Chapter 15

Draco stared up at Harry, "What do you mean there's been a break in?" he asked slowly as he processed the information.

Harry looked irritated at that, "Exactly what it sounds like. Someone broke into Gringotts a few hours ago."

A worried look plastered across Ginny's face at the news, and Draco could tell she was immediately concerned by the news.

"What did they take?" Draco asked, rising to his feet as he grabbed his wand from the table, ready to go investigate. He knew as well as anyone else in the room what it meant that the break in had occurred, but he kept calm as he obtained all the information from his partner.

"We don't know," Harry said with a shake of his head. Instead of heading back to the fireplace to floo out, Harry surprised him by sitting down at the table.

"Should we be, I don't know, going to investigate the break in?" Draco asked, slightly irritated at his partner's nonchalance towards the entire thing.

Harry sighed, "We can't because they haven't formally filed a complaint or reported it to the Auror's office. And unless they do so, there's really nothing we can do to investigate or try and figure out how it happened or who did it in order to get ahead of the perpetrators."

"Then how do you even know someone broke in?" Draco asked, raising an eyebrow at Harry as he sat back down. It seemed pertinent that he gained all the information of the crime if he were to properly understand what had happened.

"Bill," Harry said simply. Sensing his partner needed more of an explanation than the name of the oldest Weasley sibling, he elaborated, "Bill works at Gringotts as a curse breaker, so he noticed some of the Goblins behaving strangely. He asked a few of them about it, but they brushed it off without giving him much of an explanation, so he decided to do some investigating. He found out that someone broke into a vault, but not the vault of any client of the bank as opposed to the vault that stores every goblin treasure which they have 'reclaimed' over the years from wizards and witches they believe have stolen their artefacts. As it is, they would barely have tolerated wizards enough to inform them of such a break in, but the fact that it was that particular vault makes them all the more sceptical. Bill came to see me after finding out since he figured it was relevant to what happened in the future"

"What do you think they stole?" Ginny asked, in a quiet voice as she spoke for the first time since her husband's return home.

"Any number of things," Harry said with a shake of his head, "The sword of Gryffindor is in that vault, but I can't see what they would need if for. We could make a list of every single Goblin made item to try and figure it out, but some are lost to time, the others we have no idea if the Goblins have them, and if they did, they wouldn't tell us. Besides, it's not as if they're willing to go let us take inventory to figure it out."

"So we're supposed to do absolutely nothing about it?" Draco asked, sounding frustrated. "They could have the weapon in their hands that started all of this, and we can't even stop them. At this rate, we're never going to be able to stop them if we can't even stay ahead of them! We're going to knowingly watch as everything plays out the same way as before."

"No," Harry said, "We didn't know about the Gingott's break in until it was too late in the other time line, now we know right away. Things are already different than they were. Besides it's not just the power they had going for them, it was the support of the people."

"And?" Draco drawled, not seeing a point to where his partner was going.

"There's still a divide in the Wizarding world, that's why they were so successful. Despite us fighting a war for equality, some things haven't changed. There are still those who don't believe in equality of blood status, and there are those who are mistrusting of everyone who was once on that side, no matter their role. You know that better than anyone. The damage runs deep to the cores of society, and if we want to make sure that we're successful, we need to mend that. We need to get everyone united, and stop the fears that others have," Harry reasoned.

"Easier said than done," Draco snorted. "You saw how quickly everyone turned on me once they realized that my house was where the earthquake originated from. Despite fighting by all of their sides for years to put away criminals, they all immediately assumed I had something to do with it. It's not something a grand speeches can fix, Potter."

Harry nodded, "You're right, it can't. Words can only really fix so much. We need to show them that things are different and that we can all get along in this new society."

"And for people like my mother whose ideals probably never will change? Draco questioned. "The war didn't solve how they perceived blood purity. Sure, it's not a common practice anymore to publically put someone down for their status, but it's still there in the shadows. It's only a matter of time before it returns."

"So we prove to them that it doesn't have to. There will always be racist people in the back bones of society, and that might never change. But we show the world that those thoughts are old fashioned and people are capable of change. We can work on making it a long term plan, to slowly cement it into their minds instead of throwing the idea out there one day and expecting everyone to believe it. Hermione might have a few ideas on how to do that exactly. Strategizing like that was always her forte."

Draco sighed, "It could work. For the future's sake I hope you're right."

Draco was tired; actually that was an understatement. He was beyond exhausted. All he wanted to do was go home and grab a few hours of sleep. But he had tried that. He had lain awake at odd hours of the night, hoping just to close his eyes and drift off into a peaceful rest. But for the last few days, it hadn't been happening. In fact he had stayed awake these last few nights, simply because he had been unable to fall asleep.

It was the stress of it all; it was what usually happened to him when he was under times of immense pressure. In sixth year he had found himself unable to sleep, and the same had happened in the days leading up the trial that had eventually acquitted him of all charges.

So it served as no surprise to him that he was unable to do so now, what with the entire future in his hands.

He wondered if this was what Harry felt like growing up, knowing he had unknowingly and unwillingly been given this great task and have the entire wizarding population depending on his success. It wasn't an easy job to be given, that much was correct.

Draco was also anxious due to the fact that he was due to head over to the Weasley family home for dinner that night. While he knew that Ginny had come to terms with him, as she said the night before, and Ron and he had a mutually tolerant relationship, he wasn't all that sure if the same could be said for the remainder of their family. He hadn't run into them after the war, but he wasn't quite sure where he stood with them. It was no secret that the Weasley and Malfoy families have hated each other for centuries, but he could only hope that they did not hold on to grudges, nor would they make the visit an unpleasant one.

He sighed as he went back to writing notes on a piece of parchment on another case. Officially, reigns of case were handed over to him and Harry, with Ron on the side "consulting", but the only other person who knew about it was Kingsley, as the Minister if Magic. They had decided it would be wise to make sure very few people actually knew the full details of the case, as they weren't all that sure who they could trust. While at work they kept minimally detailed documents, the full files were at home with all the information they had gathered from their children and their memories. But even those documents had been enchanted so that only the five of them could read it to ensure that they were left protected in case the wrong people got their hands on them. He knew they were probably being overly precautious, but a little safety never hurt anyone.

He was about to write something down on the page with the quill he had been holding, but realized he was missing a file. So he stood up to grab it from a nearby desk, when suddenly, as he felt a strong pain in his upper left shoulder and he felt himself falling to the ground, as the world around him when dark.

Hermione could feel herself being weighed down from exhaustion. She had pulled a graveyard shift at work to make up for some of the hours she had missed lately, and it was at the point where all she wanted to do was go home and grab a few hours. Thankfully for her, she only had about half an hour left on her shift before she would be able to go home and do just that.

In retrospect, planning to go on a date the evening after pulling a shift like that probably wasn't the greatest idea on her part. She figured she could head home and sleep four about four or five hours before she had to start getting ready for her date, and with the help of some coffee, she should be more than fine.

She sighed to herself as Healer Lorcan came over to her. He the head of permanent magical damage, and had also been her supervisor when she was an intern herself.

"Miss Granger, we have reports of a young man brought into St Mungos as the result of a stunning spell. We need to check for simple damages like head trauma, and normally I would assign it to an intern, but his partner specifically asked for you," he said in a deep voice. "Patient is in room 142."

She frowned, who would specifically ask for her, when it wasn't as if there was serious damage? Despite her confusion, she headed down to the room where her mysterious patient and his partner were occupying.

As she opened the door, her eyes widened as she saw Harry standing there with his arms crossed, and Draco lying on the bed. From an initial glance he looked to be fine.

He looked up at her, and smirked, "We have to stop meeting like this," he joked and she felt her eyes roll in response.

"What happened?" She demanded to know as she walked over to perform a few quick diagnosis spells on her patient to make sure that he was fine and that nothing else was wrong.

"I was at work when I got hit by a stunning spell," Draco explained. "I insisted I was fine, but this one," Draco said, nodding off at his partner, "Insisted that I come in just to be safe. Bloody waste of time is what it is."

"Who would hit you?" she asked, eyebrows scrunching up. "How did they even get in, in the first place? I thought you guys had wards to prevent this sort of thing from happening."

"We do," Harry said grimly. "Either someone found out how to get around them, which if they're skilled enough to break into Gringotts, shouldn't be that big of a problem for them, or they have connections."

"Did they take anything?" she couldn't help but ask. Clearly they broke in for a reason.

"The files pertaining to the earthquake," Harry responded. "What bothers me is how they knew where to look. I probably arrived a few moments after Draco was stunned, seeing how he was already starting to recover from it, but that meant they knew where to look right away. If they didn't, they probably still would have been looking when I got there. On top of that, nothing else was disturbed."

He didn't say the way, which she was sure they were all thinking. If the person who broke in was and Auror, then they could simply have walked straight in stunned Draco, grabbed the files, and then left. However she could see why it wasn't a pleasant idea. If they had that sort of connections, it would make it all the harder to catch them, since to become and Auror, you need to be vetted first, and if nothing came up the first time, chances of them being able to find out something to prove the connection would be harder.

She was grateful that it had been her friends who were working the case. Granted it helped that they were only doing it because it was their children who came back, but if it had been anyone else who were less careful, it could have posed to be a large danger for everyone. The last thing they needed was for the robbers to know that children had come back from the past to inform them so they could stop it. Merlin knows what it would do to the safety of her kids.

"So what's my diagnosis?" Draco asked her, looking up from the bed. "Am I free to go? Or do I have to stay here because my paranoid idiot of a partner insisted I had no choice but to come in."

"I want to run a few more tests and such, just to make sure it was just a simple stunning spell and not some dark magic which has taken root inside of you, but you should be free to go in about an hour or so. I'll have one of my interns come in and run them," she informed him.

"Oh and before you leave, Hermione, we're planning on going over to the Burrow for dinner tonight to strategize ways to unify the wizarding world," Harry informed her.

Her forehead creased, "Tonight? I have plans…" her voice trailed off.

"Oh?" Harry said in surprise. "Doing what?"

"I have a date," she said softly, avoiding eye contact with the both of them. "With Oliver Wood. But I could always re-arrange it so we can meet up tonight. It's more important anyways," she rambled slightly.

Harry shook his head, "No go ahead. You deserve a break from all of this. I'll reschedule for tomorrow; it'll probably be better, and give Draco a chance to get some rest too after his injury."

"Are you sure?" she asked, furrowing her brows slightly. She didn't want to cause Harry to have to push everything to the side just for her.

"Should you even be going on a date?" Draco asked suddenly, "Won't it send the wrong message to Scorpius if you're going out with random men? And have you even thought about what it would mean for your future? When Wood eventually meets Scorpius, how happy do you think he's going to be about the fact you kept so many things from him."

As he said that, she felt her initial worries resurface again, "Don't you think I've thought about that?" she snapped at him. "I've contemplated every possible outcome of this and what it meant for me, Scorpius, and for him."

"And what about what it meant for me?" Draco snorted, "Of course you didn't really think about that, did you? You didn't even think about how I fit in this new future of yours that you seem so keen to re-write."

"We both decided it that day when we said we were going to see people!" she argued, "And that's exactly what I'm doing! You have no right to just go off on me like that, when it was your idea to begin with!"

"I meant in the future!" he fought, "Not while all of this shit is still happening! We have more important things to worry about than whether are not you're getting laid!"

Her eyes widened, "How could you even say that?" she sputtered out. "You know what, Malfoy, you can just go shove everything up your arse. I'm not being paid enough for this garbage. I'll send in an intern to clear you and release you."

And with that she spun on her heels and walked straight out of the room, despite Harry calling out to her.

On the other side of the country, a dark figure stepped out of the shadows to greet their accomplice after a particularly important mission that they had sent them on.

"Did you get it?" they asked their partner as they entered the room.

The partner waved a file in their hand, "It was exactly where you said it would be," they said in return.

Excitedly, the one in charge took the file and flipped through it all, scanning each page briefly, taking in its contents.

"Is this it?" the first one asked in surprise. "This is all that's in the file? There's nothing here! Where's the rest of it?"

"I don't know!" the second one said, looking down, "I took everything there was pertaining to the earthquake. They must not have written it down."

"This is a setback," the first said with a sigh. "But there are other ways to get the information we need. All we need is someone who knows about the events of the earthquake."