AN: I just wanted to put a warning here as there are scenes about survivors of sexual abuse in this chapter. For anyone who doesn't want to see this, you can stop reading when Tracey and Harry's conversation ends. I wanted to try and do something different with this chapter and talk about something that people do deal with. However, I understand that this isn't for everyone and that it can upset people, so if you would like to skip this section I will summarise in the next AN. I'm also updating the content type to M on this story, this wasn't something I originally wanted to talk about but after a lot of thought I decided to go down this road. I apologise if this upsets people but I hope you understand.

Chapter Six: Harry Potter, Again

St James' Park is always crammed full of tourists taking photos, joggers, cyclists and all the other muggle paraphernalia that fills a tourist trap in spring. Sure enough, that day I was nearly run over twice by fitness freaks, bumped into by a jogger and asked to take the photo of a lovely couple who had just gotten engaged and were hoping to capture the moment forever, or at least it would have done if he hadn't dropped the camera in the road a few seconds later and watched in despair as it was crushed by a passing bus.

But that's not the point. St James' Park was also the meeting place Harry Potter had assigned to our second, first meeting. I say that because our first meeting didn't exactly go great and I was hoping to make a better impression the second time. Hoping being the operative word.

He was there first, hardly surprising, after my run-in with the newly engaged couple I'd encountered on my way there. Sat on a bench just inside the gates of this famous patch of green in a city of muggle architecture. Hair at all angles and glasses perched on his thin nose, anyone walking by would never have realised they were passing a war hero. He didn't look like the lead in a muggle blockbuster, yet there was a faraway look in those emerald green eyes that was all too telling.

"You're here," he said rather awkwardly as I joined him on the bench. The morning air was crisp and birds brave enough to travel in London's smog-filled air tweeted merrily above us.

"Did you think I wouldn't be?"

He grimaced, rather revealing that he hoped more than expected. I was used to that. People were either thrilled to see reporters or felt sick to their stomach. Harry will always fall into the second category. Celebrities always do in the end, for some it just takes longer.

"I'm only here because Hermione said I should be," the words were as combative as I had expected, but that didn't lessen their sting. It's like knowing you're going to be stabbed, it doesn't make it any easier. "She thinks I should change my mind."

"And you?"

Those emerald green eyes flicked to me for the first time, only briefly, before returning to checking the entrances and exits to the park. I guess old habits die hard. "I think you know the answer."

"Then why come?" I wasn't trying to be aggressive, and in all honesty, I think it was a fair enough question. Why show up to somewhere you clearly don't want to be? Naively I thought perhaps he might maybe just be about ready to change his mind.

"Because I owe Hermione a lot and because she said you're worth it." A thin smile without any humour pulled at his lips.

"Don't agree?"

"Funny thing is I didn't need your editor to tell me who you were," Harry said, his voice cold. "I remembered you, from school. I couldn't have told her your name, but I knew who you were. You were there, right behind Parkinson." When I didn't deny it he carried on. "Yeah, thought so."

"It doesn't matter what I did or didn't do then, what matters is helping people now."

"We helped enough people then," Harry bit back, "isn't that enough? What is it with you people always wanting more?"

"Why don't you want us to run this?"

"You."

This, I'll admit, was where I lost my temper a little but I was getting sick and tired of being judged by the man who was supposed to have led a glorious revolution against prejudice. "You had your fight, I had mine. You won, I lost. That doesn't make me a bad person and it sure as hell doesn't give you the right to sit and judge me."

"Doesn't it?"

"You don't even know me."

"No? Well, I know your father was due to be tried by the Muggle-Born Registration Committee. I know he and your mother were forced into hiding. I know that you carried on living at Hogwarts and didn't do a thing as your housemates tortured people. I know that when the time came, when it really mattered, you hid from it all with the rest of them. And I get it, I really do, but you are not the person that gets to look back and say how great we all were and how proud everyone should be of us."

"That's not what I'm doing."

He scoffed, running a hand through his hair before fixing me once more with those harsh emerald green eyes. "People died."

"I know." My words were quiet under the sheer rage radiating from his side of the bench.

"Do you? Do you really? Do you know what's it like to hold your friend as they die in front of your eyes? Do you know how it feels watching people sacrifice themselves and for it not mean a Goddamn thing?"

"You're scared," I breathed, not daring to believe it. "You can try and say you don't want the stupid Slytherin to write it but that's bollocks. You don't want us to print this because you don't want to look back. That's why you've never said anything. That's why you're happy to just let people speculate because they're always wrong. Even if it's just a little bit. And that's good for you, that's distance. You don't want me to tell your story because you've not heard it yourself."

His mouth opened, then shut. He tried against but it just flapped there, like a swinging door in a cowboy saloon. I probably went too far just outright accusing him like that. There are better ways to handle it, sure as hell more sensitive ways, but he'd just spent the last few minutes verbally kicking the crap out of me, so I didn't much care for his feelings.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, why would I? I'm just a stupid Slytherin, after all."

"I didn't —"

"It's okay," I forced myself up from the bench. I'll be honest, all I had in my mind was refusing to give him the satisfaction of storming off first. Plus, I just knew that he wouldn't want to say anything. I knew it. I was so damned sure. I don't know. Looking back, maybe he just needed a kind ear. Maybe he was so used to pretending to be okay that anyone saying anything else was just attacking the very lie he had built himself on. Looking back, well, looking back you always wish things were different, don't you? You always regret what you didn't do. What I should have done was listened. What I did… what I did was turn my back on him.

"You know where to find me." Was all I said as I walked away. He didn't follow me and I'll be honest I lied about it to pretty much everyone except Alice. She, as always, was the perfect shoulder to lean on.

The days that followed were pretty manic, but I managed to get the piece written up and green-lit by Katherine too. She even went ahead with my cover idea, which I was pretty scared about given the bust-up I'd had with Harry. To his credit, none of the others seemed to know about it because they all showed up. Katherine asked me into her office the day before we were due to go to print to show it to me. It was more beautiful than I'd hoped. Each one of them sat in a row with a final chair at the end standing empty, for all those who couldn't tell their story.

"It's perfect," I smiled, as I handed her back the almost finished version of the magazine. I say almost finished because there was still an article missing. Mine. Not the interviews, they were done and dusted and approved. No, my personal piece. That was still an unfinished draft of an unfinished draft, tucked away in my desk. Hoping never to see the light of day.

"I'm glad you think so," Katherine said, gesturing for me to take the seat opposite her. "And your personal piece?"

"I'm struggling."

"I thought you might be," Katherine said, rather more kindly than I had been expecting. "And will it be finished?"

"I don't know," like all good magazines Witch Weekly commissions extra copy for its special issues, just in case something doesn't come off and we need a quick fix. If it's not needed it's saved for the following issue or a kill fee's paid to the writer for their wasted time if it was time-sensitive. God, I do not miss the freelance days.

"Have I ever told you about the first story I oversaw for Witch Weekly?" Katherine asked when I didn't reply. I shook my head, I'd still been at The Prophet back then, juggling five million and one stories, rejections on things I actually cared about and making the tea for the 'experienced' reporters while they stared my arse and tried to resist slapping it on my way past them. Fun times.

"It was about a woman called Evangeline Dale. She had tried and failed to go to several magazines, newspapers, The Prophet included, to expose the managing director of her company for doing what managers of companies everywhere have done with secretaries."

"I remember that." It was hard not to. Evangeline had gotten the head of the Nimbus team disgraced because of her testimony to Witch Weekly and it put us on the map as something more than just a cookery guide for depressed housewives. It was brutal, beyond brutal, what he'd done to her. Theodore Grant (the Nimbus family name had died out after a series of half-blood marriages) threatened to kick her out of the company if she didn't sleep with him. On more than one occasion. According to Evangeline he stopped her seeing other men and questioned where she was going outside of work. Completely ruled her life. And all of this with a wife and kids back home who had no idea. Weeks later more and more women came forward and the aurors were called.

"I pushed that story for all the obvious reasons, it mattered, women everywhere deserved to read it, inspiration, all the reasons you're doing this. But there was something else I never shared with the board, not as a new editor and certainly not now." She lowered her fingers, calmly placing them upon her desk. "I had been in her position, quite a few years earlier. Like you I started at The Prophet and I don't suppose it's changed all that much. Late nights, longer hours, no friends. No social life.

"But it was a completely different environment. It was tough, especially if you were a young, black, half-blood woman looking to make a name for herself." She paused, drumming her fingers on the desk and looking out on the now bright day outside. The office was filled with people behind us, but - thanks to the silencing charms - they couldn't hear a word of what she was saying. It was just us, in that small little bubble. Just us and Katherine's secret.

"My editor, I won't tell you his name, he kept pushing me to stay late. I thought he was taking me under his wing, and he was, in a way. He told me I could make an incredible journalist, fed into my vanity, my dreams and one night, when it was just us, he… propositioned me." Her face was completely expressionless, like she was retelling someone else's horrific past and not her own. "And I have never felt so alone. I was trapped, there was nothing I could do and so it happened.

"The next day I just showed up to work like nothing had happened. I stayed there for a few years. He left about a year or so later. I didn't tell anyone because back then nobody would've believed me. And even if they did he had the money to just make it go away. So, I kept quiet and I've kept quiet for all these years.

"I wanted to tell Evangeline's story because it mattered to me, more than anything else. If I could help even just one person know that they could be heard, that they would be believed, then I…"

She faltered, looking for the first time like she might cry. And I had no idea what to say. I'm not proud to admit it, but sitting there watching one of the most powerful, passionate, strong women I knew tell me this, it honestly broke my heart. And there were no words. What could I say? I didn't know what that felt like. I had no idea what she had gone through and was still going through.

"That maybe I could make up for letting him get away with it. And the reason I am telling you all of this, Tracey, is because sometimes it's better to face up to the things we try to avoid, if not for ourselves then for other people."

"Katherine, I —"

"No, don't worry." Katherine assured me, giving me one of her thin smiles. That was when I knew the conversation was over. "I'm alright. I've had over twenty years. You've got your whole future ahead of you, just do me a favour? Make it a good one."

So that's what I did, or at least, what I tried to do. I'm still not sure if I got it right, or if it even made a difference. But sometimes, you don't have to be sure. Sometimes trying is just about good enough.