Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Call Girl.

Draco had suggested that they leave Thursday night rather than to wait until Friday evening. He said this was a big problem and needed all the attention that it could get and sent Harry home saying he would sort travel and would pick him up tomorrow afternoon.

Harry went home and started to throw clothes into an old duffle bag that he managed to dig out of the bottom of his closet. Suddenly he was really grateful that Severus had put all of his clothes away for him. He was busy folding t-shirts and stuffing them into the bag when he looked up to see Severus standing in the doorway. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of the man.

"You really should keep your door locked," Severus scowled at him.

"And you should knock," Harry murmured. "Besides, I forgot. So sue me."

"Going somewhere?" Severus asked eyeing the bag of clothes.

"Um, yeah, going to see Ron and Hermione. Thought it might be good to get away from London for awhile," he half lied.

"Good to get away from me?" Severus teased.

"No, of course not," Harry grinned.

"So what will you lot be up to then?"

"Dunno really," Harry shrugged.

"Be careful and have fun," Severus said drawing him close and kissing him.

"I will," Harry promised. It took a lot not to just spill the beans there. He just hoped that Severus wouldn't realize that Draco had gone missing as well.

"I've got something for you," Severus said causally.

"Yeah, what's that?" Harry smiled, but his smile faltered when a large burly man stepped into the doorway. "Who is that?"

"This is Seamus and Seamus is going to be your bodyguard of sorts," Severus said. "He's highly trained and one of the best in his field."

"What do I need a bodyguard for?" Harry asked confused.

"Incase Skeeter tries anything," Severus said annoyed that Harry didn't think of it first.

"Well I'm not having him following me around," Harry said offended. "I can take care of myself, I've been doing it my entire life."

"He's to keep you safe. If anything ever happened to you I don't know what I'd do."

"Yeah, well I'm going to jump out of my sitting room window if he's following me around everywhere I go! No offense, Seamus," Harry said pointedly and the man nodded.

"I'll delay his start until you return from your trip, but I really do want you to agree to let him do his work," Severus said seriously.

"We'll talk about this when I get back, yeah? Can you send him away now or something?" Harry asked crossing his arms.

"Well, actually we'll both be going. I'm late for a dinner meeting," Severus said checking his watch.

"Have a good time then, yeah?" Harry said kissing him goodbye.

"I'll call you later," Severus promised lightly and Harry nodded.

When Severus had gone Harry rushed to the window to make sure the mountain that was Seamus had gotten into the car with the man. Satisfied that the man wouldn't be lurking around, he locked his door and set to tuck into one of the meals that Mrs. Weasley had made for him. As he ate, he angrily stewed about the fact that Severus wanted to issue him a glorified babysitter. He didn't care what threat that Rita Skeeter might pose, it didn't warrant a bodyguard. Severus was going overboard, and it was cute in a way, but it was still totally mad. He wasn't going to have Seamus following him around like some trust fund child in America. He barely left his flat as it was, and the thought of having Seamus standing guard at the front door didn't make him that eager to leave again. He would definitely have to play this to his favor and talk the man out of the bodyguard.

On Thursday afternoon, Draco knocked on his door and Harry opened it to see Neville tagging behind as usual. The blonde pushed past him and strolled into his flat and Neville offered an apologetic shrug as he followed Draco inside.

"This place is the worst. How do you live here?" Draco complained loudly.

"Well it's a step up from a cupboard under the stairs at my relatives," Harry countered. What was everyone's problem with his flat.

"Maybe, half a step," Draco relented and smiled.

The flight was nearly unbearable. First Harry chastised Draco for using his family's private plane, but Draco quickly shut that down. He bluntly told Harry that it would be even more suspect if he were to fly commercial when he had almost exclusively taken his family's plane his entire life, and that he was more than welcome to fly home commercially on his way home. Harry muttered an apology and something about being mistaken and the smug look on Draco's face was unbearable. Well he thought it was unbearable until Draco and Neville kicked off in a heated make out session. He groaned audibly, but they ignored him, and eventually he just gave up and moved as far away from him as he possibly could and tried to tune them out.

He was worried that Hermione wouldn't be able to help them sort out what was going on and even more worried about how Ron would react to the revelation that he was an escort. He hoped the git didn't blow it up way bigger than it should be, there were honestly bigger issues to deal with. Ron could hound him all he wanted after this was sorted, but for now he just needed him to be cooperative and supportive. He also needed for Ron and Draco to stay away from each other as much as possible. They were really similar, but at the same time they regarded each other with little to no respect. Draco thought that was Ron was beneath him and Ron hated that Draco was a pompous jerk. It was a no win situation, especially considering their different upbringings. Everything needed to fall into place perfectly or they wouldn't stand a chance of doing this together.

It had started raining the minute they touched down and Harry hoped that it wasn't some sort of omen that things weren't going to go well. He was throwing everything on the line to tell Ron and then to try to figure out what Rita Skeeter was playing at.

"So, looks like I'm the only girl then," Hermione said when she opened the door to them.

"We can call Loony Lovegood if you prefer," Draco said pushing past her.

"Luna is very bright, and would probably be an asset in this situation," Hermione protested.

"Well by all means call her up then," Draco shot back.

"Ignore him," Harry muttered and hugged her tightly.

"This place is positively medieval," Draco said in disgust. "How do you live here? I didn't think it was possible, but I think we found somewhere worse than your flat."

"What is wrong with my flat? Leave it be," Harry groaned. "That's not important right now."

After introductions and catching up, Hermione led them all upstairs to her room. She and Ron had pulled some extra chairs in to accommodate the lot of them.

"Now I've done some research. As soon as you called I started looking into this Skeeter lady," Hermione said hotly.

"She's a right witch, mate," Ron said apologetically and Harry nodded.

"There's not a lot about her personal life online. Despite her invasive methods she seems to be a fairly private person. Besides a few arrests for trespassing or violating some sort of order she's got everything locked down," Hermione continued.

"So what do we do?" Harry asked confused.

"We have to establish her routine. We're gonna have to follow her, well you three are, we're up here and she's in London."

"I can't follow her," Harry protested. "She'll recognize me. I don't even know if she's keeping tabs on me or not."

"Right, that's where Draco and Neville come in," she said looking at the pair. "You two are going to have to go to her house in the mornings and follow her around. See who she talks to, where she goes, what she's working on right now."

"So what're you going to do then?" Draco asked skeptically.

"Ron and I are going to monitor on all of her social networking ventures. She has a twitter account and seems to like to drop hints about what she's doing and she runs a blog," Hermione explained.

"Yeah and our mate, Seamus, he's mad with a computer, he can hack her emails," Ron said with a lopsided grin.

Hermione laid the entire plan out before them. Harry was meant to stay as low key as he could, and he was going to have to keep Severus out of the picture. The man wouldn't approve of any of this, and he could very well interrupt their plans. Neville and Draco were going to tail her and then report back anything of interest to Hermione who would start keeping a log of all the things that might come of use to them. Ron was going to work with Seamus on hacking her email servers, home and work. It all felt a like a bit of a spy movie to Harry. He didn't know if any of it would do any good, but hopefully they could find something out so that they knew where to take their next move.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Hermione drilling various plans and procedures into their heads. She made sure that Draco and Neville were aware of the keys to trailing a person without being caught. She then managed to procure Rita's home and work addresses along with the address to her private offices. Harry was honestly in awe of her.

"Wait, wait, there's something else," Harry sighed. "Severus brought this hug bloke named Seamus over and said he's to be my bodyguard."

"Uncle Sev bought you a glorified babysitter," Draco laughed.

"Shut up, if this guy gets in the way then what?" Harry asked looking at Hermione.

"Then you'll have to give him the slip. In the meantime I need you to collect as much of the information that Severus has acquired on Rita and her contacts," Hermione said pointedly.

"What if he doesn't want me to have it?" Harry asked skeptically.

"Oh, there are ways of getting what you want," Draco smirked and made a rude gesture that caused everyone in the room to blush.

"Couldn't we just hire private detectives?" Neville asked after a moment. "Surely they'd be much better at following people around than the lot of us."

"Private detectives can be bought off, and we don't know if could trust one," Hermione admonished him.

Hermione had explained her theory that Rita Skeeter had found their story and it was a big story indeed. A millionaire leader in medical research and discovery had a violent history and to top things off he was dating an escort who had slept with some of the bigger politicians in the country. There was something bigger at play here, otherwise why would she forfeit this story so quickly? Hermione had told them that something connected to Harry and Severus' story must have caught her eye, something bigger, something better. She just needed to keep Severus and Harry out of her way, especially after what Severus had done the last time she had made herself known. She got what she needed on them, but in reality their story was a part of much bigger story that Rita was hoping to nail.

He hoped that the bigger story didn't lead to the five of them getting into something that would be completely over their heads. He knew they had the money to provide the necessary resources, and the brain with Hermione, but he still hoped that they had what it took.

Back in London Harry had fallen ill with a cold and Draco and Neville had been trailing Rita Skeeter for a few days. Harry's only insight into what was happening was when Draco had texted him a photo of Rita clothes shopping and had captioned it 'Seriously? Who is she trying to fool?' even when tailing a psychotic bitch Draco had to comment on her fashion.

He hadn't really been of much use to the cause and getting Severus to come around was proving to be difficult. The man had been in and out of meetings for the past few days, and even getting a reply to his texts was a challenge. Finally, on Wednesday, Severus came calling at his door. Harry wrapped his blanket around him, and padded across the room to open the door. The smile on the man's face fell when he saw that Harry was ill and immediately pushed in.

"You're ill," Severus stated.

"Yeah, I hadn't noticed," Harry smiled.

"Why didn't you say you were ill?"

"It's a cold. You were busy and I've been taking care of myself. Mrs. Weasley even stopped by and made me some soup."

"You could have said. I would have come sooner."

"I could barely get you to reply to a text message, you were clearly busy," Harry scowled.

"I'm sorry," the man confessed. "I just want you to keep in check."

"Aren't I keeping in check with you wanting Seamus to babysit me and then Mrs. Weasley's self prescribed weekly visits?"

"You haven't agreed to Seamus," Severus shot back at him. "We still need to talk about him."

"Wouldn't you rather come and have a bath with me?" Harry smiled.

"I'd love to, but I've gotta run," Severus said glancing at his watch, the one that Harry had given him.

"Why am I not surprised?" Harry sighed.

"I really do want to stay. I'll come back tonight and stay," Severus said kissing him on the forehead and was out the door again.

"I love you too," Harry muttered as the man disappeared out the door.

Harry hoped the man did come back because he was going to ream him for not even saying a proper goodbye, and he intended to use Seamus as a bartering chip. He needed to get his hands on the intel that the man had gathered on Rita Skeeter and her associates, and he had a strong feeling the man would refuse him. So he intended to use Seamus babysitting him as a bargaining chip. It was a sacrifice he didn't want to make, but it was necessary. It should be easy enough to figure out how to give the man the slip when the time came. It would also come in handy if he ever needed to hold anything else over the man's head. In his mind a bodyguard was a glorified babysitter and the Dursley's weren't even willing to get one of those for him.

Harry waited up until around midnight for Severus, but the man didn't show. He finally gave up and had a bath and climbed into bed. He wasn't sure what time it was, but sometime in the early hours of the morning Severus crawled into bed with him and wrapped his arms around him and went to sleep. Harry sleepily noted that he would have to ask the man how he managed to get in.

Unsurprisingly, Harry woke long before Severus did. He slipped out from under the man's arm and padded into the kitchen to make some tea. He took his cup and perched himself on the chair that sat at the end of the bed and watched the man sleep. The man was sprawled out on his side of the bed, a few strands of hair had escaped his hair tie and were slightly obscuring his face. It was odd after so long to see the man asleep in his bed, he'd grown accustomed to a life of solitary and Severus was so keen just to barge in as he pleased. Harry was happy to see him of course, but sometimes it felt like Severus didn't even think about what he wanted. The man came and went as he pleased, and Harry had yet to spend a large sum of time with him since their anniversary, even then there wasn't a whole lot of talking being done.

Harry abandoned his train of thought as the man stirred and looked up at him, and smiled sleepily.

"You should be in bed, you're ill," Severus chastised him.

"Good morning to you too," Harry scowled. "I'm fine. Just having my tea,"

"Sorry, I came in so late," Severus said pushing himself up to sit against the headboard.

"Speaking of, how did you manage to get in?" Harry asked curiously.

"Seamus, is a master lock pick," the man explained.

"You could have knocked," Harry countered.

"I didn't want to wake you."

"But breaking and entering is alright though?" Harry scowled again and the man grimaced.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you," Severus said tiredly. "What can I do to make it better?"

"I want to see what you have on Rita Skeeter,"Harry said ignoring the implications behind Severus' question.

"Why?"

"Because it concerns me too," Harry said sipping his tea. "What could it hurt?"

"I don't think it's a good idea," Severus said looking at him skeptically.

"How about a deal then? I will allow your watchdog Seamus to babysit me, and that's what it is glorified babysitting," Harry said sharply. "If you let me see all of your intel on the woman and of course her associates."

Severus mulled it over for a few minutes before finally agreeing. He said that he would have the files emailed to Harry, and that he wasn't to share the information with anyone. Little did the man know that the first thing he was going to do with the information was forward it to Hermione. She would do most of the reading and the analyzing, and he would just sit by and wait for further instructions. He felt bad for deceiving the man in the fashion, but it was all for the greater good. If they were ever going to be together, and get married like planned, she had to be taken down. The only reason he hadn't caved and included the man was because he knew how objected the man would be, he would try to shut them down before they could make any proper progress.

"Come on and I'll make you some proper breakfast," Severus said offering his hand to Harry who accepted it and allowed himself to be led into the kitchen.

For now he'd have to let on as if he and the others were up to nothing.

A/N: Thanks for all the lovely reviews so far and thanks for reading!