"

The mass of wires and plastic parts that he pulled out baffled Harry, until he saw the last piece dangling at the end of the line.

"Now what do you suppose…"

"It's a processor for credit cards," Harry said. He leaned down and lifted the plastic transmitter and, pointing to the part where one would swipe their card. "Muggles put money in their banks, then the banks give them pieces of plastic called credit cards. When they want to make a purchase, they run the card through this and it transfers the money from their account to the store."

It might have been a simplistic answer, but Harry'd tried to explain the concept of credit to Ron before with little luck. Somehow, he didn't think Arthur would understand much better.

"Where did Smithson say he found this?"

"Said some Muggle tossed it out-Smithson likes to go digging through their rubbish bins. He saw the tangle of wires and thought it might be something we'd better look into."

"Not much here, I'm afraid," said Harry. "No unusual charms or hexes associated with it," he murmured as he ran the usual diagnostic scans. There was a faint trace of magic that showed up and Harry wondered about that. It was possible that Smithson had attempted his own amateur magical scans and that had left the residue. Harry pondered over that as Arthur began trying to untangle the wires, becoming horribly entangled himself.

"Anything new come in while I was gone?"

"Nothing important," said Harry. He sat back down at his desk and watched, amused.

"Well, if there's nothing wrong with this, perhaps I'll just take it-"

"No taking anything more home," Harry warned.

Arthur huffed, but they shared a smile. With Harry safely in place as Arthur's partner, Molly had put her foot down that there were to be no more Muggle artifacts brought back to the Burrow or smuggled into Arthur's shop under the guise of research. Harry agreed, begrudgingly, but kept his mouth shut about the small stash of hidden items residing in his own closet at home-some of Arthur's pet projects that were to be kept completely hush-hush from his wife.

"But-"

"Nothing more."

Arthur seemed to sag in resignation, but finally nodded his head. Harry might have laughed, but there was just so much blasted affection between the two Weasley parents that even if Molly caught him bringing home the entire office, she'd yell a little and then give in, banishing the entire lot to the shed.

And all of it had been harmless so far.

Well, except for that one charmed walking cane that had been smacking everyone in the shins. But that was safely hidden away under Ron's bed, unbeknownst to him. One day, he would find it and receive a swift knock in the shins for all of his teasing of Harry.

"Dinner tonight at the Burrow," Arthur murmured as he kept on working with the wires. He'd told Harry already half a dozen times, and it was a standard invitation that Harry never turned down, but, apparently, Arthur felt it needed to be vocalized.

"Yeah. I'll be there. Thanks."

They went on about their day, working-mostly Harry-on a few existing cases and chatting about this and that. It was not a remarkable day, but Harry was content with having boring days occasionally. For so many years, he'd wished for a boring day. He did enjoy the days when he and Arthur would be called out to work on a mystery or two, but routine was what Harry had been craving.

And, he felt, in some small way, he was still making a difference in the Wizarding world, helping keep charmed objects out of the hands of people they would harm, helping heal the rift between Magical and Muggle, just the smallest bit. Plus, he was still active in the Order of the Phoenix when needed.

xxxxx

The Burrow was a welcome sight later that evening. The windows were all lit when Harry apparated to the designated spot and walked through the mucky March mud toward the house. It was warm and inviting, and filled with the sounds that Harry loved the most.

He was greeted as usual, with handshakes, back slaps, and a few kisses on the cheek, and settled right into place laughing with his friends, pinching Teddy's round cheeks, and just enjoying being included.

Ron and Hermione were there-Hermione being grilled by Arthur about the university life. George had brought Angelina, whom he had just started dating, again. Harry tried not to think too much of it, since they had a fairly volatile relationship and were generally on-again, off-again. He never really knew which it was, so Harry'd gotten used to keeping his mouth shut.

Tonks was there with Teddy, which was not unusual since she'd been spending more and more time with Bill over the past year or so. Harry wanted to be bothered by the strange relationship, but he'd found that he really couldn't. After Remus' death, Tonks had been inconsolable and it was Bill, freshly broken up with his girlfriend, Fleur, who had stepped up to make sure that Tonks and Teddy were taken care of.

Mrs. Weasley did her best to fatten Harry up, as always, by having him taste a bit of everything she'd made and chatting away with him like always. She tended to repeat herself often, sharing the same stories over and over, but Harry patiently nodded along, simply thrilled that she was able to talk at all. There was a time just after the war that he wasn't sure she would recover. After Fred's death and the battle at Hogwarts, Molly had slipped into a deep depression and it had been months, if not more than a year, before he'd started to see some of the old life in his beloved Mrs. Weasley again. Her hair was now completely white, and she often carried a deep shadow of sadness with her that Harry understood all too well.

"You're such a love," she said with a hand laid along his cheek. "What would we ever do without you?"

"You'd manage just fine," Harry said as his face heated.

A moment passed between them while they looked at each other. Harry had to look away first. He couldn't stand to see the tears gather in her eyes or the deep longing that he could never hope to fill. Two sons and a daughter lost over the years, even if not in the same way.

"Dad got you running all over England this week?" Ron asked when Harry finally excused himself from the kitchen and Molly's tasty offers.

"Nah. Boring week."

"Blimey, Harry, that smile just never goes away, does it?"

"Leave off." Harry laughed and nudged Ron for teasing him.

"I still don't understand it, but if the job makes you happy."

"It does."

"Alright."

"Hermione doing well?"

Ron rolled his eyes at his girlfriend, but his smile was wider than Harry'd ever seen it. "Yeah. Fine. She's a nutter."

"Nothing unusual, then."

They shared a laugh and chatted about their favorite Quidditch teams and who would come out on top during the next season.

When they sat down to dinner, Harry felt a wave of sadness wash over him for the missing places at the table. There had been a time just after the war that he'd struggled with blaming himself for those empty spots. They'd all been drawn into the war because of him.

That's not right, he told himself, again. The Weasley's would have fought oppression and tyranny all on their own.

And Ginny...well, she had made her own choices.

"Let's eat!"

Arthur's words broke him from his dark thoughts and Harry dug in, trying to remember to smile more and laugh a little louder, in hopes that it might help this family heal just a little bit more.

Xxxxx

"Arthur was telling me that you found a credit card processing machine?"

Later, after dinner had settled low in his belly, making Harry surreptitiously unbutton his jeans under his robes, Ron, Hermione and Harry were lounging in Harry's flat. They'd exhausted the subject of Quidditch, but that didn't stop Ron from nattering on about it.

"Yeah. Not much to it," said Harry. "A source of ours brought it in. There may be some magic involved, but I haven't taken the time to really check. Arthur was busy trying to convince me to let him bring it home."

They all shared a fond smile and Harry lay his head along the back of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. There was a bit of melancholy that still danced along the edges of his mind, and he couldn't seem to dismiss it easily tonight.

"There was a story in the London paper just the other day about shops who had been overcharging customers by only a pound or two," said Hermione. Her brow furrowed as she thought about it more. "I just glanced at it, honestly, didn't really read it through."

"You didn't read it?" Ron asked, receiving a smirk from Harry and a soft slap from Hermione.

"They thought it was something to do with the machines. And the shops themselves never collected the extra money. They were able to prove that much, but they never found where the money was going."

"I thought you didn't read it," Harry said.

"Oh, shut it, you! I skimmed the story," said Hermione. "But nothing in depth."

"Ah."

"You think there's something to it, then?" Harry sat forward, more interested now as the idea rattled around his brain.

"I'm not sure," said Hermione.

"Do you still have the article?"

"Probably. I can send it to you when I get home."

Harry nodded. If there was something involved, even if it was just the chance of something, he'd feel better if he checked it out, at least.

"I never thought I'd see the day when you were so gone over Muggles," Ron said with a chuckle. "It's like you're really becoming one of Dad's sons."

Harry beamed at him. "That might be the best compliment you've ever paid me, mate."

"I didn't necessarily mean it to be one."

"Ronald!"

Ron flushed and stammered. "I mean...I suppose… It's just that none of us ever saw what Dad saw in all of that...stuff, you know."

"That's why we fought, Ron," Hermione said waspishly.

"So that Harry and Dad could muck around with Muggle artifacts all day?"

"She's right," said Harry. "So that we could show that we're not all that different, and certainly not better to them simply because of what we can do. Plus, you forget that I grew up Muggle-"

"Of course, I didn't forget-"

"-so I know quite a lot about Muggle artifacts."

Ron huffed and ran his hand through his hair. "I didn't mean… I just meant that I always saw you as more of an Auror type, you know, more action than sitting behind a desk at the Ministry all day."

"He leaves the Ministry!"

"I'm not stuck there," said Harry as Hermione defended him also. "I go out loads more than you would think. Your Dad isn't as young as he once was, and while he loves to get out and get his hands dirty with stuff, it's usually me that is out tracking down the leads and trying to figure out what's going on with it. And maybe I'm not an Auror, the way we used to talk about, but I really like my job. It's…" Harry trailed off, trying to find the right words for what he felt. "It may have started out as a favor to your Dad, but I've found that I really do like it. It's like a puzzle, at times. And the magic is damned harder than some of the stuff I'd be doing as an Auror. For the most part, I'm doing about the same stuff, I just don't usually get hexed on a daily basis."

His friends just looked at him, blinking. Harry thought back over what he'd said and couldn't find anything that should have made them goggle at him like they were.

"What?"

"That was very eloquent, Harry," said Hermione. She sounded sort of choked up and Harry sputtered.

"I've just been thinking about it, that's all."

"I know I take the piss," said Ron over Hermione's protests of his use of profanity, "but I really do appreciate that you're there for Dad. He had a rough couple of years there with Mum. Some of us weren't sure he was going to be able to go back to work, you know."

Harry nodded. He remembered too well those dark days after the war when they'd all been struggling with the demons that had come along with Voldemort's rise and fall. The Weasley's had been dealing with a fair lot of loss already, and Fred's death had sent Molly spiraling.

"Enough," Hermione said. She shook her head, probably releasing her own sad memories. "No more talk of the past. Only good things tonight."

"Whad'ya wanna talk about, then?" Ron asked as he pulled Hermione to lean into his side.

"What we're going to do when the weather warms up," Hermione said, pleasantly.

"Whatever it is you're planning," said Harry, "don't invite me. I've seen far too much of both of you over the years to-"

"Harry!"

He laughed when Hermione tried to throw a pillow at him and missed.

Xxxxx

Hermione did send the article from the London newspaper and Harry read it time and time again, trying to find where the connection was. When he went into the Ministry the next day it was with a new determination to figure out if the machine they had was connected to any of this mess.

Smithson gave him the exact address that he'd found the machine in the rubbish bin and Harry planned to visit the store this afternoon, once he brought Arthur up to speed.

"I think I'd like to go with you this time, Harry," said Arthur as they dismantled the machine and found evidence of magical tampering. "There's still a bit you need to learn about tracking this type of magic."

If it had been anyone else who said that to him, Harry would have bristled and probably argued, but with Arthur there was an undertone of protection and fatherly affection there that Harry could find no fault with.

"Okay. I'll file the report with the Aurors so that they are on alert if we need something."

Arthur nodded. "Tonks is on duty. It'll be enough to let her know."

Xxxxx

Hours later, they had walked miles all over London, tracing a dodgy credit card merchant who had been signing small businesses up for his services over the past several months. Curiously, not all of the businesses seemed to have been hit with the additional fees charged to their customers. It was rather hit or miss, which was confusing in itself.

"I can't make heads or tails of this, can you, Harry?" Arthur nudged his hat to sit on the back of his bald head and scratched at the edge of it, a nervous habit.

Harry looked down at their notes, trying to see any sort of pattern that would enlighten them to what was going on. Each of the machines they had examined showed the same faint traces of magic. Harry-claiming to be a repairman-had removed the tracing spells and made copies of the store documentation showing the additional charges. He'd promised each shop owner that the charges would be looked into and possibly refunded while Arthur worked his magic with subtle memory charms. They hated to deceive the shop owners, but with no way yet to track whoever was magically altering their equipment, there was no way to return any money.

Twenty-five stops later, the sun was beginning to set and they had a good idea of what the scam was, just not who was behind it. Harry was annoyed and Arthur was not making the situation better by peppering Harry with questions that they had no way of answering just yet.

Tonks was waiting in their office when they walked in.

"I set a locking charm," Harry said with a scowl.

"Pssh. Locking charm," TOnks said. "Amateur. I could break those with my eyes closed now."

"Too much time with Bill," said Arthur with a knowing glance and a waggle of his eyebrows.

Tonks blushed, making Harry laugh. "Did you blokes find anything interesting?"

"Yes and no." He sat down and wondered if removing his shoes to rub his tired feet would be too rude in front of her. But then he remembered that she and Teddy had been having a huge belching contest the last time he'd come to visit them. So, he slipped his trainers off and sent a spell toward his aching feet to massage them while he talked.

"We found the basic idea. You know how credit cards work?" Tonks nodded, so Harry continued. "We think someone posing as a merchant services provider is putting a spell on each machine to capture the card information each time it is swiped or entered-"

"Brilliant idea," Arthur said, "but horribly illegal and misguided."

"And they take small bits of money here or there, nothing ever too large to attract too much attention."

"And before you know it…"

A light went on in Tonks' countenance. "Millions of pounds stolen. Cor. That's right brilliant, and scary as hell."

"Right."

Harry shook his head. "And he's smart, too, because we can't seem to find any common pattern. We walked all over London today and found dozens of shops that he's signed up, but not all of them are having the information stolen."

"Maybe he does it in waves," she said, "as a way to allay suspicion."

"I thought about that, too," said Harry. "I got copies of all of the records." He pulled what looked to be a small, handheld notebook from his pocket, enlarging it as he set it on the desk. Piles and piles of paperwork were there. "It'll take me forever to get through."

"Have Hermione do it for you," Tonks said with a smirk. "She'll have it all indexed, cross-referenced, and categorized for you in an hour."

"You don't know how much I would love to," said Harry, "but she doesn't have the clearance for this."

They trailed off, lost in their thoughts. Harry was imagining spending the next few weeks trying to make heads or tails of the mass of numbers contained in the paperwork.

"Well, while you blokes were out pounding the pavement, I took a walk down to the boys in the International Magical Cooperation offices. What you told me made me wonder if this was a one-off, or if other countries have dealt with something similar."

"Slow day at Auror Headquarters?" Harry asked. He flexed his toes in his socks and then stuffed his feet back into his shoes.

"Exactly. Plus, you two get some pretty interesting cases, if I do say so myself. Anyway, I asked them if they'd seen anything like this before. They started digging through their archives of news stories."

Arthur nearly climbed over the desk, he was so excited. "And what did they find?"

"A similar set of circumstances in Paris, and one in Berlin. It seems this person might be hitting all of Europe's major cities for a few months at a time, hoping to remain lost in the sheer numbers of Muggles."

"But it's not a Muggle," Harry said. "My guess is a Muggleborn, or a wizard with much more knowledge of Muggle artifacts than the usual. He'd have to, to be able to still let the computer systems work with the magic. It's such a subtle spell. Impressive, really."

All three of them shared a look.

"I guess that means I'm going to France and Germany."