Beta(s)/Alpha(s): Nixied, Capitu
Artist(s): digthewriter
Word Count: ~50k
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Harry/Ginny, Albus/Scorpius, Harry/Draco
Other key characters: Ron, Rose, Hugo, Hermione, James, Lily
Era: Canon compliant
Content: Major character death(s) and emotional infidelity.
Summary: Harry and Ginny's marriage has been in trouble since the beginning, but they had the kids to raise and careers to keep them busy. Now the kids are all at school, except James who's starting his own career, Harry is at a desk as the Head Auror and so is Ginny while working for The Daily Prophet. They're working on problems they've been brushing aside for years. When Scorpius Malfoy, their son Albus' best mate, goes missing from Hogwarts. Harry is torn between finding Scorpius before it's too late, and keeping his falling-apart family together.

Despite how angry Albus was at him, Ginny still felt Harry should keep his promise to Lily and take them out for a weekend. Albus wasn't happy about it, but he couldn't very well refuse. They were still his parents. He refused to look at Harry the whole way to their house, and once he got there he went right to his room without even saying hello to his mother. Lily had been quiet the whole way, but at least she smiled when she saw Harry and had given him a hug.

'Well,' Ginny said as she gave Lily a hug and Albus stormed up the stairs. 'That was pleasant.'

Harry sighed. 'I told you.' He winced as Al's bedroom door slammed.

Ginny looked up the stairs and shook her head. 'He's just upset. Anyone would be. You were impossible after Sirius died.' She released Lily, who grabbed her things and headed up the stairs herself.

'How was I "impossible"?' Harry asked, trying not to sound offended; although he clearly was.

Scorpius wasn't dead, but he didn't say that out loud. He needed Ginny's support with the kids home that weekend. He couldn't take fighting with Al and Ginny at the same time.

'You wouldn't listen to anyone, you fought with people more, you were just . . . difficult.' Ginny shook her head and walked up the stairs. A moment later Harry heard her knocking on Albus's door. He let her in, and Harry went to his study.

The next morning, Harry took the kids to visit Ron at the shop. Ginny bringing up Sirius the night before had reminded Harry of everything he'd been feeling at that time. He didn't want to talk about it, and had just wanted to be left alone. He tried to compare his feelings to Al's, but the situations were far too different. He didn't sit in limbo waiting to hear if Sirius was alive or what torture he was enduring. There was a brief moment of that the night he went to the Ministry, but not the prolonged knowing his best friend was alive and in pain but not for how long.

Lily tried to force conversation and Harry participated, but Albus mostly looked at the ground and kicked the snow as they walked through London. It was the dirty, dead looking part of winter. It matched their moods too much, and Harry wished it would snow again, so that he could be reminded of how beautiful snow could be. Albus loved the snow.

Once they arrived at the shop both kids abandoned Harry to go look around. Harry went to the register where Ron was stocking up the impulse items.

Ron took one look at Harry and said, 'That bad, huh?'

'Ginny wants me to talk to him,' Harry began explaining. 'Albus refuses to talk to me. I can't even get him to look at me.' Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'I don't know what to say any way. I'd only make it worse.'

Ron nodded. 'I could try . . . or you could ask George.'

Harry wasn't too sure about that. George had been depressed for years after Fred died. And though he had married and had kids, and the shop was still successful, he was never quite the same. Though his relationship with Fred would be more similar to Al's with Scorpius, the situations were still as different as his own with Sirius. Fred's death was in the middle of a battle. And Harry kept reminding himself that Scorpius wasn't dead. He was out there somewhere.

They just had to find him.

'Where is George?' Harry asked.

'Upstairs.'

'Brewing or inventing?'

Ron smiled. 'A little bit of both.' He rummaged around the cash register until he found a rolled up parchment. 'If you want to go ask him, could you take this with you?' He handed Harry the parchment. 'It's everything we're low on.'

Harry took it and headed up the stairs. It had been a while since he'd been up there and he couldn't remember which door led to the shop, which one led to the apartment, and which ones were just storage closets. He tried the first door on his left and it was locked. He went to try the first door on his right when George popped out of the last door at the end of the hallway.

'Hi Harry,' George said. 'Can I get something for you?'

'Um, no.' Harry handed the parchment to George. 'Ron just said you needed this.'

'Ah, the stock list. Thanks.' George looked a little worn down, but that could have been from lack of sleep if he was inventing as much as Ron said he was. Or trying to invent something at least. Harry imagined what George might have to say to Albus about what life was like without Fred, and Harry decided that it was a really bad idea to have him talk to him.

Albus never much got George's sense of humour. If he tried to joke around with it, to try and make Albus smile it would only make the situation much worse for Harry. It would upset Albus, not comfort him. If he told him that he needed to learn how to live without Scorpius, Harry didn't want to imagine his response to that. Harry would have pitched a fit if someone had even suggested such a thing about Ron, Hermione, or Sirius iwhile they were still alive needing to be rescued./i

Harry left the list with George and went to find his kids.

As crazy as Harry's life had always been, it seemed so much simpler looking back than his life as an adult did. He couldn't rush in and save someone when he didn't know where they were. Though he iwas/i good at finding clues and putting them together, there were too many instances where there was simply nothing to be found.

No one had contacted him from any of the shops about suspicion people asking for gift wrapped boxes yet. It could happen any day, but it felt wrong somehow to be waiting for them to cut something else off Scorpius. Even if Harry did talk to Albus about where they were in the case, it would be an awful conversation. iWe've almost got them. I just need a little more information. We're waiting for them to gift wrap the next piece of your best mate, and then the shopkeeper will contact us. Then I'll be able to figure out who is behind this./i That wouldn't be helpful to anyone.

Lily was looking at the candy not far from where Albus was looking at the floor more than anything on the shelves. Harry came to stand between them and asked, 'Ready to go?'

She nodded she was ready, and Albus followed them without a word. Once they were outside and out of the way of the front door, Harry hesitated. He hadn't planned out the day in detail. He wanted to stop by the shop, but didn't know where else to take the kids. George's shop was a favourite, so that they were both still so glum after stopping by meant he shouldn't really push them to keep shopping. He'd take them to lunch, but it was near ten in the morning.

'Where would you like to go next?'

'To find Scorpius,' Albus said at the same time Lily shrugged.

'Albus,' Harry said with a sigh. He leaned back against the building, wanting to bang his head against it. It was a bad idea. A horrible idea. 'Let's go to my office.'

Albus perked up at that. 'Really?'

Harry knew he'd regret it, but said, 'Really.'

Lily shared a smile with Albus and they were quick on Harry's heels as he led them to his office.

His kids had been to his office plenty of times, so no one thought anything of them being there that day either. It was a Saturday, but recently it wasn't odd for him to stop by to pick things up on the weekends. So no one said anything, but simply nodded greetings as Harry hurried past with his kids.

In his office the files for Scorpius's case were already on Harry's desk. Harry started to gather all the paperwork together as Albus and Lily came up beside him. He didn't notice them until Albus touched one of the photographs of Scorpius's toes. Albus stared at it, trailing his fingers over each of them. When Harry saw his hand begin to tremble, he quickly gather it along with the rest of the pictures into the file.

Though Lily had seen the photos as well, she didn't look as shaken up by them as Albus was.

'Scorpius has very ticklish feet,' Albus said suddenly. Lily snorted while trying not to laugh, and Harry shook his head and said, 'Your relationship with Scorpius is odd sometimes, Albus.'

'What's so odd about that?'

'Albus,' Lily said rolling her eyes. 'Most people don't tickle their friend's feet.'

Albus huffed and walked back around Harry's desk. 'So what are we doing?'

Harry looked through the mess and started to organise it. 'I'm remembering how impossible this case is,' Harry mumbled to himself. He put his lists of suspects together in a pile. 'List of suspects.'

'That's a really long list,' Lily said.

'Yeah,' Harry agreed. 'The Malfoys aren't a very popular family.' Albus glared at that, though not at his father, more at the world. It was a subject they had avoided ever since Albus announced his friendship with Scorpius, but there was no getting past that most people had one grudge or another against his family.

They avoided difficult subjects too much in their family. It was time they stopped.

'The problem is that they left us nothing,' Harry said looking right at Albus. 'We can normally pick up a magical signature on something. Or a potion is used that you can only get from so many places, or there will be one rare enough ingredient to find the source and we can track them that way.'

Al nodded.

'But kidnapping is different. Without someone seeing them, without a magical signature left behind somewhere. We have no idea even who, which is the first step in figuring out where to start looking.' Harry gestured to the list of suspects. 'The list of who normally isn't so long, but every time I cross off one name I'm adding two or three more.'

'The Prophet says you've been doing illegal searches of people's homes,' Lily said.

'Well, the Prophet is full of lies.'

Albus watched Harry. 'The Prophet also said that you've been spotted out in the middle of the night in random neighbourhoods.'

Well, shite. Not that Harry was surprised that the Prophet would follow him around; they'd done it often enough before. He really didn't want the world to know what he was out doing every night, and he was surprised Ginny hadn't mentioned it. Though they hadn't spent much time together and when they did they only talked about the kids.

'I've been investigating; just ignore the papers.' Harry picked up his list and read his notes from the night before. Shaking his head, he dropped it back down on his desk. 'The thing is, Albus, if I knew where Scorpius was, I'd have gone to get him already. If I knew who had him, I'd be tracking them down.'

'Instead you're tracking all of Wizarding London.' Albus didn't look pleased, but at least he was talking to Harry again. 'And Scorpius might not even be in London; he might not even be in a Magical area.'

Harry nodded. 'Thanks for the reminder.' He hadn't even begun to look outside of Magical areas yet.

'What about the boxes?' Lily asked. 'Is there nothing that can trace them back to who sent them?'

'No,' Harry said. 'Not yet at least. They are standard at every store that gift wraps in Diagon Alley, but we don't know which store they went to because none of the shop owners remember someone bringing in something to wrap. Only things bought in the store. They'll all be on the look out for it now, but—'

Lily watched Albus as she asked, 'We have to wait until they send something else?'

Then Albus asked, 'What if they aren't caught by one of the storekeepers next time?'

He didn't want to think about it. How many more body parts would they send before they hit one of the shops Harry visited, or Harry found the shop they used? They could be going to Muggle shops. They could have a box wrapped in a store with something they bought, and used magic to switch it afterwards. They could have wrapped it themselves and simply ordered from the same company as the shops did.

Yet their best chance of finding them was an owl from a shopkeeper, because though Harry worked every night on narrowing down his list there was a good chance they never made it onto the list. And then the Prophet had to report on his every move, giving them a heads up on where the investigation was going.

Which meant Harry would have to start reading the bloody thing, again.

#

Harry went straight home after dropping the kids off at the train station. Though the kids' visit did nothing for their moods, he and Albus were talking again. They both hugged him goodbye, but only Lily wished to see him again soon.

James was out for the evening with Sonja, so Harry suggested he and Ginny go out for dinner.

'We haven't been out in a long time,' Ginny said almost as though to convince herself it was a good idea. 'Where would we go?'

'Wherever you want.' Harry hadn't thought that far ahead, and he didn't even know which restaurants were Ginny's favourites any more. He'd have suggested one of the places he used to take her to before the kids came along, but they all required reservations and he couldn't be sure they were even still in business; or if they were that they were still in the same locations.

The Wizarding world didn't move quite as fast as the Muggle world did, but new restaurants did pop up every now and again. Older ones did close down or were sold and turned into something completely different. They could also go to a Muggle restaurant.

'You know,' Ginny said. 'Just because I think you're doing better with the kids, doesn't mean I'm not still angry with you. You're becoming obsessed with work again.'

So she was going to bring up what the Prophet said.

'It's not healthy,' she continued. 'Harry, I worry about you is all.'

'I'm not doing anything dangerous.'

She gave him a look that said she didn't believe that for a second, but really he wasn't. He just followed them around to make sure they weren't hiding a person in their homes. It wasn't that big of a deal. He spend his first few years as an Auror just trailing people. It was boring, but necessary.

'How is the case going?' she asked.

Harry closed his eyes waiting for the assault that would come from him not answering. She knew he couldn't discuss any case with her. He never had, and it only made it worse now that he'd broken that rule for the kids. He didn't tell them to keep it quiet, because he was sure they knew how important it was that they didn't tell anyone that he'd told them anything. Even their mother. He already felt guilty and he couldn't look at her, because she'd be able to tell something was wrong. That he was either keeping something from her or felt guilty about something.

'I know, I know.' She began to shake her head the way she often did when she was frustrated and trying inot/i to say something. 'You can't tell me. You don't trust me. You never have.'

'I do to trust you!' Harry was surprised she thought he didn't. She didn't guess the truth, but she still knew him well enough to see he felt guilty. He would have felt guilty if he didn't trust her, but that simply wasn't true.

'No, you don't,' she said. 'Not the way you trust Ron and Hermione.'

Harry couldn't get his words out, stunned by her accusation. Of course, he trusted Ron and Hermione with everything, but he didn't tell them all about his cases.

She threw her hands in the air. 'See, you don't even deny it.'

'I trust them, yes. But I trust you too. It has nothing to do with that. I can't tell anyone. I'm the head Auror, if I can't follow the rules, then how am I supposed to expect my Aurors to? We already have one leak—'

'I'm sure you suspect me of that as well.'

'Suspect you of what? What are you talking about?'

'Ever since I started working for the Prophet—'

Harry took a breath to keep himself from yelling. 'Where is this even coming from? I've never suspected you of saying anything to the Prophet about me. I haven't even read it since before you began working for them to be able to know if you had.'

'You've locked me out. You lock me out of everything. You lock your office at home.'

'I lock my office because I leave case files open in there sometimes, and I never wanted the kids to walk in and see anything in them. Not just because they can't know what's in them, but because often times it is terrifying what is in them.' Scorpius's file was in there right now, and he had the urge to throw it at her. Instead he stormed towards his office and planned to lock himself in. Forget the bloody dinner, he had work to do.

Just before he shut the door he heard her yell, 'So much for dinner!'