Chapter 6

Harry

What the bloody hell is she thinking, Harry wondered. He was Pissed. The elder Greengrass had drawn his wand, what was Harry supposed to do, let him attack Harry, on top of trying to trap him in marriage to the man's daughter? It had barely been 5 minutes and already Harry regretted swearing to Kingsly he'd follow his lead. Harry should have listened to Ron and just jinxed the both of them from the start, see if maybe then they'd be more forthcoming and helpful!

Meanwhile this mad Slytherin girl had just stared silently at him the whole time Kingsly had been talking. She didn't seem a fraction as distraught by this forced marriage as Harry would have expected or liked. He couldn't get any read on her at all. How was she so calm about being basically sold off at such a young age! Kingsly had said that the Greengrasses hadn't supported Riddle, that they knew of, and so Kingsly had begged Harry to not antagonize them. But she had just stared at him. Like every damned wizard and witch since he was eleven she had stared at him. Well he wasn't eleven anymore and refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him look away first. Not with her head doubtless filled with years of nonsense by Draco. Harry just wished he understood how she was taking this so calmly. Even when she tried to calm her father and him down she was just an emotional blank slate. Wasn't she furious at the injustice of this situation? Didn't she have dreams beyond being treated like some prized breeding mare?

Harry had never, besides perhaps during Umbridge's reign of terror in fifth year, felt more strongly about the correctness of Hermione's constant preaching about the need for reforms to the magical world. How could a society raise a woman who would just passively accept bullshit like this? Though, Harry supposed, not every witch raised by purebloods was so spineless. Harry almost chuckled picturing what Ginny's reaction would be in this situation. Then Harry thought of Ginny's likely reaction to all this, and felt less like laughing and more like being sick in the Minister's office.

Well if he did, he'd be making sure to aim for the expensive robes of the Elder Greengrass for sure. Harry prayed Ginny wouldn't make one of his first acts as an Auror be to arrest her for assaulting the two Greengrasses outright. This just didn't make any sense. Harry assessed the young woman staring back at him, at least as well as he could without breaking from their resumed staring contest.

She was short. Looked only about 155cm tall. Perhaps that and her evident quite nature was why he had never really noticed her before, despite evidently being in the same year. Maybe she had been one of the faceless hoards of girls laughing at every cruel joke of Pansy and Draco's. She was dressed in an elegant, and form fitting, formal robe, which accentuated her moderate bust tastefully. Her shoulder length hair was a yellower blond than Malfoys, leaving her skin less sickly pale than his always appeared. She had every look of the sort of wealthy type Aunt Petunia always admired in her magazines and telly shows. Except, Harry supposed, for the whole magical element. Harry was almost glad her shoes were past his glasses ability to see, as he was sure they would be expensive too. She looked barely over 10 stone.

As he stared into her Brown eyes, or were they Hazel, Harry could never remember the difference, Harry racked his brain for any memory at all of this former classmate. He had more success remembering places and times she definitely was not present, than times she was. She hadn't been in his potions or defense classes 6th year. Those classes were small enough he'd definitely remember her. Harry supposed it was possible she had been in Charms or Transfiguration with him, but could not say he recalled her specifically. Before that, Harry had never noticed any Slytherins not following the lead of Malfoy, Snape, or Parkinson, but he didn't remember her as being on the inquisitorial squad. So that was something.

Truly, the fact that Harry knew he had spent 6 years sharing classes with this girl, and the first memorable moment with her was reading her name on that document was astonishing. She must have kept an absurdly low profile. Harry didn't pretend to be the most observant person. He hadn't truly noticed Romilda Vane until Hermione had warned him about her in 6th year afterall. But from a house of prideful bullies like Slytherin, Harry decided he would say it was probably a good sign he couldn't remember ever having spoken a word to this girl before today. Besides, if Severus' sacrifice and the Malfoy's actions had taught Harry anything, it was that outside of school, even Slytherins were capable of demonstrating goodness and bravery.

Finally, Harry let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. " So what now? I'm, what, engaged to Daphne now? What if either of us married someone else before the month deadline is up? Or what if we got married and got it immediately annulled?"

" I'm afraid it's not that simple my boy. This contract was written from way before divorce was legally available. The Blacks who wrote it put in magical insurance of a sort. That family has very much deserved their reputation for paranoia through the centuries. If any action is taken by either Daphne or Harry that prevents the fulfillment of this contract, both will lose their magic for certain." Harry was definitely not just about to take Lord Greengrass' word on that. And he told him as much.

"So you say, but I don't believe that this is just something to be accepted. One thing you should know about me, I'm not a person who gives up easily." Even as Harry said all this neither he nor Daphne broke eye contact.

"And the whole wizarding world owes you an unpayable debt for that. Now, unless the minister has any further questions, my daughter and I were denied our breakfast to answer for this, and tempers have already gotten the best of each of us. Despite the unfortunate nature of it, I am honored to have finally met you, and you are welcome to contact Daphne or myself to plan the ceremony. Look for my owl to receive an invitation to visit my home so you and Daphne can hopefully converse some more soon." The very way the Lord's tone left no room for disagreement just made Harry want to argue even more.

"Yeah, you go. I have a new job to start today,and don't want to waste anymore time on you." Harry probably should have kept the venom out of his voice, but he couldn't help it. The girl still hadn't broken eye contact with him, and the man just got on Harry's nerves.

"Come Daphne, bid your betrothed farewell for now." Harry actually thought Daphne's eyes betrayed the same sense of rising bile he felt in his own throat at her father's description of them. Still, as she dipped into a curtsey, offering her hand, which Harry now saw was surprisingly tiny in his own, Harry was glad to have an excuse to lock his eyes on hers. Harry felt heat rise in his face as he tried desperately not to notice how her robes showed quite a view of her cleavage from this new angle.

" I'm really sorry Harry. Maybe if you do come over, we can work together to see if my father missed anything and we can get out of this afterall. Good luck with your first day of Auror duties, please stay safe." Daphne's voice actually sounded full of concern, and her eyes matched it. Harry blinked, and turned away from her at last.

" Thanks Green-Daphne. See you, I guess." Harry muttered to the wall. He didn't turn around until he heard the door close.

As soon as the door had closed, Kingsly birthed into Laughter. Deep and rumbling chuckles that made Harry go even redder in the face.

" Oh, Thanks Kingsly, that's really helpful.I feel loads better now."

" I'm sorry Harry," Kingsly got out in between the rumbles from his chest, "but watching you stumble like that was not something I thought I'd ever see. It's adorable"

" Ha. Ha. I'm glad you can see the amusement in my suffering. Please tell me there's some run away death eater I can take these frustrations out on."

" I'm afraid not just yet Harry. But you will need to report to Robbards, your new boss. I'm sure he's already putting Ron through the wringer testing out his abilities before he'll let him escort Hermione to Australia." Harry shook Kingsly's hand and followed the aide to the Auror's office. Harry had his hand on his wand reflexively hearing shouting and the sound of spellcasting from behind the door. Harry knocked on the door three quick times.

"Quit loitering by the door and get in here!" Harry heard a gravelly voice bark from the otherside, and saw the door open up. Harry had to chuckle at his own mind's tendency to want to describe the door as 'almost like magic'. Harry hoped he would never stop being awestruck by this wonderful world.

Inside the door, which shut immediately behind him, Harry saw what looked like some strange combination of a typical Office, with desks in cubicles, and the Room of Requirement as Harry knew it when he was training the D.A there. There were a dozen training dummies, several enchanted flying baubles, and all manner of magical combat training tools. Manning all these from behind a podium like some mad orchestra conductor was an old man that called old Mad-eye Moody back to the forefront of Harry's memories.

His wild gray hair was receding so far back that it seemed he had two distinct tufts of hair. He was of middling height, and was missing most of his left nostril and right ear. His face was so covered in scars that Harry wasn't sure what were scars and what were wrinkles. His wiry walrus mustache seemed to move independently on either side of his battered nose. Harry couldn't actually follow every spell the man was firing off non verbally in combination with the various training devices. Harry could not have been prouder than in the moment he recognized Ron ably fending off this deluge, all while running what appeared to be a three dimensional obstacle course. It was every bit the Ron at his best that Harry had seen perform a perfect game as a Keeper.

" Potter!" Harry was not certain there was actually a mouth beneath the mustache. " Let's see if you have any hope without fate and luck babying you! Weasley here is so far proving to be a moderately capable wizard I think may not embarrass this force. Join him immediately, then we will debrief on the Minister's desperation to ignore all hiring protocols to bring you in." The man's eyes never actually met Harry's, nor did his spell slinging slow for a moment. Harry was officially impressed by his boss. Harry was also not about to let Ron's typical under performance under scrutiny kick in now, and as he ran into the obstacle course, immediately began firing off his own jinxes and counter curses at both the various targets, but also the Mustache himself.

"Now that's worth what I've Heard about! Good! Now disarm me between the two of you and maybe this department will have a semblance of a hope!" Harry almost thought the mustache twitched into a smirk. The obstacle course was constantly changing and shifting from bright light to oppressive darkness obscuring Harry's vision. Harry felt nostalgic for the Hogwarts staircases and Oliver Wood's old training sessions. Truthfully, Harry should have been nervous, but working with Ron, who he quickly caught up to, felt so natural at this point. If anything, Harry felt exhilarated.

In the end, it took 15 minutes from Harry's arrival for Ron to distract their opponent by directing a dummy at him while Harry got a full body bind curse from another angle past his defenses. Harry's heart was beating the kind of speed that reminded him of his best quidditch matches. None of the terror or horror he had started getting used to from combat situations. Magic was fun again.

"Fine, you won't embarrass this country." As soon as Harry had lifted the curse, the man, Harry now assumed this was Robbards, was back to barking business. Pointing them at two of the desks Harry had noticed earlier, and upturned during that spar. "Weasley, that's your desk, Potter, you take the one next to it. Get this place cleaned up, then check inside. You'll find your badges and some nice dragonhide duelist robes. If you're on the clock, you are wearing those. I'll answer to director, or Robbards. Hop to it! And welcome to the Aurors."

Robbards kept both of them pushed to their limits all day, barely even letting up for a lunch break. Ron and Harry alternated being grilled on potions knowledge and going over investigation methods. All while neither were allowed to go five minutes without being tested on their reaction times and endurance. As the day wound to an end, Harry had almost forgotten how angry he was with the Greengrass situation.

Robbards said Ron could probably keep from being a complete waste of department resources, and signed the forms so that Ron could officially escort Hermione to Australia starting the very next morning. Harry was expected early as well to work on investigating a possible location of an escaped death eater.

" Bloody hell He's a bigger nutter than Moody! What have you gotten me into Harry? And what was up with that contract, how'd You-Know-Who fake it?" Ron groaned as they headed to the apparition point to return to the Burrow, where Harry planned to stay at least the rest of the week.

"Eh, Robbards honestly isn't as bad as Wood sometimes got. But in a few minutes I'm going to need you behind Gin, ready to stop her hexing my nads off. The bloody thing was legit. I'm to be married within the month to Daphne Greengrass." Harry saw Ron stop and drop his jaw impressively wide at that.

" Come off it mate! You're taking the piss, surely? No one's used contracts in a century! Not even gits like the Malfoys!" As Harry got ready to explain his meeting to Ron, realizing he'd have to do so all over again soon or the whole Weasley family, Harry's anger, temporarily abated from exhaustion returned.

" My bloody luck then isn't it? Cus Greengrass and Kingsly were both quite sure there was no getting out of it. Apparently Riddle's plans for after my demise required it, and the death eaters found some ancient contract already signed by the blacks, and forced Greengrass to sign at wandpoint."

"Fuck, Harry, Mum and Ginny'll go apeshit for certain. And forced to marry a Slytherin to boot? All right mate, at last I think I can say I'm glad I don't have your life. Bet ya anything Hermione can figure out a way to help though." At the mention of Hermione, Ron got a slightly far off look of happiness in his eye. Harry was glad for his two best friends. But their happiness right now just pissed him off at his own situation even more.

"Except she can't bloody be studying up on centuries old laws while the two of you are in Australia can she? You heard Robbards, there might actually be renegade death eaters there, you need to be focusing on helping her parents."

"It's Hermione Harry, I don't think she'll be able to sleep without a book or two on contracts once you tell her regardless. And you should really get it in your head by now that Hermione and I are never abandoning you. Certainly I'll never do it again. We beat the fucking Dark Lord Harry! We can handle the Greengrasses."

Dinner that night was indeed a hectic affair. Mrs. Weasley and Ginny broke the kitchen table and all the dishes respectively, and Hermione Hugged Harry, tears in her eyes, swearing her parents could wait while they figured the situation out. Honestly, Harry wanted to be right there with Ginny and Molly in destroying things. But there was no way he was going to let his misfortune get in between Hermione and her reunion with her parents.

" Hermione, your parents are absolutely more important right now. It's not like I have to marry her tomorrow. You and Ron go to Australia. Get your parents back." Harry cracked a wry smile, "If worse comes to worse, I'd hate for them and you to miss my wedding".

"Harry's right 'Mione. Kingsly already got a portkey set up for us early tomorrow morning so we can get to Sydney in time for dinner. If anyone can find them, and think up how to get Harry out of this mess, it's gotta be you!" Ron ended with a quick kiss on Hermione's lips, to the sound of wolf whistles from George. Hermione blushed but seemed to have calmed down.

"Well in that case, Harry, I need you to help me test a project I've been working on today. It looks like it may be more important than I thought."

" Sure Hermione, what's the project?" Harry responded.

" Well Professor Mcgonnagall gave me some advanced spells to study last summer before she knew I'd be traveling with you. Since I found out I was going to get to complete my last year yesterday, I got started on it. And as soon as I figured out the first spell, creating Port keys, I got an idea." At this she pulled out her old traveling bag. "Obviously we all know Port keys were invented because of the limited range capabilities of Apparition and the floo network."

"Oh yeah, obviously." Ron cut in with a slight grin.

"Ahem," Hermione continued, " well I found mastering the Portus charm to be fairly simple, and began wondering if Wizards could transport goods as easily as people. I confess Harry I was somewhat inspired by Sirius' two way mirror. It took me most of the afternoon, with several rather abysmal failures I'll admit, But I believe I've quite improved upon my travel bag."

At this Hermione pulled out two tiny objects Harry quickly recognized as miniaturized bags such as the one Hermione had enchanted during their time on the run last year. She quickly enlarged them to normal size.

" Now, we can travel with the Port Key, and communicate with this." Hermione held up two hand mirrors Harry guessed were recreations of the one Sirius had given him. "But as of now, we have to wait on the post if, say, I forget to pack something important. I'm so happy that my experiment has worked though, because I fixed it!" With that, Hermione excitedly opened one bag and placed one of the mirrors inside. She then closed the bag and opened the other, retrieving what appeared to be that very mirror.

" Wow Hermione, that's incredible!" Ron was the first with the compliments, but Mr. Weasely spent the remainder of the night excitedly discussing Hermione's success. Hermione made it clear she'd be leaving one bag with Harry at the Burrow, so he could send her any books on Wizarding law she needed while searching for her family. Harry had to hand it to Ron, He knew his girlfriend, and had predicted her actions almost perfectly. Only missing on her creating a major magical breakthrough in an afternoon. Which, listening to Mr. Weasley, would be a revolutionary product for the whole of wizarding society.

It worked quite well at distracting the entire family from Harry's problems, Harry couldn't have planned it better. Harry and Ron said their good nights when it became clear that the discussions weren't ending anytime soon.A few moments later, Ron's snores were lulling Harry to sleep. He had nearly surrendered to his exhaustion from this insane day, when he felt a poke in his ribs and a hand over his mouth.

It was Ginny, who held a finger to her lips, her silhouette just barely illuminated by the hall light. Harry quietly slipped out of his bed and followed Ginny to the room she was currently sharing with Hermione. Harry could still hear most of the family heatedly talking with Hermione downstairs. He nearly swallowed his tongue when Ginny shut her door and sat down on the bed. Clearly not everyone was too distracted to let Harry avoid the hard discussions about Greengrass.

" Hermione and I had discussed her using her invention as a distraction earlier, right after she mastered it. Now I see we need to have a talk, you and I, Harry. Such a waste of an opportunity if you ask me." Harry looked at her. She didn't look angry, but Harry could definitely tell she was upset.

"Ginny, I'm so sorry. This whole thing is just such absolute bollocks. Fuck Daphne Greengrass, and her father too! All last year, I couldn't think of any future without you. I nearly didn't make it into those woods because I feared not seeing you again. If you had asked me to choose you over the wizarding world, I'm terrified I would have chosen you immediately. I don't care what some ancient asshole Black signed on some archaic parchment. If I'm going to marry anyone, it's you Ginny!" Harry held Ginny in an embrace the entire time he spoke. It felt like if he just hugged her tight enough, he could make the words true.

"Well look, Harry, you know I've loved you longer than I've even truly known you. What started as schoolgirl obsession developed into feelings so deep they honestly frighten me at times. But I want to be clear, if Hermione and Percy fail to figure out a legal way out, I don't care about dusty old parchment either. Marry the cow even, I'm yours and your mine! I'm not 11 anymore. I don't need to marry Harry Potter to live my dreams, I just need to hold him in my arms."

Ginny did just that, and then, they were snogging with a passion Harry knew in his gut he'd never feel for anyone else. Who else could light his insides on fire the way Ginny did? As he breathed in her scent, and battled with her tongue, Harry felt the exhaustion wash away, to be replaced by growing excitement. This was good. This was right. This was how he wanted to spend his summer. His life. As Ginny somehow found a way to deeper the kiss even further, Harry knew in this moment, in this amazing, wonderful, brave, clever witch, he had finally found a true home.

Harry felt Ginny lifting up his shirt, and as they temporarily broke their kiss he lifted hers as well. As soon as both of their shirts were abandoned to the floor, Harry and Ginny practically slammed back into each other's 's seeker fingers had nearly figured out the confounding mystery of how to unclasp Ginny's bra a few moments later when there was a soft knock on the door.

"Merlin's nads!" Ginny hissed in anger. " That's Hermione, she must have already ran out of excuses to keep the family distracted. You'd best pop into Ron's room before Mum spots us. Good night Harry, I love you, don't you ever forget that!"

Harry quickly retrieved his shirt as Ginny donned hers. With one more quick kiss, Harry apparated to his bed in Ron's room. Ron didn't even stir from his slumber. Harry knew he'd be needing to rub one out before he'd be sleeping tonight. But as on edge as he was, He felt much more at peace than he had all day. Ginny loved him. If Harry just held on to that truth, he knew he could face an army of dark lords, or even a marriage to Daphne Greengrass.