The air was thick and stale around Harry. He stood in the hallway outside the department head of the Auror's in the Ministry of Magic with only his thoughts to occupy him.

The doorknob waited for him, but his hand recoiled the first time he reached for it.

"Get in here."

The order came from within.

He sucked in his breath to form a flat smile and entered. The dust he expected to waft into his face was already settled. The man behind the desk which Harry would choose one of two muted grey chairs to sit before, was a man not unlike him. Taller, but same build, only the head of the Auror's buried himself in manilla folders with aged and new papers without a glimpse back up at Harry.

An ugly pause lingered when Harry pressed into the chair and waited for the man to acknowledge him.

"It doesn't get easier, Mr. Potter."

The man lined the sides of his black mustache with his fore left index finger and thumb, then rested his hand on a handle of a black mug as his eyes waded up toward Harry's.

"I'm sorry?"

"I know what you're thinking."

Did he?

"You sat here before after a few good years on the streets, but the past has a funny way of catching up to you."

Harry sat silent. His eyes scanned the other's and down at the folders. They were case files, but with a red line across, marked to be forgotten.

"You never completed your seventh year and couldn't pass the N.E.W.T.s exams, and only made it through on the aptitude tests."

"Sir?"

"You got here on the basis of being a celebrity, Harry. Just like how I caught the Ukranian Ironbelly back in my third at Hogwarts."

"Like the one from Gringotts?"

"Not quite, Mr. Potter. However, I can still remember the taste of my own tongue burning in my mouth. Can still smell the body of the dragon before I even knew it existed. These things haunt you."

"Can I ask why I'm here?"

"Always a shit you were."

The Department Head leaned back in his chair and pulled Harry's eyes to his as he pushed two folders to the edge of the desk for the old celebrity to receive.

"You don't belong here."

Harry straightened himself, shifted his glasses. He hadn't expected that after fifteen years with the Auror's. Three of which he had been department head himself before the nightmares began.

"Take these down three flights, sixth door to your left. You're off the Auror's, Mr. Potter."

Those many years had boiled to those thin folders in his hands. Only two or three papers in each. Marked for the chimney to burn with the rest of the nonsense, Harry felt a flash of his old self burn in him and shifted toward the Department Head in an attempt to save his career from those embers.

"Sir, with all due respect I–"

"Your opinion here is worth less than a Scamander's. You've deteriorated, Harry. I've been there. I know what it's like to be haunted by the shit that builds up in your past."

He leveled Harry in his seat. His eyes stern and his words cut like a spell.

"I look at you Mr. Potter, the days off you take, the corner's you've cut, and the darkness inside you and I see what I could have become if I hadn't sought help."

"I can get help."

"Good. Then take this down three flights, like I said, sixth door to your left. You're brilliant Harry, but you're not a cop, as the muggles would say."

Speechless, Harry pried himself from the chair and was immediately accosted by the Department Head. His badge must be left behind. On the desk before him would be left the past of an Auror, and in his hands something far different from it, but from himself? He had no choice but to confront it and find out.

"Harry."

He was stopped at the door and didn't even turn to look back.

"It took me years to accept help. Take it from me."