There had been a time in Harry's life when he'd hated hospitals. The nothing. The stillness, and in turn, his stillness within them, as he seemed to only ever find himself in their beds and not their chairs.

Yet then, as he was held within the white walls of St Mungo's, he could only summon relief. Relief that James' ashen face, as it laid against his pillow, still drew breath. Stuttering, staccato breaths, yet air did still fill his lungs, and life still filled his pores.

The guilt would come soon enough, he knew. Oh, how blindingly obvious it all had been, and how much of an idiot he'd been to be so slow. That a boy, as that was all James was really, small and scarred and still bleeding, had been hurt, and it could've all been prevented with just a shade more competence.

But then was not now. So, Harry did not linger on the cuts James had carved into himself in his panic, but instead he remembered that they were closing.

He'd sat beside too many bodies, with their wounds unending, to feel otherwise.

Elliot, the boy's father, sat at his son's side. Harry pulled apart the Confounding charm upon him as they awaited James' treatment. Harry had given the politician a potion that they gave all muggles in his circumstance. To him, and later to James too, this would all be some awful dream. A shared imagining.

And, in roughly a week's time, an Obliviator would visit each of them, and then it wouldn't even be a thought.

Harry took great relief in that. To have two minds, his and Tonks', burdened was already one too many, but a burden he would gladly bear. Yet another aching reminder that he'd fallen short; that it was luck, and not judgement, that'd guided James to safety.

But if luck was what James had needed, then let him be lucky for the rest of his days. If magic granted the power of wishes, Harry would've wished it so then and there. And even as magic did not, he still wished anyway.

The stillness of the room ended with a knock on the door; only interlopers to a hospital knocked so loudly. Outside of emergencies, the nurses and the healers hardly hit the door at all. They shuffled through the passageways nearly soundlessly. To maintain the stillness; to fade from notice.

Yet, Kingsley did not fade. He filled the doorway, tall and resolute, his posture perfect.

He offered Harry a solemn look as Harry rose to greet him, the two soon disappearing into the corridor. Harry chose to stand facing the glass window of James' room, just to reassure himself.

"So, Elliot Powell and his son were confounded to give poisoned whisky to Stephen Sumner," Kingsley said. Harry thanked God and Merlin and everything else for the man's professionalism, his calm voice allowing Harry's mind to focus once more. "Whoever the culprit may be, they're working hard to make sure it looks politically motivated."

"They likely want as much upheaval as possible," Harry said, his words coming without any conscious thought. "Probably think that their society is as brittle as ours is, and all it takes is one figure to fall for the whole pack of cards to tumble down with it."

Harry wished his words were true. That the pack had fallen with Tom Riddle. But it hadn't. It truly hadn't. His ideas, hateful and rotting though they were, still filled the corners of their world. Over the years, the corners had been made smaller, the world rounder, safer.

Yet still, the corners remained.

"Any ideas of who exactly it is?" Kingsley asked.

They were looking for someone with ties to the Death Eaters; someone that either Tonks or Harry most likely went to Hogwarts with, given they spanned all the years of currently free, known Death Eaters, of which there were seven.

Eight, if one were to include Draco Malfoy. Which Harry did.

The Notts: Theodore and Mikah. The Goyles: Gregory and Alexis. Walter Macnair. Graham Montague. Freyja Rowle. Draco Malfoy.

Those at school with Harry had all escaped prison by virtue of receiving the Dark Mark under the age of majority; an olive branch offered by Minister Robards. The others had been successful in pleading in their trials that they were truly innocent of any crimes they'd committed. That they were under the influence of the Imperius Curse, or that they'd put themselves forward to protect their family and fled the country soon after to ensure they did not bring any harm to others.

Of those he went to school with, Harry dismissed Draco, both Goyles, and Montague. Draco was working in the Ministry for the DMLE and, albeit begrudgingly, Harry would admit his turn of coat had been earnest. Even though the poison of gifted drinks was a ploy Malfoy had used before, against Dumbledore so many years ago, his alibi was airtight. Veritaserum, pensieve, and witness checked.

He truly appeared to have changed, in recent times. The snide child had grown into a weary man, his tiredness worn both as armour and apology.

Goyle had fled the country some years ago, now living in Serbia with distant cousins, as was Alexis. And neither really seemed to be capable of planning out the attacks that'd taken place.

Harry felt awful for even calling Montague a Death Eater. He'd been in the year above Harry and had been placed under the Imperius Curse by Voldemort himself. He'd been released from the curse the moment Harry had defeated Voldemort and had immediately broken down the moment he'd realised what his dirtied hands had done.

Of the others, most were too wrapped up in the magical world to act as had been acted. Macnair retained his father's violence, though none of the shrewd intelligence that'd kept Walden in a job at the Ministry after Voldemort's first fall. Freya Rowle too held too great a passion for pain to ever let Stephen Sumner live through an attack, plan or no plan.

That, in Harry's eyes, only left the Notts. Of Theodore, Harry knew him to be highly intelligent, and certainly capable of learning the details of the muggle world. Death Eaters preferred to work in teams, and with the family connection, it would make the most sense for the two to be working together.

"Check on the Notts," Harry told Kingsley. "They're my first guess."

Kingsley nodded. "I've assigned another team to your case, by the way," he said. "Jeffers and Hendricks in the day; Spinnet and Howard at night. They'll be working in a surveillance capacity as any more unknowns entering into the event itself would arouse too much suspicion. Spinnet and Howard are there right now, adding additional wards to the hotel since we know it's definitely a target."

Harry frowned. "Jeffers?" he asked. "Isn't he a little too...incompetent for this sort of case?"

"He put himself forward," Kingsley said. "He said he was embarrassed about the whole 'hitting his own partner with a spell' issue and wanted to make amends. I'm inclined to let him."

Harry hummed. He agreed with the notion of second chances, yet perhaps such opportunities were better placed elsewhere.

Kingsley gave Harry a slow nod. "You and Tonks did well with this," he said. "From the little she told me, you acted incredibly quickly under pretty blind circumstances. Good thing you did too; that poison was doing its damage in a hurry. Well done."

Harry gave Kingsley a crooked smile. "Tell me that when we're home and dry."

He looked through the window, watching the shallow breaths James drew.

"I'll let you get back to the hotel," Kingsley said. "I'll sit with those two. See if there's anything that they still remember about the culprit."

Harry gave a truer smile this time.

"Learning the trade, more like," he said. "One politician to another."

Kingsley leaned against the door frame. "What about your trade, Harry?" he asked, to Harry's surprise. "Where's life gonna take you after the Aurors?"

"Not worth thinking about," Harry said. "Not while the project's still unfinished."

Kingsley gave him a kind smile.

"The project's been finished a while now," the Head Auror said. "The laws are moving in the right direction. Crime's down, people feel safe in the streets again." He folded his arms. "I don't know what ghosts you're seeing in the world these days, but I promise they're not there."

"Death Eaters are still out there. That message is still out there."

"That's not the Auror's project," said Kingsley. Harry's jaw tensed. "Our project is to give this society a structure. A safety net. Our project is not to heal the divisions in our society. That might be your project, and it will likely be mine soon enough, but it's not an Auror's."

Kingsley opened the door to James' room, though he did not enter quite yet.

"I've loved having you as a colleague. You were something I'd been missing for years around here. An idealist. Someone that, despite everything, hoped for the best in the world," he continued to say. "But you're more to me than just a colleague. You're a friend. And as your friend, I'm compelled to say that this job is not your life. You have more to offer than this."

"What," began Harry, "like standing in front of crowds? Delivering speeches?"

"I don't think so," Kingsley said. "That's reassurance work. Same work as an Auror, truly. God or magic or whatever it is out there didn't put you here and bring you back to maintain the status quo. You know that. I know you do."

Kingsley walked toward the hospital bed, making his way to a chair that sat beside it. Yet before Harry left, he turned to address him one last time.

"You've helped replant this world's foundations. Now, I think it's your time to build."

Evening had fallen on the Lansbury Hotel by the time Harry returned. The heat of the day had not yet faded, even as the light of the August sky had. And once more, the sight brought with it thoughts of flying.

He'd flown on only one such night. He'd been fleeing then; fleeing Surrey and Little Whinging, unfairness and circumstance.

Leaving St Mungo's had felt an awful lot like fleeing, too.

Yet, that night, and that fleeing, had brought with it magic again, and the magical world; a world removed from the staleness of his summers. Into a world of friends and safety. A sanctuary.

The world of Harry and Tonks' bedroom felt an awful lot like a sanctuary then, too.

And, thankfully, as Harry soon discovered, both occasions held Tonks.

She'd been waiting for his arrival, he could tell. She was sitting up in the bed, her body curling fully forward to wrap herself around the case binder that her eyes passed over. There was a stillness to her then that Harry disliked. She had taken off her dress in favour of a set of pyjamas, but her hair was still pastel pink and her eyes were still a foggy brown.

But she jumped from the bed the moment the sight of Harry came into the corner of her eye, the binder thrown onto the duvet covers.

Tonks rushed over to Harry, though she stopped half a foot or so from his touch, halfway between distant and familiar. Harry, however, opened his arms and pulled her close, bringing her the rest of the way.

She fit against him wonderfully. His cheek rested against the top of her head, her nose brushing against the column of his throat. Her hands gripped the bottom of his jacket, twisting the pale cashmere into her grip. And his hand passed gently through her hair, carding into the soft strands until, blessedly, magic and colour flowed through them once more.

Her touch anchored him, the room a sanctuary.

Harry wasn't a hugger. He wasn't.

But then, her touch, her hold, her embrace, was something he never wanted to leave. She cleared his mind clean of worry and thought, and allowed his body to breathe and only breathe until the air of their room made his lungs feel clean and new.

"Is this alright?" Harry asked, his words spoken into her hair. "I didn't ask."

Tonks shook her head against his chest, her hair spinning into blue infinities in his hands. "You don't have to ask," she said. "Not you. Not with me."

The words held weight; they held gravity. They took form in the room and demanded contemplation, which he dutifully gave them.

And only then were they allowed to disappear into the air that hung in between him and her.

"He's going to be fine," Harry said. "Full recovery. As if nothing ever happened."

"Except to us."

"Except to us."

Tonks pulled him yet closer still; until their forms began to meld into one. Until she and him, at that moment, became them, intertwined and together.

Even after they pulled away from one another's touch, the closeness still lingered.

Harry couldn't look anywhere else other than Tonks. Her hair, her eyes, in their shifting wonders, patterned and patternless, infinite and yet there, right there, with him.

"It never gets any easier," he said. "Seeing someone hurt. Because of what I did. Or what I didn't."

"It's not supposed to."

Because there was a life in the balance, a life held up by their action. Without them, James would've fallen.

"We take on burdens so that others don't have to," Tonks said. "We get to go to work every day and know that we've made the world a bit cleaner. Tomorrow, James will wake up, and that's because we got there." She took his hand in hers. "That's enough for me to keep going."

Harry could only admire Tonks. Her strength. Her resolve.

She'd been holding the burden years longer than he had. Horrible years too, and yet she still held the same composure. In his first years as an Auror, she had been the one to guide him along; to guide everyone along. On his bad days, his awful days, she'd been the one to take him away from it all. Take him drinking, or to Quidditch games or even just poking her head through the fireplace for a while.

On her bad days, he'd done the same. Even as she'd insisted otherwise, that she was fine, he'd dragged her to the pub with him. She'd been strong then too; joking, laughing. She appeared untroubled.

Unburdened.

There had been a time Harry had believed it too. That she was enough all on her own, or that what he'd offered then was enough. That their world didn't weigh quite so heavy to her.

But then, as he watched her.

As she stood so, so close to him.

As she gently trembled.

It became so, so clear, that he'd fallen far short of what she deserved. That maybe, just as she had eased his burden yesterday, he could ease hers now.

As her magic stuttered instead of swirled. As even as she forced a smile to drag its way to her face, it could not stick. As her eyes could not meet his. As they could only seem to search the floor. As her shoulders sagged with the weight.

The terrible, terrible weight.

"I'll be okay," Tonks whispered, in one of those brief times that her eyes found themselves able to look at him. She even had strength enough to let a laugh ring through the hollow of her throat. "I always am."

But Harry went to her anyway.

He opened his arms for her.

"I'm okay," Tonks said. She took a single step toward Harry.

Harry gave her a soft look and said. "Then be okay with me."

Tonks did not move at first. Neither to nor away from him.

She just stood, her feet rooted to the floor.

She did not look at him, her eyes too rooted downward.

Filled, at that moment, with that horrid stillness.

And then, her eyes moved, and she cast the briefest of looks his way.

And then, her feet moved, and she fell into his arms.

She fell with enough weight to send them falling onto the bed. Harry held her close as they fell. Tonks allowed herself to fall and allowed herself to be held by Harry, and so her head rested beside his heart and her arms were held within his, the weight of her form resting on him.

Harry did not speak. He had no words to say. The air was not his to take.

They laid in silence, together. Neither moved at all, content in the slight motion of drawing breath beside another soul. Harry wanted then to pass his hands over her sides, to soothe her, to bring about some comfort, some reassurance, but he did not.

Tonks rose, and Tonks fell. But then, she did so with him.

And, eventually, the stillness of her hands ended as they came to Harry's wrists, holding him. Her legs moved too; wrapping around one of his legs as if to anchor him to the bed. To her.

Her hair became black against the white canvas of his shirt. And as she looked up at him, her eyes became blue, swirling around in waves of cerulean and aquamarine.

Her voice broke the air's stillness soon after.

"He's fine," she said, and her voice sounded nothing like it usually did, but mostly it was quiet. "We did our job and I have no reason to be like this."

Tonks swallowed her next breath, her eyes watching his. Watching him.

"But it's not just today," said Harry. He watched the blue of her eyes disappear behind the widening of her pupils.

"But—but it's not just today," Tonks admitted, and then she stopped, the words stopping inside of her. "I'll make peace with today soon enough."

Harry thought his next words for minutes; minutes of holding Tonks. They held a terrible weight, but one that needed to be held.

"So," Harry did eventually say, "what is it?"

Tonks was silent for a while. Long enough for the fading red hue of the world through their window to leave completely into the dark blue of the ensuing night.

"I'm scared," she said. "And I'm stupid for feeling scared, but I am. I'm thirty-two, not nine. I shouldn't be scared of my own feelings, but every time I think about it, I get so fucking frightened. I can't bear to face it." Her gaze fell down, her forehead pressed against his chest. "I shouldn't—I shouldn't be such a fucking coward."

"I'm scared too," Harry said to Tonks. "I'm—I'm scared that this is all fake. That I'm dead, and that Voldemort won. Or that I'm dreaming, and that I'll wake up back at the Dursley's; that magic isn't real and that I'm still alone." He took in a deep breath. And then another, and then another. "I'm scared that Daphne was right."

"Don't say that," Tonks whispered.

"I'm scared—I'm scared that she was right," Harry said. "That I can never love in a way that's enough for another person. That I can never make another person happy, or feel like they're enough."

Those words echoed in the halls of his mind on most nights in recent times. Visions of her and him, together, and those words spilling from her, yelled by her.

"I'm scared too," said Harry once more. He smiled softly. "I promise, no fear will change what I think of you."

"It's from years ago," Tonks said. "I should be over it."

Harry held her tighter. "That's okay."

She pushed the back of her hand against her eyes. The blue was a still, inert, frozen pale. No change, no magic, no shift.

"I'm sorry," she said, forcing a laugh through her voice. "You don't need to put up with me like this."

"I'm not putting up with anything," Harry said. "I'm here with you because I want to be. Not out of any obligation."

He found a wonderful clarity then. The rest of his world most often seemed blind, and that his way was blind too, but he knew then that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

Tonks met his eyes, and the colours swirled again into a shadowy, darkened shade. She worried her lip in between her teeth, her form shrinking in his arms.

"Hey," he said, his forehead pressed against hers ever so gently. "We don't have to talk about anything more. We never have to talk about it ever again. I'll never mention it. If you're okay, that's okay with me. If you're not okay, that's okay with me too. Whatever it is, just please, be it with me."

She didn't say a word. She kept her face pressed against his shirt, not meeting his eyes.

"Tonks?" he asked again. "Please."

"I just want things to be as they were before," Tonks whispered, the sound reverberating through his chest. "Before everything happened. The war, all of it."

"Things change," Harry said. "But they have to."

"I don't want things to change."

"I know," Harry said, and God, did he know. "But if it's any comfort, my opinion of you hasn't changed. You're not selfish. You're not weak. You're still the same person, I just know more of you now."

Tonks was silent. Hardly breathing at all, though when she did, it was stuttering, unsteady.

"I don't believe you," she said quietly. "I want to, but I just don't."

Harry nodded against her. "That's okay too," he said, his voice quick to come. Quick enough to shock her, her eyes widening as they looked up at him.

The tiniest, thinnest stream of tension bled from her form; her breathing a slight bit easier, her eyes slightly clearer.

It felt like the beginning of something. The planting of something. A building block of something more.

Harry wanted to find out what that was.

"This isn't really our style," Tonks said.

"Honesty is."

Tonks smiled tremulously. But she did smile.

"I've had enough of honesty," Tonks said, lifting herself up from his arms and away from his touch. He missed the contact immediately, watching as she threw herself onto the pillows and turning to meet his eyes once more. "Lie with me."

She laughed. The sound a blessing.

Harry laughed too.

And as she laid there, no longer did her form shake, and no longer did the worry seem to fill her every fibre. Assurance returned to her eyes. Not yet fully, but they held the same look as they had before this day began.

"Given the circumstances," he said, jumping up to place his head against the pillows and sinking into the bed, "I'll forgive that."

Tonks laid on her side, her head propped up on the pillow and facing the window. Harry mirrored her so that they could face one another.

"How intimate," Harry said, smiling.

Her nose crinkled.

"That's the worst part of today," Tonks said. There was a forced joviality to her voice, but it soon stopped being forced. She rolled her eyes. "That word. I will give you money to never say that ever again."

"Really?"

"I will be extra nice to you," Tonks said. "I'll buy you breakfast at work for the next two weeks."

"Really?" Harry asked, leaning forward just slightly. "Because that's beginning to sound like it's worth my while."

"Great! But, you've got to remember that it's a miracle I wake up in the morning at all, let alone with enough time to buy you a bacon sandwich," she said. "But I will!" She pointed at him. "However, I'll likely be late, and then King will get all mad, and do you really want to make him mad?"

Harry nodded. "Good point," he said. "I reckon I'll just keep saying intimate then." He watched her face, her nose twitching immediately. Yet more interesting by far was her eyes, as they swirled black, he assumed in an effort to express her dread. "Why do you hate that word so much, anyway?"

"Outside of its generally slimy aesthetic?" Tonks asked, her face pinching together. "Int—I can't even say it to prove my point, it's that horrible."

"Beyond that, yeah."

"I'll tell you another time," Tonks said, smiling. "I will. Just not today. Maybe tomorrow if you're lucky."

"That bad?"

"Worse," Tonks told him. "I need time to prepare myself to tell it."

"It requires rehearsal?" Harry asked.

"More like bracing."

Behind Harry, the light of the sunset had disappeared, the sun's setting over. The world still clung to the last vestiges of light in the day, but the peace and serenity of night was the next painting on the canvas of the sky.

Its cool embrace turned their room into hazy darkness, dulling everything. Its touch settled them.

Tonks' breathing came easier, Harry saw, and the darkness of her hair came and went with each breath she took. From black to pale grey and back to black again, all under the dimness of that night.

Neither moved at all as time passed. Not waking, not sleeping, not anything, until the night was truly upon them and the sky was as dark as it could be and all that seemed to exist was each other. They just laid and watched each other as time passed. Their eyes hardly met; they said little of anything, in any way.

Harry found himself tracing the contours of her. The smiling edges of her heart-shaped face, and the dark, shadowy set of her eyes.

To commit her to memory.

Properly.

And only then, as it was truly dark, did Harry allow his voice to fill the air.

"Is there anything you want to do?"

She shook her head.

"Let's go to sleep."

And so, Harry pulled away his shirt and his trousers, leaving him in his boxers. He rushed under the covers the first moment he could. Tonks did the same, sleeping in the same T-shirt of the night before.

They were like that for a time, too. Neither spoke a word. The day had already said enough, and they had already said enough in the day.

They laid in the peripheries of the bed, an infinity of room between them. Harry did drift off after a while, falling into a shallow sort of sleep. The distance between them was larger than before, but the little contact, shared in their shared space, touched twice as closely.

Yet, just as he closed his eyes, Harry reached over to offer his hand for her to hold. To reassure her that he was there. To reassure himself that she was there.

She took it and she held it in hers.

She did not let go.