He had saved little Ginny Weasley from the Chamber, killed a Basilisk and destroyed a piece of Riddle's soul to get his best mate's sister out alive.
He had slept with Ginny Weasley, called out her name throughout the night, hands frantically gripping at the sweaty sheets as she rolled her hips.
Those are two sentences that clash with such force in Harry's brain as they begin to shape, he quickly has to stifle a wail into the pillow, eyes scrunched shut and teeth gritted.
When he finds the courage to open his eyes again, round glasses shoved sloppily onto his nose, her naked back is, strangely, still there, small freckles climbing up the arcing of her spine. All he has to do is stretch out his arm.
"Potter?"
"Yes - sir," Harry adds carefully, guarded on the off chance that Robards had gotten wind of the ridiculous amount of protocol breaches he'd piled on his record both last night and this morning. Never a good idea to nettle the boss so early into a case, Harry's learned.
But he'd been careful to keep the lights off so they wouldn't be seen and she'd left under his Cloak this morning. Could it -
"You do understand that, if it is indeed true that you've let the murderer go, I will put my boot so hard up your arse, you're going to taste leather?"
Harry swallows, fingers twiddling lightly over his scar.
"Fairly certain."
Robards snorts, his large knuckles rapping over the tabletop. "You're 'fairly certain', Potter? You're a Senior Auror, you have no business being 'fairly certain'. People's lives depend on the decisions you make." He stresses the final sentence with a loud bang on his desk. Sparks fly from the wand at the edge of the table, Robards snatching it and tucking it inside his pocket, fuming.
"Look, sir, I've known Ginny since we were children -"
"That's exactly what I'm fearing, Potter," the Head Auror booms, "that you're making a call based on emotion rather than reason."
"I'm making a call based on evidence," Harry retorts, trying very hard not to sound like he's gritting his teeth.
Robards scans him for a moment and Harry stubbornly holds his gaze.
"Oh, yeah? Then how do you explain Belby's wife showing up dead today?"
Harry's eyes widen as the door to Robards' office opens, then swiftly closes.
"Marcus Belby's wife is dead?" he exhales, nudging aside to allow the caretaker to clean under Robards' desk.
"Found by his own mother - can't you come by on Sunday, man? When no one's working?" Robards stops to address the caretaker, plopping his boots on the tabletop with a grunt. "Can't concentrate with you swishing round here."
Harry has the distinct impression that the caretaker had shot Robards a very filthy glare. However, when he looks up, the man's head is bowed low, his hands trembling slightly as he maneuvers the mop close to Harry's feet.
Guiltily, Harry examines his boots, certain he'd been giving the caretaker some extra work. If this had been Filch, Harry reckons he'd already see the end of that mop stick for his crimes.
Oddly, though, he finds them to be clean.
"I don't work Sundays, sir," the man mumbles, faint, walking backwards towards the door. "Against my religion."
His head is still bowed when he says it and it bothers Harry briefly that he can't see the man's expression. Then, something sparks inside his brain and he turns back to Robards.
"Same mother who'd been moaning about her daughter-in-law round the Ministry?"
"Bingo," Robards chuckles, low. "The woman's made no secret of her feelings towards Belby's choice. Seemed to think the girl had seduced her son and was a minute away from leaving him, eh?"
"Yeah," Harry nods slowly. "Didn't strike me as a killer, though."
Robards studies him, dark eyes piercing.
"What's your guess, Potter?"
"Erm - crime of passion, sir?"
The door thuds softly behind him, his mind picturing the scene at Belby's home. Inexplicably, flowers grow and bloom inside the house and then he thinks of Ginny.
"Harry, wait. Harry!"
Ron, out of breath and freckled cheeks glowing pink, ambushes him before he can step inside his cubicle. Harry sighs.
"Ron, I can't tell you."
"I know, you git," Ron glares. "Just - just tell me if I need to worry," he adds quickly, his voice barely a whisper.
Harry's fingers fly up to his scar. "No. I don't think so, at least."
His hand moves further up into his hair, ruffling it at the top as he dwells on his next words. "Look, Ron, there's no evidence showing she's involved, alright?"
Ron seems to be able to breathe again. "Mum's been worried sick."
"Yeah," Harry sighs again as an awkward, heavy kind of silence stretches between them.
Luckily, Ron breaks it, nails scratching at his nape.
"Hey, you're coming round on Sunday, yeah?"
Harry's stomach twists. He'd rarely missed a Sunday lunch at The Burrow since the war.
"Tell Molly I'm really sorry."
Ron puts his hands up as if to say he understands, feet shuffling under the crimson robe when Harry stops him.
"Oi, Ron," he calls, waving him back. "Make sure Ginny's there, though, will you?"
"That's the plan, yeah. Why?"
"She's safer with you," Harry responds, slow, careful, his eyes avoiding Ron's. "Have you talked to her?"
Ron's face darkens briefly. "No, she's been avoiding us."
"Why?"
The question escapes him before Harry can control himself. But it's bothered him and he's been twisting and turning it around in his head, the fact that Ginny Weasley had been reluctant to stay with her family. The fact that he never saw her again after the Chamber and, funnily, that he'd never wondered why.
Like his mind wanted to forget.
"Honestly? No clue," Ron sighs dejectedly, dropping into Harry's chair. He spins from left to right in half circles, guiding the wheels with the sole of his foot as Harry watches him. "Mum and Dad never told us anything, always been very cagey about it - only that she's studying at Ilvermorny and we'll see her come summer. But she never returned and Mum was miserable for a while - until, you know, the war started and after that I think they were both very happy Ginny wasn't here for it."
"Yeah, but why not come back to Hogwarts?"
Ron shrugs, blue eyes glued to the ceiling. "All I know is that Dumbledore told my parents she wouldn't be safe at Hogwarts. Then Mum caught me eavesdropping and you know how she gets. I was on degnoming duty all summer. You popping up at the Leaky Cauldron after blowing up your aunt actually saved me from that, cheers."
Harry grins, fondly remembering big Aunt Marge floating to the sky.
"Well, well," a voice Harry usually has an allergic reaction to interrupts his reminiscing. "Robards seems to have finally lost it and won't kick you off the case, Potter. How do we know you didn't let her go because she's Weasley's sister?"
Williamson clearly hasn't seen Ron standing behind Harry - because, when he does, his face and neck flash a deeper scarlet than his Auror's robe.
"You have something to say to me, eh, Williamson?" Ron growls, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Ignore him, Ron, he's a prick. Come on."
His shoulder bumps hard into Williamson's as they walk past him, heading to the Atrium. He needs to talk to Marcus Belby.
His chat with Belby hadn't been particularly informative, Harry privately concludes as he sips the last of his ale and lets the pint fall to the dirty table with a loud clank. He'd barely got further than 'don't you listen to Mum, she's mental, she's - Madeline hadn't a bad bone in her' before Marcus Belby became hysterical and Harry had to rush him to St Mungo's for some (less than) mild sedatives.
The crime scene didn't help much in terms of pinpointing a suspect, either. Same MO, same lack of clues.
He knows it's early to say they're connected, but...But his gut already knows, probably.
Harry munches on his thoughts a while longer, lonely in the usually empty pub. He's intrigued, he is, and a little tired from a sleepless night. A sleepless, white night like he'd never had, his breath hitches when he remembers. And he'd remembered it all day.
If they'd met under different circumstances, he shrugs to himself, rubs under his eyes, yawning.
The barman raises an empty pint, raises his eyebrows, and Harry's about to motion that no, thank you, that'll be all for tonight when the door opens and a small figure slides in quietly.
Harry swears.
"Happy to see me, I gather," she grins, dragging down the hood of her cloak. She's windswept, skin blotched by the heavy bags under her eyes - similar to his, he reckons, and Harry suddenly feels the need to ruffle his hair.
"Nah, just relieved no one's found my private spot," he improvises.
Ginny snorts. "Oh, so I'm nobody now. And 'private spot', really? What are you, some coveted bachelor?"
His hands mess up his hair. "Or undercover criminal."
"No one likes a dirty cop, Harry," Ginny grins and hauls a chair with the side of her boot, drops into it. Without wanting to, he leans in.
"Speaking of cops, what are you doing here again, Suspect Number One? Thought I'd told you to go to The Burrow. Multiple times, might I add."
She rolls her eyes with a vengeance. "Thought I'd told you I don't want to - also multiple times. And are we still there? Am I still a suspect?"
"That's classified information, ma'am," Harry nods, an uninvited smile shaping at the corner of his lip. "What have you been doing all day, anyway? You've clearly ignored all instructions."
She frowns. He's interrogating her and she knows, but he can't help it. There's been another murder before the first victim's body was properly cold and he's an Auror with a tendency to obsess over cases, and especially over cases like this.
"Alright, Auror boy. You want to question me, you'll have to take me to that small, padded room you have at the Ministry and do it because all I want right now is a decent shower and a place to crawl in to sleep."
Her mouth is pulled into a pout, her hand twisting the red strands of hair at the crown of her head, eyes blazing, almost daring. She's putting up a wall.
"Why not go home and shower, have some dinner, sleep?"
Ginny's quiet for a long moment and Harry holds her gaze. He can see all the walls she's built standing strong inside her eyes. He figures she can see the same reflected deep within his own.
"It's complicated," is all she offers him with a casual kind of shrug.
He thinks of the case and he thinks of her. He sighs.
"You can come over mine and shower. I'm not proposing anything," Harry fastly adds, body now leaning against the back of his chair, increasing the space between them.
She's surprised for just a beat, but, as Harry'd come to notice, she tends to recover very quickly. The ghost of a smirk lingers on her face as she looks at him, all freckly cheeks and mussed hair.
Something in his chest moves.
"Didn't say you were."
"Alright."
"Thanks, Harry."
Now something nearly breaks inside his chest because, for just one moment, Ginny Weasley lets her walls down and what he sees inside is sadness.
The girl he'd found dying in the Chamber had never really left, he feels. She's still there, still clinging on to life, still fighting.
"Don't mention it," he smiles weakly.
When Harry sets the pictures of Susan Danes and Madeline Belby side by side, scrunched over the small desk inside his bedroom, it bothers him how much they look alike. Long, red hair. Young. He frowns deeply, fingertips pressing into his scar, nail scraping on the underside of it, up and down the lightning bolt as he mulls.
The light padding of wet steps interrupts his thoughts, briskly erasing the dotted lines he'd traced inside his mind.
When he turns his head, there's Ginny standing in the doorway, body wrapped in a white towel, wet hair like tendrils twisting over her back, her shoulders.
"I'll get you something to sleep in," Harry hurries, scratching under his ribs as he totters to the dresser where he'd shoved the last of his clean shorts and shirts. He carefully selects the decent ones, the ones with no holes in them, the ones that aren't all that old. "Here," he offers, walking towards her with his arms extended, clothes piled on his upturned palms.
She doesn't move, the drops in her wet hair dripping down her arms, her chest as she stays silent. Brown eyes bore into his and once again he feels like his mind's a book that she can skim through when she pleases.
Then, the towel pools at her bare feet and Harry forgets how to breathe.
"I'll leave these here," he says lamely, turning to place the clothes on the edge of the bed.
Ginny takes his hand.
The numbing warmth of her mouth enveloping his index finger has him instantly hard, the tip of her tongue over the tip of his finger shutting down his brain.
"Ginny, ah," he moans, weak, when she guides his wet finger in between her legs.
They fall on top of his bed, Ginny naked under him, the wet patches on her skin refreshing, the taste of her intoxicating. His heart stirs when she calls his name.
He pushes into her; his hand slips into hers.