Apparating to the coordinates Astoria left in her letter, Harry found himself in front of an iron-wrought gate in the middle of the rustic countryside. The gate opened without prompting, presenting an elegant Elizabethan manor with little decorative turrets and bay windows, ivy climbing up the stone walls. Harry walked down the gravel path crossing the thoroughly landscaped formal gardens that surrounded the manor. A stock-still house-elf in a crisp white toga was waiting for him at the front door. The elf opened it with a solemn expression on his wrinkled face before bowing low.
"Thank you," Harry said uncomfortably, earning himself an inscrutable look from under bushy brows that quickly dissolved back into blankness.
This kind of subservience in the elves from wealthy households always set Harry's teeth on edge. So many of them weren't naturally like that. Dobby wasn't, and neither was Kreacher. For all his talk about proper elfish place and propriety, he delighted in nagging Harry, finding new creative ways to insult his guests, and sabotaging any orders he didn't agree with, not that Harry gave him any except for an occasional request. And since Severus had become a permanent fixture in Harry's house, they were engaged in passive-aggressive warfare over the right to use the kitchen. It didn't matter that Kreacher hardly ever cooked. Harry suspected they both kept at it simply because they were enjoying themselves too much.
The elf showed Harry to the drawing-room before vanishing with a quiet pop. Both elder Greengrasses, as well as Astoria and Malfoy, were already there, sitting in tense silence. As soon as Harry entered, the hosts assumed polite expressions, while Malfoy didn't bother to clear the irritation from his face. For once, Harry suspected, it wasn't directed at him.
"Mr. Potter, lovely to see you again. Although I do wish it would've happened under more ideal circumstances." Cordelia Greengrass inclined her head. She was sitting on the paisley armchair with a perfect aristocratic posture, hands clasped over the black wool of her robe. Blonde and slender, she looked not a day older than forty-five. She had looked like that on the photo from the Kings Cross station, the one where she was sending Daphne to Hogwarts for the first time, too. With witches, you never knew for sure.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Lady Greengrass, Lord Greengrass.'
Like the Malfoys, the Greengrasses had a title bestowed on one of their ancestors by some muggle king before the Statute of Secrecy was enacted, and weren't shy about using it among wizards despite renouncing everything else muggle. Harry remembered meeting them for the first time at a charity event he had been roped into attending. Mortimer, Cordelia's husband, made a point of correcting Percy Weasley who had introduced him as 'Mr.' Technically, their title didn't mean a thing in the wizarding world, which operated as something of a state within a state, but no one would deny that it sounded grand.
Mortimer Greengrass was standing behind his wife's chair with his hand on her shoulder as if posing for a formal portrait. With his impressive moustache and receding hairline, he would fit right in with the hall of paintings in the Goldstein's firm.
"I know Astoria had her reasons for hiring you, Mr. Potter," he said. "Although I have to admit we had our doubts about the validity of those concerns until today. You must understand that we've been unwilling to disturb the memory of our sweet girl by stirring the past." Cordelia covered his hand with hers and squeezed gently.
"If I understand correctly from Astoria's letter, Daphne's wand has been stolen," said Harry. Upper-class Purebloods could prevaricate for hours if you didn't cut to the chase.
"Indeed," said Mortimer. "Somebody broke into our house without triggering any protective enchantments."
"Was anything else taken?"
"Not as far as I can tell." Mortimer shook his head. "But somebody has been through my study. Nothing is missing, but I know someone was there. I noticed it earlier today before Astoria came to us with your request, but I thought maybe it's my imagination playing tricks on me."
"The wand was in your study?" asked Harry.
"No, it was in Daphne's old room," said Cordelia. "We've never expected something like that to happen."
"Most troubling," said Mortimer. "Our theory is a fan looking for a souvenir."
Astoria made an abrupt motion as if to say something before reconsidering.
"Daphne was very popular," said Cordelia, sending a chill look in Astoria's direction. "And we were so proud of our girl. But there's the underside to fame, as you must know better than most, Mr. Potter. She had all sorts of unhinged people craving for her attention."
Yes, Harry had a lot of experience with those. And before he saw Goldstein's memory earlier today, a stalker was one of his working theories as well. While still a possibility, something told him that the truth was much more complicated.
"When did you last see the wand?" he asked instead of sharing these suspicions with Daphne's parents.
"Two weeks ago—" Mortimer started just as Cordelia said, "This morning."
Everybody looked at her in question.
"I couldn't sleep," she said with a tremor in her voice, the first display of real emotion. "So I went to her room at dawn."
Mortimer patted her shoulder. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, there was a loud yell from upstairs.
"NO! DON'T—"
Harry was first on his feet, rushing up the marble staircase, the others short on his heels. At the top, they swung to the noise of a loud bang and a clatter of a window being thrown open.
A feeble man, hunched over with age, stood barefoot in the doorway of one of the rooms with an unfocused expression on his wrinkled face. Despite the early evening, he was wearing a house robe and had a nightcap on his head with wisps of white hair peeking out.
"What happened, Grandfather?" Mortimer asked, panting.
"He was there!"
"He?" Cordelia repeated.
"Or was it her?" His expression grew confused.
"Who was it, Grandpa?" Astoria stepped closer.
"It was—" The old man's face crumpled. "I don't remember."
Harry pushed past him into the room and ran to the open window. On the ground, a figure in a black cloak was limping away.
"Stupefy!" Harry shouted, but the figure dodged and darted to the side.
Throwing a cushioning charm, Harry jumped out of the window and looked around. A flash of black cloth disappeared around the corner. He followed, zigzagging past a small maze, a pond with a multi-tier rock waterfall, and two outbuildings. Just as he thought he had lost the perpetrator, there was loud neighing and screeching from the stables ahead. He dashed there, only to come to a halt when an angry hippogriff blocked his way forward. The creature reared up, his wings flapping.
Harry froze, clenching his wand. Never taking his eyes off it, he bowed, movements slow and deliberate. His fingers were white around the wood.
The hippogriff lowered its front legs and folded its wings, but didn't move from its spot. A blast of a sloppy apparition fired in the distance, making Harry jerk, but the hippogriff shrieked in warning, unfolding its wings again.
Harry didn't know how long he stood there, keeping his gaze locked with the beast, until finally there was a sound of steps behind him.
"Down, boy!" Mortimer shouted, hurrying over.
The hippogriff inclined its head slightly and turned away to the stables. Mortimer followed, herding it to the nearest stall.
"You're lucky," Cordelia said, coming over as well. "Ripclaw is rather vicious."
"Somebody apparated out on the other side of the stables," said Harry, turning to her. Astoria stood at her mother's side, while Malfoy was keeping his distance, throwing nervous glances from across the road.
"Anti-Apparition ward extends to the stables, but not to the field they open to," said Astoria.
"Whoever that was, they must know the grounds well," Harry said. "Does anyone else live here, by the way?"
"Only our stableman, Barry Bletchley. He lives in one of the outbuildings over there. He's 6'4, though. Rather noticeable."
Harry thought back to the person he'd followed. Neither tall nor particularly short. Could be a man or a tall woman. With a shapeless cloak and a hood over the face, there was no way to tell.
"You held your own admirably, Mr. Potter." Mortimer returned from the stable. "I respect the man who knows his way around a hippogriff." He darted a glance at Malfoy, who jutted his chin and came closer.
They returned to the Manor where Harry, against his better judgement, took an offered glass of firewhiskey. Sometimes you had to make an allowance, and he felt that encounters with raging hippogriffs counted as one of those cases.
To his disappointment, the old man didn't give any clues.
"YOU!" he shouted as soon as he spotted Harry, his unfocused eyes igniting with anger.
Astoria put a hand on his shoulder, and his face went placid.
"Lucy! I missed you so much, Lucy," he babbled.
"Please excuse my grandfather," Mortimer said stiffly. "He's a very old man, and his mind is not as sharp as it once was."
Astoria steered him to his bed with an encouraging smile. "Keep going, Grandpa. One foot after another. That's right."
"We've already asked him about the burglar, but—" Politely but insistently, Cordelia was ushering him out of the room, embarrassment clear on her face. "Well, you see how he is."
Harry asked if there was anything valuable in the room, but Grandfather Greengrass wasn't even allowed to keep his wand anymore. It seemed that he opened the door—which he was apparently wont to do even with locking charms in place—and spooked the thief.
Daphne's bedroom was in the same wing, two doors down. It was a stark contrast to Daphne's fashionable and cold flat or the wealthy elegance of the rest of the manor. The walls were covered with The Weird Sisters posters, prominently featuring the lead singer, Myron Wagtail, bare-chested and in tight dragonhide trousers. Teddy bears in different robes and porcelain dolls inhabited the shelves, together with Daphne's school textbooks and half-dozen bright volumes of a book series called The Princess of Ascania.
"Please excuse me. I just cannot see my daughter's bedroom right now," Cordelia said before leaving the room.
"I've learned some new information earlier today. Shortly before her death, your daughter might've been in possession of a dangerous book that had recently been stolen," Harry said carefully.
Browsing through a pile of summer holiday letters from Daphne's Slytherin friends, he watched Malfoy and Astoria from the corner of his eyes. They didn't look overly surprised. Or unduly anxious.
"What are you implying?" Mortimer's voice rose up indignantly. "My daughter would never be involved in anything illegal!"
Malfoy rolled his eyes behind Mortimer's back.
Further questioning in this direction would only bring hostility, that much was obvious. Since it was unlikely that Mortimer Greengrass knew anything about his daughter's forays into the Dark Arts, Harry changed the topic.
"Did you question your house-elf if he had seen anything?"
"My house-elf?" Mortimer sounded genuinely confused.
"Don't underestimate what little buggers can see and do," Malfoy said with a sour face.
"Soppy!" Mortimer called the elf with a click of his fingers. The familiar elf in the toga appeared. "Have you seen any strangers in the house today?"
"No, Master," Soppy bowed.
"Soppy, have you seen the person who got into the house and then ran away?" asked Harry. From his experience with Kreacher, he knew that wording was everything. And he suspected that the person who'd stolen Daphne's wand was not a stranger to the family living here.
The elf regarded him for a moment with the same inscrutable expression. His ears twitched. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I haven't, Harry Potter, sir."
"See?" Mortimer huffed, sending Soppy away. "Indispensable for housekeeping, but otherwise useless creatures."
When they returned downstairs, Cordelia stood up from her chair.
"We are grateful for your help, Mr. Potter, and hope you'll find the detestable individual disturbing our daughter's memory," she said.
"Today's events are most troubling." Mortimer nodded gravely.
"But you must understand that our family values privacy," Cordelia continued. "We're also counting on your discretion."
"Of course, Lady Greengrass."
Discretion was a popular word among the members of this family. Perhaps the reason they had never supported Voldemort in the war was him being too indiscreet.
He left the Manor, accompanied by Astoria and Malfoy.
"What's that book you were talking about earlier?" Malfoy asked.
"Unabridged edition Magick Moste Evile, stolen from Theodore Nott's house." He watched Malfoy for any signs of recognition, but there were none. Only honest surprise. "With Voldemort's notes in it," he added.
Both Malfoy and Astoria winced at the name. Malfoy rubbed his left forearm reflexively.
"Well." Astoria shook her head. "Not remotely something I'd expect from my sister, I must admit."
"I didn't know Theo had something like that in his house. Of course, I haven't spoken to him in years," Malfoy said with a trace of guilt on his pointy face. "He loved Daphne back in Hogwarts, though. In love with her since our third year, had a ring since our fifth. He was heartbroken when she ditched him after graduation."
"Being a wife of a disgraced Death Eater's son would interfere with her plans for the future: living a life of the main socialite of the Wizarding Britain and having her face in every single Witch Weekly issue." As always, Astoria's politeness and soft-spokenness disappeared when she talked about her sister. "She did love Theodore, though. Certainly more than she'd ever loved Anthony."
"Goldstein is around your height, isn't he?" Malfoy brightened suddenly. "And the same height as whoever you were following down there. Personally, I've never trusted a short man."
Harry kept his face blank through sheer willpower. Neither he nor Goldstein were that short: since Harry's growth spurt before their sixth year, Malfoy never had more than two inches over him, and now it was closer to one. Staying professional on this case was going to take a lot, Harry thought, putting his hands into the pockets of his robe lest the urge to flip Malfoy off became overwhelming.
Severus was nowhere to be seen when Harry returned home, so he floo-called to Spinner's End.
"Severus? Are you there?"
"In the kitchen!" came the distant reply.
Tumbling out the fireplace, Harry shook off the soot and looked around. The house had a general air of disuse and was a bit ramshackle, but on the rare occasions he visited, he always found that it certainly had character. In the golden light of the summer evening, the walls lined with bookshelves and the worn, well-loved tartan chesterfield sofa, looked cosy and lived-in. Pansy would call him nuts, but Harry would take this room over the grandeur of the manor he had just left any day.
Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was way past its glory days, if it had ever had those in the first place. Severus stood with his back to Harry, rummaging through an old and mostly empty fridge. The light inside flickered occasionally.
"Hi there. Are you busy?" Harry asked.
"No, not at all. I was just making dinner." Severus grabbed the closest thing in his reach—a single egg left from whatever better times the fridge had seen—and scowled at it as if it was a Gryffindor melting his favourite cauldron.
"Want to grab some takeaway? Indian, maybe?" Harry asked carefully. Severus was in one of those moods.
"Do you honestly believe this godforsaken shithole has any of those? There's a Tesco fifteen minutes away from here and a dirty pub for those who wish to drink their lives away." He closed the fridge door with force. The glossy white surface bore a visible indent near the handle. "Idiotic contraption."
"We could go home—to Grimmauld, I mean—and order from that new place on the corner you liked," Harry offered. "Or I can apparate there and get us something," he added hastily.
"I've been living at your house for the past two weeks as it is. I realise that this place is no match for the opulence of the Greengrass Manor, but it's the only one I have." Severus's scowl deepened.
Harry gently took the egg from Severus's hand before it exploded from the way he kept staring at it—and not at Harry.
"I like it here."
Severus gave him a disbelieving look.
"I wouldn't want to live somewhere like the Greengrass Manor. It's beautiful, but… oppressive, I guess." Harry waved his hand in a vague gesture. "No, oppressive isn't the right word. It's not gloomy or bleak or anything. Quite the opposite, actually. But places like that come with certain expectations, if you get what I'm saying. A boy from a cupboard under the stairs could never feel at home there." Harry gave a little self-deprecating laugh.
"Oh woe is you." The words were derisive but lacked the bite. "Look around." Severus made a sweeping gesture. The cupboards around him—indeed rather shabby—rattled.
"Now who's throwing a pity party?" Harry stifled a smile at the dramatic timing of Severus's magic, putting a hand on his arm instead. He remembered the hippogriff from earlier today. Sometimes, Severus reminded him of one: proud, easily angered, easily spooked. "You're making good money, certainly enough for a renovation. And we are wizards, for Merlin's sake. I'm not good at Transfiguration, but Pansy would be only too happy to create a Malfoy Manor in miniature in an afternoon. Permanent Transfiguration, too. You know she's that good."
"I don't need a Malfoy Manor here. One was enough for my lifetime," Severus huffed.
"Or we can buy something. A house. A flat." Harry dared to voice another option, the one he had been thinking about for some time now. "If you are that opposed to Grimmauld Place or it brings back bad memories—"
"It doesn't," Severus interrupted sharply. "Unless you're planning to reinstate the house-elf heads and return the mutt's—the old shrieking harpy back in the hallway."
Severus's caution about badmouthing Sirius too much even in this mood made Harry's chest expand with warmth. Their very first big fight had been about that. Harry understood Severus's feelings towards his godfather, but that didn't mean he appreciated Sirius's name constantly brought up in random conversations in a derisive manner.
"Don't worry, I'm not."
"Buying another property doesn't make sense. I'm at Hogwarts most of the year. And since you expressed your willingness—" Severus stopped short with a jerk of his head. Outside the window, the sun disappeared beyond the horizon almost completely, leaving the kitchen and Severus's face in long deepening shadows.
"I'll continue living in your quarters, if you'll still have me, of course." They had discussed this at the end of the school year in June. By then they had for all intents and purposes been living together in the dungeons, even before Harry took McGonagall up on her offer for the NEWT classes next year. But evidently, Severus still felt unsure. "Until McGonagall officially gives me the boot, and then I'll be coming and going through secret passages under my Cloak."
Severus snorted. "Minerva would never do that. You are her favourite. Giving you constant talks on how you can do better, that's more likely." As if realising that he'd said too much, he scowled and attempted to cross his arms on his chest.
Harry didn't let him do it, pulling Severus towards himself and kissing him lightly on the lips. Severus willingly stepped closer, which Harry considered another good sign.
"I'm doing perfectly well for myself as it is," Harry said, putting a curtain of Severus's hair behind his ear so he wouldn't attempt to obscure his face with it. Besides, Harry liked carding his fingers through the black locks, almost clean this evening. Since the time they got together, Severus made an effort to wash it more often, although it still got greasy very quickly from the cauldron fumes. Harry found that he didn't care about that too much. The hair was simply a natural part of Severus, just like his long, graceful fingers or his temper.
"Humph."
"And the only speech Minerva gave me was a warning not to break your heart."
"What?! You can't be serious." Severus looked at Harry with frank astonishment he quickly hid behind another scowl.
"Believe me, I am. She's concerned about you, you know. And I think she's still feeling a bit guilty about doubting you during the war but doesn't know how to approach the topic. That's why she's acting all reserved. She does care about you."
"Psychologist Potter, always looking for the best in people."
"Actually, I'm not. Not with my job."
Despite how the wizarding world viewed him, especially when the pendulum of the Prophet articles veered into the adoration and away from the 'unstable attention-seeker', Harry had learned to be a cynic when it came to certain people rather early in his life. He had to if he wanted to survive the Dursleys. It was easy, however, to come across as a glass-half-full person next to Severus who firmly believed—to a certain extent justifiably—that the world was out to get him.
Severus yanked him suddenly, pinning him to the kitchen worktop. "You can do much better than a cantankerous old man. But until you realise that, you are mine," he muttered hotly into Harry's hair; low, almost unintelligible sound.
He captured Harry's lips into a fierce, possessive kiss full of teeth and tongue.
"Yes," Harry half-moaned when they separated briefly, both slightly breathless, before Severus's lips found his throat. Harry's hand was on his way to Severus's trousers when his stomach gave a loud rumble.
Severus stepped back, earning himself a whine of protest from Harry.
"You haven't even had any lunch, have you?"
"I've had a butterbeer with Lee at the radio station. And a Peppermint Toad," he added lamely.
"A Peppermint Toad." Severus raised an eyebrow.
"You're the one to talk." Dragging Severus to lunch in between lessons was a hard task. Dragging him to lunch when he was in his lab was impossible. "I can ask Kreacher to make us something quick."
"You will do no such thing. I'm not letting that slanderous creature anywhere near our food."
Severus stepped closer again, and Harry's eyes fluttered closed. Instead of another kiss he was expecting, however, Harry got an unpleasant sensation of being squeezed through a tube. When he blinked, opening his eyes, they were standing in the middle of Grimmauld Place kitchen.
"There are some chicken breasts left from Friday; those will do," Severus said before turning his head to the door. "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT COMING HERE, YOU FLAP-EARED BANDERSNATCH!" he shouted. There was some low muttering in response.
Harry caught his hand. "Stay here."
"I believe I've come to do just that."
"I mean until September."
"Until mid-August," Severus conceded. "Teachers have to return to the castle before the students, you know," he explained before Harry could protest.
"Until mid-August, then," Harry agreed with a wide smile. "By the way, did you know that you're a fashion icon now?"
"What?" Severus furrowed his brow.
Harry's smile turned into a mischievous grin as he produced the CD he'd brought from the wireless station.