A/N: Hi everyone, don't be alarmed but the rest of the story will have fragments of the future scattered throughout, so two timelines will sort of be running together. I've given them their own chapters, even if they're short, so as to make it as easy as possible to follow. Also, I'll be going on holiday and doing real-life things so I won't update for a while. Thank you again for your support and I hope all you beautiful people keep enjoying what I put out into the fanfic world. xo

4 years later…

His office was clean; white walls with subdued hues, sprinkled with hints of greenery. Hermione seemed to love hanging ferns and accessorized his space with them. They were everywhere and it reminded Harry of her new flat in London. He'd been so busy the last two weeks he'd barely had the chance to see her. Ginny was constantly hounding him with wedding plans, insisting he become more involved in what she classified as 'big decisions'. Last week he'd spent hours looking at flowers and listening to his fiancée argue with her mother about which centerpiece would best match her wedding gown. If Harry was being honest, he'd rather leave all those decisions to her and be pleasantly surprised on the day itself.

"Oi," grinned Ron, striding into his office. "How's the groom-to-be?"

'Sod off," he chuckled closing the Grayson report.

"Still on centerpieces then?"

"Nope, we've moved onto cake-tasting now."

Ron's eyes seemed to light up. "Oh, I ought to tag along, best to get third-party opinion and all that."

He laughed. "Right, sure."

"Anyway, I got a message from Kingsley. He wants to see us."

"When?"

"Twenty minutes ago," laughed Ron who had already started walking off. "Come on!"

Quickly taking the report, he filed it in one of the cabinets and caught up to Ron.

"So the Grayson case is closed?" asked the red-head as they rode the lift up to Kingsley's office.

Harry nodded. "Tricky bastard was giving us the runaround but we finally got him. Reminds me of—"

"Mundungus Fletcher?"

"Exactly!" he exclaimed with a quiet chuckle as they stepped out onto the marble hallway. "Wonder what that slimeball is up to," Harry mused out loud.

"Didn't Hermione tell you?" asked Ron. "She caught him pedaling stolen goods at Diagon Alley. Confiscated everything and let him off with a warning—you know how soft she is."

"Mate, let's do something this weekend," pleaded Harry. "Just the four of us, I haven't seen you'll in weeks and all this wedding stuff is driving me up the bloody—"

The door to Kingsley's office flew open.

"Harry, Ron, come in— quickly!"

Kingsley wore a grim expression on his face as he walked around his mahogany desk. "Minister?" asked Harry, realizing he hadn't seen the wizard look so worried since before the end of the Second Wizarding War. "Is everything alright?"

"No," he frowned, dropping a file in front of them. Ron picked it up and began leafing through it as Kingsley continued to speak.

"Head of Magical Law Enforcement over at MACUSA contacted me a few days ago. I needed to be certain before I brought this to you both," he said pointing at the file in Ron's hands. "Corban Yaxley's body was found in an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn."

"Dead or—?"

"Murdered," answered Ron turning deathly pale.

Kingsley was shaking his head, his palms splayed on the desk. "M.O is the same. There's no doubt in my mind. It's him, he's alive."

"No, that can't be," muttered Harry as he took the file and took a glance at the grisly photos. "It's impossible."

"He must've been tracking him this entire time," Ron whispered, almost to himself.

Harry's mouth went dry as he considered the evidence. "God, we have to tell her."

"The hell we do!" hissed Ron looking at him angrily. Stabbing his finger onto the wooden surface of the desk, he punctuated each statement. "We keep this to ourselves—we portkey to New York—we help them bring him in."

"Impossible," deadpanned Kingsley. "The MACUSA consider this a British affair—it's our mess and they want us to clean it up."

"Kingsley," said Ron, dropping any formal pretense. "This will break her. She's only just..." He cursed out loud, standing so abruptly that his chair fell back. "Yaxley was the last one."

"Which means, what?" asked the Minister, his eyes darting between the two Aurors.

Harry ran a hand through his hair as he understood what that implied. "It means that he's following through on a promise he made four years ago."

"And what exactly did this promise entail?"

Ron's jaw was clenched, a terrified expression drawn over his face.

"He swore he'd come back for her when it was finally safe for them to be together."

The Minister sunk into his armchair. "Are you telling me that Draco Malfoy is coming back to Britain?"

"No," said Harry bluntly. "We're saying he's probably already here."

The Minister jumped from his seat, issuing a stream of orders so rapidly that Harry could barely follow. He bellowed to his secretary outside, a tall skinny woman with short hair and large teeth.

"Polly, get someone from the Prophet over here now," he ordered.

"Can't we hold off on the press?" asked Harry.

"As the Minister of Magic, I have a responsibility to the wizarding community to warn them that a rogue Death Eater is alive and still at large.

"You two," he said looking pointedly at them. "Get a team together. I want you'll heading this—in fact, bring Hermione in. She'll know his movements, his habits, how he thinks—oh, and get Matthews and Leto to watch over her flat."

Ron who had yet to say a word was merely nodding along.

"Minister," interrupted Harry. "I don't think you understand… she might not be willing to help us."

Kingsley's lips tugged down into a deep-set frown waiting for an explanation.

"It's complicated," he offered, unable to explain it himself.

The dark tall wizard sat back in his armchair, his gaze fixed beyond Harry's shoulder.

"Draco Malfoy is responsible for the cold-blooded murder of six people—"

"Death Eaters," corrected Harry.

The Minister's eyebrows furrowed. "Murder is murder," he said gravely. "It is the line between them and us."

He nodded looking sheepish for implying that because they were Voldemorts followers, their deaths didn't matter.

A few minutes later, Ron and Harry were ushered out by Polly who seemed to have caught Kingsley's agitation like the flu. But even they were shaken.

"Mate," he said, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "It's okay, we're going to find him and it'll all be over."

Ron stopped in his tracks and glared at Harry accusingly. "You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?" he asked taken aback.

"It's been four years... four fucking years and it's still not over... it's never over with them Harry."