"Have a seat."

It was an order that had no malice to it and Jack quickly followed Thomas' instructions. Thomas took a second to massage his temples, focusing once more at the man that sat at the other side of his desk. The action alone gave insight to the intensity of Thomas' headache, making Jack wish that he could dream up a quick remedy.

Unable to hold back, Jack asked the other man, "Are you alright?"

The answer he got in return was clipped, "Doing just fine, I have a stress headache, is all. I'll live."

A brief pause permeated the room before Thomas had it in him to continue the conversation, "What can I do for you, Jack Harkness?"

Jack pondered upon this question before settling on the truth, "I figured it was my due diligence to learn more about the man that bested me."

...

Harry felt as though the air around him was pulsating, suffocating him with every throbbing beat. He knew that the air around him didn't really have a pulse, that instead it was his head that was throbbing, but that didn't stop the pain nor did it diminish the fact that he had to work. He was too high up for a sick day.

His subordinates were no stranger to Harry's headaches. Headaches such as these only came after speaking to Harry's direct superior, Balthazar Aureate. It took Harry a couple years to figure out the link to his headaches and his boss, but there wasn't much he could do without arousing suspicion.

Harry was truly lucky to have such understanding coworkers. With that stated, it only took one warning email from Hugo and suddenly the lively office space would hush, shifting into the equivalent of a library. Hugo, too, had noticed the link between Harry's headaches and Mr. Aureate, and as such had done his best to plan ahead for the pain looming on the horizon.

Harry expected the best out of his employees and in return they would get the best from him. The seemingly young director of the accounting division of the finance department did what he would to suit the needs of everyone that worked for him, simply because they deserve it.

This was, in part, due to Harry's stringent hiring process, where he weeded out the people who showed no real passion for their line of work and those that were vying for power. Oh, and the muggles. They had no place in the accounting division; after all, they couldn't really grasp the severity and danger that came with its line of work.

Yes, there was danger involved in accounting. Maybe not in the namesake, but on top of filing taxes and the like, MI5's accounting team was responsible for completing missions with varying degrees of deadliness, all of which require a magic user.

Harry served as the guinea pig for this venture after having no choice but to use his magic to defend his unsuspecting coworkers from a terrorist attack some years back. The terrorist group of the week had managed plant pipe bombs, along with tear gas canisters, throughout the first floor of MI5. Their hope was to topple the building over, crushing those that sat inside and administer a major blow to MI5 as a whole.

Harry had woken up that day with a bad feeling in his gut, doom seemingly on the horizon. He had grown to trust his gut after all of his years at Hogwarts and serving as the master of death, so Harry wasn't about to ignore it now. He had grown rather good at wandless magic over the course of his life, hardly ever using the elder wand except in cases that required more thought than dexterity. That, and he was concerned that his coworkers would find his magic wand and either severely injure themselves or relentlessly make fun of him. Harry wasn't sure which one was worse.

Thing about magic, or rather, Harry's magic, is that it amplifies your gut feelings, making what would be a whisper into a scream, an ever blaring alarm that makes you constantly aware of your surroundings. Stepping into work that day was like walking into a hallway of bullhorns primed and ready to go off when you least expect it.

However, Harry was expecting it, so much so that he practically knew when the height of the danger would be. He tried to appear nonchalant while 'danger deadline' loomed over his shoulder like a strict parent, all the while searching for any and all reasons that there might be impending doom at his exact location. The danger was everywhere, so he ducked into an empty conference room and tried all the spells he could think of that might help reveal what exactly was going on. After several minutes of sweating and cursing, a simple 'point-me' spell directed him to one source of danger: a bomb that was about three feet in front of him, tucked behind a table in the corner. On it was a countdown that meant that this specific bomb was wired to go off at 10 am, a mere 1.5 hours away.

Needing no further prompting, Harry dashed out of the conference room and into the nearest office area, a touch of madness in his eyes, "Who here can disarm a bomb?!"

Instead of his coworkers springing into action like the circumstances dictated, they remain seated at their desk, though the room had taken on a silence that was rarely seen.

"I know you bloody heard me, who here can disarm a bomb?!"

The silence lasted for a few more seconds until he heard someone in a far off corner say "I can." And with that, Harry sprung into action, far more confident than he was in his school days, "Alright," he pointed at the man who bore some resemblance to Draco Malfoy, "you! Come with me!"

Harkening back to his CPR and first aid training, Harry called out the person in the cubicle nearest to him in order to eliminate the bystander effect, "You! Go outside and call 999!" And the next cubicle over, "You, call the bomb squad! Everyone, go outside and stand 80 yards away from the building."

With quick movements, Harry located the closest fire alarm and pulled down hard, the blaring that soon followed synonymous with that in his head.

"Alright, let's go."

...

With everyone safely outside and a large majority of the building on lockdown, Harry and the blond haired man got to work, running into the conference room where Harry saw the first bomb. As the volunteer got to work on disarming the bomb, Harry decided that he should learn his name, just incase everything went topsy turvy.

"So what was your name?"

"Scorpius Malfoy."

Well that was something that stopped Harry in his tracks, "Of course you would be a Malfoy," the phrase coming out a little more derisive than intended.

"Don't let my heritage be the cause for your distaste."

"No, no— I didn't mean it like that. I went to school with your father… we didn't always get along, but we grew to tolerate each other when we were adults."

Ignoring the bomb that lay ticking in his hands, Scorpius took his turn in being shocked, "How the hell did you go to school with my father? You don't look a day over 20!"

Rolling his eyes, simply because this wasn't the first time he'd heard that last sentence, he leaned forward and lowered the glamour on his face for a split second.

There was a brief silence and then, "...Merlin."

Scorpius took a moment to look confounded and then returned to the task at hand. Once he had successfully disarmed it, Harry used his wandless magic to perform another 'point me' spell, the arrow pointing to an area just behind the receptionist desk.

Scorpius again got to work deconstructing the newest bomb, leaving Harry with a question.

"Why do you know how to disarm bombs?"

Malfoy looked embarrassed, though Harry wasn't quite sure why, before answering, "People have been trying to kill us Malfoys for as long as I can remember. It was just wizards at first, but after the war muggles joined in too. Bombs only helped the cause. Father saw to it that I learned how to protect myself."

Harry was at a loss for words. He hadn't realized the profound hatred Malfoys experienced on a daily basis.

"I'm sorry."

Scorpius spoke with some effort, "Don't be. We lived, didn't we? And as the saying goes, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

The conversation died out as they located all of the bombs and worked to destroy them before the rapidly approaching deadline. Once they were sure that all of them were dead, they vacated the premises and walked over to the nearest pub— not unlike the one where Harry met Jack— ordering their respective food and drinks and wondering where the years had gone. Harry made sure to mention that his alias for MI5 was Thomas Green, so that when they were inevitably questioned Scorpius would have the right name.

As Harry suspected, they were both questioned extensively when they returned to work the next day, a conversation that led to the both of them not-so-willingly enlisted in the secret services of MI5. It was a far cry from the normal life Harry so desperately wanted, but he was immortal so he had plenty of time for normal later.

As stated before, he quickly worked up the ranks and he was soon given his own division to look after— after all, magic users knew the needs of other magic users.

This all led up to today. His mission to infiltrate the base of an enemy and obtain information was about a week ago and therefore it had been a week since he'd seen Jack, which really didn't make up for the years that he missed him.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Jack would come looking for him soon, if only because the American found his glamour interesting. So Harry was not surprised that Jack had come searching on the day of a blinding headache. These headaches were relatively new to Harry, beginning during his early days at MI5.

The first time it happened, Harry was sent into a panic, rambling to Hermione on the phone that Voldemort was back. Once he had calmed down, due to Hermione's insistence that he had killed Voldemort and there was no way he was still around, he and Hermione slipped into a conversation about going to the doctor, that he might have a brain tumor. The thought of that made Harry laugh because he could imagine the newspaper headlines ("The Master of Death Dies of a Brain Tumor: Why We Shouldn't Teach the Dark Arts in our Schools"). Again at Hermione's recommendation, he went to the doctor when the pain subsided.

After he had expressed his concerns to the doctor, he was quickly brought in for testing, where they found (drumroll please) absolutely nothing. There was nothing that their machines could see that might explain Harry's headaches, nor could they do anything to ease some of the pain. The Boy-Who-Lived made sure to remain polite through the entirety that the doctor was speaking, posing only simple questions at the end so as to imply that he wasn't a raving mad lunatic. Once he had left the doctors office, he only had one thought: What the fuck is wrong with me?

Since then, he sought out anyone that could possibly tell him what was wrong: specialists, mediwizards, healers, soothsayers… Not a single one of them could tell him what caused these headaches. So he had no choice but to live with them, the only option that Harry wished wasn't the case.

And he lived with them. He was ever so thankful for his understanding coworkers and the vow of a quiet workspace they'd created on their own volition once they saw the effects of their first witnessed headaches. Many items in his office were thanks to his coworkers, Scorpius and Hugo in particular, the items in question being the white noise machine, room darkening curtains, and the lamps with dimming bulbs. They made a frightful pair, those two. Harry had never seen a pair of people that understood each other so well, always in sync. Outside of the Weasley twins, that is. And… oh god he needed to focus.

Harry shook his head to rid his eyes of the thousand yard stare they were giving and steadied his attention on Jack.

"I'm so sorry, can you repeat that?"