Chapter Three

Leopold arrived at Harry Potter's dubious house at dinnertime. He didn't immediately request entry, he found himself staring at numbers 11 and 13 with no indication that there was, or ever would be, a number 12. He figured there was some sort of Unplottable charm on the place and knew ways around those, however he wondered if he feigned an inability to enter the house, he could prolong the inevitable.

As he stood there, precariously toeing that line that separated leaving and staying, numbers 11 and 13 slowly began to pull apart and number 12 forced its way between them.

"Damn," Leopold muttered, waiting for the movement to stop before he stepped up to the gate. The door opened and a tall, red headed young man exited followed by a slightly shorter brown haired young woman. Leopold instantly recognized the two to be Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, he'd of course seen them trailing Harry Potter during their school days and had the occasion of meeting Hermione in the corridors of the Ministry a few times. He had no idea what Weasley did with his time, but Leopold was positive he didn't waste it at the Ministry. Leo deemed Mr. Weasley to be a lucky man.

"You must be Leopold," Hermione said amicably when they noticed him standing there, flouncing down the stairs to the walkway in order to shake his hand. Apparently those chance encounters in the corridors left more of an impression on Leo, who had a thing for remembering names and faces, than it did on Miss Granger.

"I suppose I must," Leopold replied, trying to keep the despondence to a minimum. Granger's smile faltered slightly, but she recovered it quickly when Leopold took her hand without hesitation, shaking it briskly.

"Well someone has to be," she answered, winking at him. "It's nice to meet you. I've seen you around the Ministry before, I know, but with everything so hectic about there, it's difficult to strike up friendly conversation."

"Too true," Leopold agreed, ignoring the intense look Ron Weasley was giving him from behind Granger's back. Leopold abruptly dropped her hand, not before noting the impressive looking engagement ring on her finger, and took a sideways step away from her. Potter cleared his throat, which seemed to snap Weasley out of whatever murderous thoughts he was having concerning Leopold and his close proximity to Granger.

"Ron Weasley," Weasley practically barked, holding out his hand as well. Leopold stopped himself from commenting on the fact that Weasley seemed hell bent on breaking at least two of his fingers. "Any relation to Stewart Ackerley?"

"He's my brother. Or so they tell me." Leopold shrugged in a "fate is a fickle mistress" sort of way, folding his arms across his chest. The three of them watched him cautiously, as though he had his wand out and was threatening to hex at will. "Ah, so will we be talking outside, then? We better make it quick as it looks like rain and I haven't brought an umbrella."

The trio seemed to remember their manners then and, apologizing profusely, Ron and Hermione made their departure, wishing Harry and Leopold good luck as they went. Good luck for what, Leopold didn't want to know, but he accepted their blessings politely enough and followed Harry inside the house.

Number 12 gave the appearance of an opulent house gone to seed then hastily resurrected. It was slightly dark and dingy in some places, scrubbed and polished in others. As Leopold brushed against a tapestry, a faint musty smell wafted into his nose. He coughed to cover up the sneer.

"Has this, um, place been in your family for long?" Leopold was well aware of Potter's tragic orphaning, however, the rest of the Chosen One's lineage was as unknown to him as Shacklebolt's sense of decency.

"It belonged to my godfather. He left it to me when he died but before that it hadn't been inhabited for many years. We've been fixing it up since last year, but there's decades of dust to clear off, you see." Harry frowned at particularly heavy looking hangings covering up what appeared to be a portrait. Leopold decided not to ask about this.

"'We' being you and your charming friends?"

"Right. Well, I'm sorry about Ron. He gets a little protective over Hermione sometimes whenever she's around someone who can be considered even the least bit good looking. And he's also a little sore about, er, Ginny and me. He thinks it's my fault even though I've tried telling him that this time Ginny was the one who broke it off, not me." Despite his overwhelming desire to leave Grimmauld Place as quickly and as painlessly as possible, Harry Potter's unusual series of events seemed to be taking hold of his senses. Leopold was a sucker for interesting back-story. And Harry Potter was the king of remarkable back-story.

Harry led Leopold to a cozy basement kitchen that contrasted harshly against the gloom of the entrance hall. A very old house elf brought them tea and biscuits—which Harry thanked him kindly for—before bowing out.

Although Leopold knew a lot about Harry Potter, a lot of what he knew came second or third hand, most of it from sources he couldn't quite be sure were reliable. Potter seemed so brooding and tragic in Hogwarts, a disposition that was probably enhanced by Voldemort's penchant for trying to take the kid's life at every turn. To see Potter now, comfortable, talking, maybe even happy made Leopold have to quickly reevaluate his previous perceptions of The Boy Who Lived Twice.

"So you and Ginny have been off before?"

"Yeah. Back in school. Right after Dumbledore…well, right before the war. Chosen One stuff sort of puts a stopper on healthy relationships." Harry smirked and Leo grinned, shaking his head at the flippant joke.

"As is wont to happen."

"Anyway, this time wasn't under nearly so serious circumstances. Ginny travels a lot for Quidditch and she thought it might be best to cool it for a bit until she gets a handle on things. She'll be coming back, I'm sure. I personally don't think it's a big deal, but everyone else seems to think otherwise. I'm apparently broken hearted and lonely, I believe is how Rita Skeeter put it."

"Relying heavily on the support of your friends to help you through it," Leopold quoted. Harry gave him a funny look. "Not that I read it or anything, of course. As a ministry official, I don't have time for such rubbish."

"Of course," Harry said, sarcastically, taking a rather large gulp of his tea. Leopold shoved a generous portion of his biscuit into his mouth to prevent himself from saying something stupid for a bit. "Anyway, Skeeter's article pretty much gave the okay for all these crazed females. I will haunt her if one of them kills me."

"How ironic it would be if you were defeated by a rogue bouquet of flowers after surviving the killing curse twice."

"I just hope they don't put that little detail in the history books."

"As your pretend significant other, I feel that it's my duty to make sure they don't." Harry laughed wholeheartedly; almost spitting out the mouthful of tea he had been about to drink. Perhaps this would be slightly more bearable than Leopold had previously thought. As long as one ignored the serious decline in casual sex he was going to encounter for the rest of his life. He supposed there were worse men to pretend to be married to.

"I thank you in advance." There was still a hint of a smile on Harry's face as he sipped the rest of the tea. "So you said your bother is Stewart Ackerley? Has your whole family been in Ravenclaw?"

"Just my mother, Stewart, and I. A fact my mother likes to rub in my father's face whenever she can. He was a Slytherin, you see. A very proud Slytherin who had hoped his children would at least follow in his footsteps since he had the misfortune of falling in love with a Ravenclaw. And Ravenclaws go back for several generations on my mother's side. My father was actually the first Slytherin in a family of Gryffindors. A genetic anomaly if I've ever seen one." Harry was still smirking at him when he finished with his family history. It had all sort of slipped out, Leopold had a soft spot for talking about his family and tended to go a smidge overboard when asked about them. Leopold paused. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just funny to me that people care so much about what houses they are in, even after they leave. I figured that once you leave Hogwarts grounds all that stuff would stay behind, but it doesn't. Not for some people." Irritation suddenly flooded Leopold's veins as he roughly pushed the cup of tea away from him. Potter had a vaguely smug look on his face that Leopold would have paid a good amount of galleons to smack away. The kid may have seen some horrors in his lifetime, but that didn't give him the right to judge Leopold after only knowing him for a few minutes time.

"I do believe you were the one who asked me about my family's Ravenclaw history or lack there of. I never said anything about being a Ravenclaw, nor was I planning to. And while your house allegiance only matters while in Hogwarts, it also says something about who you are as a person and how you'll be outside of Hogwarts. I don't walk around with the Ravenclaw crest on my robes or in blue and bronze pullovers. But I daresay I display some of the traits you find common in Ravenclaws. Just as you display the typical Gryffindor arrogance."

Leopold stood up, brushing the crumbs from the front of his robes. Perhaps this would be slightly less bearable than he had previously thought. "I don't think this is going to work out. You should ask Shacklebolt to find someone else to be your husband. Thanks for the tea, I'll see myself out." Kingsley Shacklebolt couldn't possibly expect Leopold to marry someone he didn't like, pretend or otherwise. Maybe Potter was doomed to have girls following him for the rest of his life.

Leopold smiled viciously at the potential misery that would cause Harry Potter and the fact that Leopold could simply sit back and watch it happen.