A/N: It has been brought to my attention that I have perhaps not given a lot of (or enough) information regarding the set-up of this story. Yes, it is an Alternate Universe tale.

Do you know everything? No.

Do I? Not yet.

It was my plan to slowly give out the needed info as it came. Harry and Hermione got together in fifth year. It's the summer before their seventh year, not too many days before Harry's 17th birthday and Bill and Fluer's wedding…. Dumbledore is still dead. Ginny seems to be over her crush with Harry. Ron was dating Luna.

There are still Horocruxes… Voldemort… Snape and Draco still were atop the tower, Harry forced to watch…

Just go with it here… I'm just having some fun.

Thanks for all the reviews.

O X O X O X O X O X O

SANCTUARY

After several jumps, trying to blow off some of the excess anger he could feel coursing through his body, Harry finally reached his home, Number Twelve Grimmald Place. It was an ugly home, a manor left to him by his late Godfather, Sirius Black, but it did have the luxury of being paid for and being entirely his.

The tears had stopped, thankfully. Harry ran his hand along his jaw line feeling the rough stubble that danced along his chin. Maybe a beard. Or a goatee. He laughed at the absurd thought, his mind subconsciously flittering over anything and everything to keep from wallowing in a despair over the love of his life throwing everything away… and that he couldn't count on his best mate to help him since he was the one she cheated with.

"Harry Potter, sir." Dobby suddenly appeared from the doorway to the kitchen, his hands wiping the washcloth in their grasp over and over, obviously nervous. "Dobby is sorry that not everything is ready for you and your friends to be back… Dobby was not expecting Harry Potter back so soon. Dobby is a bed house elf and will…"

Harry waved his hand. "Don't worry about it. It's okay. Really." The house elf didn't look entirely convinced; his huge eyes staring in an almost worshipful way at him, but Dobby nodded his acceptance anyway.

"Does Harry Potter wish for anything?" He was smiling now, his body literally vibrating with enthusiasm to serve him. "Food or a bath, maybe?"

Harry sighed and moved over to one of the plush chairs in the main room. Sitting down, idly noting that there was no explosion of dust from his attack on the chair's cushion, Harry shook his head, tearing his glasses off of his face, haphazardly dropping them to the floor. His eyes closed, he never looked to see Dobby's movements, carefully saving the glasses from striking the floor.

"Does Harry Po…"

"Dobby." Harry sighed. "Who all can come here? To my house?"

The house elf played absently with the Hawaiian shirt that was tied around his waist like a skirt as he threw the washrag onto his shoulder. "To Harry Potter's House? The Order, minus the evil Snape. Harry Potter's friends, his Lady and his Wheezy and…"

"Dobby." Harry interrupted him, his voice tired. Can you block everyone? Keep me alone here for a while?"

Dobby's eyes seemed to wilt as he felt the rolls of unhappiness wave from Harry, the weight of his emotional pain filling the room. "What would Harry Potter like me to do?"

Leaving his eyes closed, trying to banish the mental images of Hermione and Ron together, the things that they might have done… those same things that Harry had been dreaming of doing with her, relentlessly pursuing him, the proverbial knife plunged deeper and deeper into his heart. "First, block off the Floo. No one in, no one out."

With a snap of his fingers, Dobby sealed the Floo.

"Next, reinforce the anti-apparation fields. For right now, no one in or out."

"Harry Potter, sir?" Dobby's voice was hesitant. When Harry finally opened his eyes to look at him, Dobby smiled weakly. "Can Dobby still be allowed to go as needed to take care of Harry Potter?"

Harry nodded. "Of course, Dobby. You can take care of me."

The little elf's face lit up at Harry's words. He snapped his fingers again and the House sparkled with magic, the resistance field settling into place. "How long should Dobby leave it like this?"

Harry shifted comfortably in the chair, glad for his friend's questions, keeping his mind on tasks at hand, not dwelling on… Shaking his head to stop that train of thoughts, Harry opened his eyes and sat up, his elbows on his knees. "How about for two days. After that, open it up for me."

Dobby nodded. "As Harry Potter wishes." Twiddling his fingers, Dobby seemed to almost dance in place, the desire to ask another question apparent, even to a Harry that was nearly blind without his eyeglasses.

"Yes?"

"Well, Harry Potter, sir…" Dobby stepped closer and began to whisper. "Is Harry Potter hiding?"

Hiding? Harry considered the question. Finally, he nodded. "I guess I am… for a little while, anyway. But I can't go far, so I came here and asked you to help me keep everyone else away."

Dobby's face broke into a huger grin. "Harry Potter is a great wizard, asking Dobby's help. Dobby is glad to help in any way that he can for you are a powerful wizard…"

Laughing, Harry wandlessly summoned his glasses to him. "Well, thanks to your help," He interrupted. "I am safe from intruders."

Harry stopped at the stricken face on the elf. "Harry Potter, sir. You need to still lock all doors and windows, they is a normal way to come in."

He smiled at Dobby. Leave it to a house elf to realize the muggle way of doing things, when a muggle raised wizard had been too blind to do it. "Great idea, Dobby. Can you seal everything up?"

"Oh, yes, Harry Potter. Dobby will do that right now."

Harry was always amazed, the power that the house elves seemed to have. With a third snap of his fingers, throughout the Grimmald Place, Harry heard the echoes of the doors and windows snapping shut, followed briefly by the sweet hum of magic as they were all sealed.

Glancing around the room, Harry stood. "Thank you, Dobby."

Dobby merely bowed, the wash towel falling off of his shoulder. "It is always a pleasure to serve the great Harry Potter. Sir."

Cheekily, Harry started walking towards the kitchen. "Well then, you should know that it is always a pleasure to be served by the wise and powerful Dobby…"

Harry, entering the kitchen, failed to see the rosy blush that filled the house elf's cheeks at the words of praise.

O X O X O X O X O X O

Nymphadora Tonks, though if anyone ever dared calling her by her first name she'd teach them why it wasn't safe to piss her off, tried to lift her head from where it was resting. The attempt was unsuccessful, especially as her face seemed to be stuck to the hard surface her cheek was laying against. Blinking her eyes rapidly, unsure of her predicament, Tonks found herself lying on the floor next to her bed. Scattered along the floor in her immediate vision were several bottles of fire-whiskey, butter-beer and other spirited concoctions that took away the pain she was feeling.

Remus had finally and definitely told her that he wasn't interested. Sure, he was flattered at the attention, but he just wasn't interested in a child sixteen years his junior. She'd cried. She screamed. She'd broken so many things, priceless memories that seemed no like nothing. Then she'd tried drinking.

Now, she was hung-over.

Finally awake enough to realize where she was and that it was a mess of her own making, Tonks moved her hands to a proper position and slowly pulled away from the hardwood floor of the bedroom, the skin on her face finally giving to the dried and very sticky remains of the spilt bottles around her.

Finally upright, the smell of the room hit her and she almost gagged. Looking around, Tonks sought to find the source of the offending odor, when she stopped and wrinkled her nose, before lifting the shirt she was wearing.

"Oh, Circe! It's me!" She griped in obvious self-disgust.

Standing quickly, though she had to throw a hand out towards the wall to prevent herself from falling from the vertigo that washed over her briefly, Tonks immediately began pealing away the clothes she was wearing into a pile to be discarded, preferably incinerated to ash, and took off for the bathroom that was across the hallway.

After entering the bathroom and trying not to let out a shriek as her bare feet touched the seemingly ice cold tile of the loo's floor, she quickly closed the door and moved over to run the hot water for a quick shower. A bath would have been preferable, but she'd made the mistake of drinking at Grimmald Place and that meant that there was no telling when Remus might show up.

Scrubbing at her skin, Tonks grinned as the heat seemed to open her up, allowing for her to feel more like herself. Before she'd gotten into the shower, she'd intentionally avoided the mirror, not wanting to realize how her metamorphmagus abilities had interpreted the act of trying to drink oneself into oblivion.

Turning the water off, she took a moment to run her hands across her wet skin, her flesh pimpling under the contact as goose flesh rose everywhere, the cool air of the house wanting to invade against the slowly fading steam. Sadly, she grabbed the nearest towel and began drying herself off, her thoughts dancing along where she needed to go once she made it away from here.

There had been an important Order meeting this morning. Tonks mentally kicked herself at letting her failure of a relationship with Remus bloody Lupin to interfere with helping Harry. Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One. She smiled as she considered what a powerful wizard he was growing up to be, so much like his parents.

She sighed as she quickly finished her toileting, the minty taste of the off brand of toothpaste lingering in her mouth as she wrapped the towel around her and opened the door to go back to her room. Halfway across the carpeted floor, voices from the main floor pulled at her attention and stopped her from going to the bedroom she'd been using and leaving.

Cursing her own curiosity, Tonks ran a hand through her wet hair and moved over to the edge of the balcony at the edge of the staircase leading down to the first floor. She felt her eyes widen as she watched Harry Potter, speak of the devil, and Dobby talking and walking out of her line of sight, most likely moving towards the kitchen.

Tonks sat there, waiting quietly as she considered what was going on. At the very least, the meeting was over… but why? Looking behind her at the old grandfather clock resting against the wall of the hallway, she could easily see that everyone should have only just made it to the Burrow thirty minutes or so ago. Why in Morganna's name was Harry back here already?

Chewing on her bottom lip, Tonks sighed and decided to go back to her room to put something decent on… skulking around in a towel and dripping water everywhere wasn't going to get her anywhere, at least no where that her Mum and Dad would approve of. She turned, trying to be as silent as possible, when the heel of her left foot seemed to decide at that instant to not hold her weight, causing her to trip face forward, her momentum only stopped briefly by her hands letting go of the towel and catching her weight.

Tonks sighed in relief, though she knew that Dobby had probably heard the commotion. Pushing up, Tonks was able to right herself long enough to grab the edges of the towel and hold them together when her hand slipped from the water dripping from her and her balance was lost again, this time resulting in her weight shifting enough that she began to fall down the stairwell.

Modesty be damned, Tonks knew that she could be a covered corpse or naked and alive, so she immediately let go of the towel and used both hands to grab the guard railing along the stairs. The result was not too catastrophic as she found herself three steps from the top of the staircase, both hands tightly gripping the rails on either side of the steps, her legs spread wide.

It was this position, her breath deepening as she recovered from the rush of adrenalin, that she looked up to find a fidgeting house elf staring at her with very, very… very wide unblinking eyes and a smirking, albeit blushing, Harry Potter.

"So… Tonks." She was frozen as Harry covered his mouth with his hand, apparently trying to hold back his laughter. She ignored the heat she felt rushing through her own skin. "nice of you to drop by. I'd offer to take your coat for you, but seeing as…"

"Not. Another. Word." She spit out every word, her face going an even deeper scarlet, as she stood with an alacrity that surprised even Dobby and turned her back, her hands trying to cover everything and covering nothing all at the same time. "A gentleman would turn his back."

She could feel his grin. "Thank Merlin I'm not a gentleman."

"Harry!" She yelled, outraged.

She took a step to reach for the towel, when it suddenly rose on its own accord and quickly wrapped itself around her. The proper bits all covered, she took a breath to steady her nerves as she turned and looked at Harry, a scowl on her face.

Opening her mouth to give him a good what for, the metamorphmagus stopped as she got a good look at Harry. Sure, he was still smirking at her, a look she'd often seen of the male half of the species whenever they'd finally gotten a good look at something they shouldn't have… and she decided to ignore the rush of satisfaction and pleasure she felt all the way to her toes at his look… but that Harry's eyes seemed dull.

Her Auror training kicking in, she could immediately tell that he'd been crying, something Tonks knew for a fact he rarely ever did. Hi shoulders were sagged, his posture one of a dog that had been repeatedly kicked, rather than the cocky, arrogant teen that, along with his two best friends, had tormented her during the school year when she was assigned to keep watch over him.

There had been such laughter at Harry and Hermione trying to escape her sight, their desire for some alone time to go snog in a broom closet enough that they had eventually escaped Tonks' duty to watch over them… though that they got away from all of the other Order members helped alleviate some of the sting at being outwitted by randy teenagers.

But that person was gone. Harry cocked his eyebrow at her, her silent observation of him apparently taking too long, and she fought to keep another rush of red from her face. "Sorry." She waved her hand to distract him as she tightened her grip on the towel's edge around her…

She was practically naked in front of him, a young man that she had grown friendly with, a sister to brother type bond, she continued to tell herself, she was much to old to be having those type of thoughts about him… why, she was nearly…

Nearly what? Remus' voice called to her from the past.

Shaking her head, Tonks decided to take charge of the situation. Pushing down her embarrassment, she moved quickly up to Harry and pulled him into a hug, the pressure of their two bodies together keeping the towel from falling. She knew it, could feel it in her bones that he was hurting, her earlier discomfort and ran her hands through his hair as she pulled his head to her shoulder. She felt tears come unbidden to her own eyes as Harry Potter, the wizard to save us all, broke down and started crying, his arms wrapping tightly around her.

"Shhh…" Tonks continued to run her fingers through his hair as she noted that Dobby had made himself scarce. "Its okay, Harry. Its okay…"

Silently, as Harry continued to break down, Tonks silently swore to destroy whoever had hurt her Harry.