Author's Notes: I'm sorry for the delay! I finally got covid for the first time and I had about 5 days in there where I just couldn't think enough to write. Thankfully I wasn't too sick and I've mostly bounced back.
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Thank you to Arnel for beta'ing.
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Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 86
Al didn't know when his mother had procured the large deck chairs that looked more like a couch with a large footrest, but he was doubly thankful to have them as he stretched out on one, Nat's head on his chest, as they watched the waves crash lazily over the shore. He ran his fingers along the bare skin of her arm and studied the top of her head more than he looked out to the sea. It wasn't that the sea, which was stormy and gray that day, wasn't beautiful.
But he had this time with her and he didn't want to waste it looking at a bunch of water.
Nat let out a long, long sigh and shifted to look up at him. "You're staring at me again."
"Mhmm," he mumbled as he bent and kissed the tip of her nose. "You're the only thing I want to look at, remember?"
She shrugged in a way that if he didn't know her as well as he did, he'd have assumed was dismissal, but he could see it was her self-consciousness coming through.
He'd taken her at her word when she'd said she'd always loved him and for him, it had felt natural to fall into moving their friendship into romance and kissing. But he'd laid in bed the night before and thought about so many things and he'd realized, a little belatedly, that she still didn't totally believe him.
It had been on his mind all morning, through breakfast and now into this peace and time when it was just the two of them. They'd be looking at houses to buy later that day, but for now it was their own little world and he didn't know how to bridge that gap between what she felt and what he felt.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" Al asked her quietly as he continued to run his fingers over her skin. He watched goosebumps erupt there as she turned more fully into his side, her soft breath feathering the skin of his neck.
He had to force himself to focus because just then he really wanted to pick her up and carry her back inside for some privacy.
They'd had to take a break after the first time because she'd been sore, but it was something his aunt had warned him about and she'd given them something for it. Nat had still needed two days before she was ready to be intimate again and he'd found the wait hadn't chafed because he'd wanted her to enjoy it. Thankfully, the second time had been pain-free, and now he was starting to understanding just why his brothers and mates were very happy to kick them all out and be alone. He wanted her constantly. He'd always wanted her constantly, but now it was an ache in his gut that was shaped like her. He didn't mind her being the center of his everything, but he also knew he had to reign everything in because of her health. He didn't mind that either. He just wanted her.
But he was also twenty and a newlywed.
He came back down to reality when he felt her small finger poke him in the rib. "You're not even listening to me."
"I'm sorry," he said, completely meaning it as he boosted her up to kiss her, then using his palm he slid her thigh over, scooting her onto his lap. "I was thinking about you, even if I wasn't listening."
She'd be able to feel that it was true from her perch and from the way her cheeks pinked, he knew she could. "Albus…"
"Natalie," he whispered against her lips. "My Leah." He paused, looking at her, studied her brown eyes as he tucked a bit of her strawberry blonde hair back from her face. "My Leah," he said again as he watched the flicker of emotions playing across her face.
"The bond…" Nat began as she leaned back against his arm, letting him support her weight. Her eyes dropped down to his shirt as she rested a hand there. "It feels like being part of another system. We make up this whole new, I dunno, I guess it's like a new entity. I can see the magic moving between us, even now."
Al considered what she'd just said and then asked slowly, "Is my magic going into you?"
She considered, twisting her lips up a bit as she thought. "I don't think so, maybe it's a new magic that's created in the bond, and that magic is what goes between us, binding us together. We don't really take magic from someone else."
"You took some out of baby Lorelei," he reminded her. They hadn't talked much about that moment, but it had been interesting. She'd removed the baby's magic rather than a spell or a potion.
"Well, that was just a small siphoning off to help her sleep, but I didn't want to keep that in myself or I'd be seeing visions," Nat said and then grinned up at him sheepishly as she said, "It wasn't very nice to stick it into Rick."
"He can handle it," Al told her dismissively, sure it was the truth. "But the magic between us… something is bothering you."
"It's not exactly bothering me," she told her, her gaze flickering up to his, which he kept fixed on her. She let out a huff. "Fine! Alright, I'm just concerned I'll drag you down or…"
"Nope," Al said with the shake of his head. "You're very powerful, Nat. In your way, you're way more powerful than I am."
She let out a small sigh and then ran her hand up his chest and over to his shoulder, still not looking at him.
He liked when she touched him. He really liked when she focused on him. "You just need to go to the gym more and then you can have muscles bigger than mine. You'll be big and powerful."
Nat pinched at his bicep, but she was smiling now as she again met his gaze. "You think you're so amusing."
Al laughed as he skimmed a hand up her side to cup her jaw, drawing her in for a kiss. "You could do that, but I like you how you are. I like you just how you are."
Her breath against his lips was a small sigh. "But why…"
"Why do I like you how you are?" he asked, pulling back to make sure he had it right.
"Never mind," she said as she bent in to kiss him again.
She'd done this a few times, giving voice to the fears and doubts and then blowing it off like it didn't matter and most of the time he'd let her lead on this, but it was not going away. She didn't know how to believe in herself, even though she could feel through the bond and from his body just how much he loved and wanted her.
"The first day you held Emma when she was a newborn," Al told her, breaking their kiss and cupping her cheeks, keeping her focused on him. "It was the Easter hols and we'd just made it home. I'd gone to put your stuff upstairs and while I was up there, Teddy and Victoire had arrived with the baby. You were standing just outside of the kitchen and you were rocking her and you looked up at me and smiled… Leah, it was the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen and you'd given it to me. You were so happy, so full of joy. The sun was coming in through the windows and it lit up your hair and you were happy. I knew in that moment that I had feelings for you. I didn't know what to do with them, but I knew they were there."
A silent tear slid down her cheek and he rubbed at it with his thumb. "Really?"
"Yeah," he promised her. "When I told you if you were taken we'd be getting married, it wasn't because I was being noble or selfless. I was telling the love of my life that I was going to be the one who was there for her. I didn't want you with anyone else. I need you to be safe like I need to breathe." Al waited until he was sure she'd had a moment to take all of that in. "I love you. I'm so in love with you it's like my heart is walking around outside of my body, kept constantly in your pocket. And I love you for all that you are, all that you were, and all you're going to be."
She swiped at her own tears and he had to shift to keep her from tumbling backwards. "I don't know why I keep thinking that you can't just because I'm… I don't know, so unconventional looking, but it's stuck there," she told him, pointing to her head.
"I don't see you as unconventional looking," he told her simply. "You have a thin, elfin face and a cute, little nose, and brown eyes that tell me stories even when you don't say a word. You have very soft pale red hair that sometimes curls and sometimes doesn't. You have a mouth that I want to be constantly attached to." She let out a snorting laugh then. He traced a finger along her brow and down her cheek. "You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me, and that's because I love you. You're going to be a hundred and fifty at some point with wrinkles all over the place and you're still going to be the most beautiful woman in the world to me. And it's because I love you." He kissed her again. "Remember how you were throwing up and pasty white after you tried to take the birth control potion?"
"Yeah…" she said, making a face at the memory. He'd been there, helping hold her up while they'd tried to clean her up and clear out the potion. "You're going to say I was beautiful then?"
"Yes," he said simply. "You looked terrible, but you are still beautiful, even then. You're going to have to go back to healing women tomorrow and it's going to knacker you and you'll still be the most beautiful woman to me, even when you're exhausted and cranky and pale."
Nat leaned forward, resting her head up under his chin and tucking her arms down by his side. He rubbed at her back and wondered if maybe this time he'd been able to get through to her. But even if he didn't, he'd keep trying. She had to believe it for herself, and nothing he could say was really going to change that, but he wanted to keep trying. He didn't think it felt good to doubt being loved and he'd come to realize that even though she felt like her parents loved her, they'd also left her on her own for most of her childhood.
She hadn't said as much, but after their wedding, when her parents had gone back to their own lives, she'd made a comment about wondering when she'd see them again. It had occurred to him, then, that her parents really honestly and truly were just not an active part in her life and she didn't count on them. Then because they were bonded, he'd felt what that actually felt like to her. And it was a little bit lonely. She wanted to belong, and she did belong, but not to the parents who had given her life.
His dad's stag Patronus showed up on the front porch.
"Woah," Al said as Nat raised her head.
His dad's voice came through quickly, "Please come to the Ministry. We've had an incident. Everyone is safe, but we could use you both. Cloak on for Nat."
~*~
Harry was not happy at the turn of events with Heather and her death, but he also couldn't say he was completely surprised that this woman who had been harassing James for years, was a plant for Isabella Crabbe? Not surprised.
"Why didn't you tell me about her?" Harry asked his son, the question finally spilling out of him as he paced in the conference room. Al and Nat had arrived moments before and she'd been taken to examine the body of Heather, which had not gone to St. Mungo's, but was instead in a sealed room in the Ministry, just in case the poison was something very nasty.
"Honestly," James said as he ran a hand through his hair, "I thought I had told you. I definitely meant to tell you," He admitted to Harry and then fell silent as the door opened and Teddy entered, followed by Al and presumably a cloaked Nat.
Al was not on this case, but Harry had told them Al was there as moral support for his brother. He was a full Auror, now, but this case was going to have top priority since not only had a valued Quidditch played decided to go out in a blaze of glory while trying to attack James Potter, but that Quidditch player was one of a small handful the Minister had recently given an award to for her excellent charitable works on behalf of the Wizarding world for the Muggles.
Apparently, Heather had been working in women's shelters many hours a week for years on end. The Ministry had thanked her.
Harry was now wondering if that might not be where Crabbe was getting some of her experiment victims. The Minister was not happy at being made to look a fool, but it wasn't as though anyone had known.
"Honestly, I didn't realize I hadn't told you," James reiterated, bringing the conversation back full circle as the door closed and Teddy sealed it so Nat could pull off the cloak. Her face was bright red, something that Al noticed immediately as well.
"Let's get you some water," Harry said as he conjured a glass and then filled it. "Sit and drink."
"Are you okay?" James asked her as Al guided her into a seat.
Nat chugged the water down and waved them off. "It's bloody hot under that cloak, but I'm fine. We didn't cast any cooling charms today."
"That's my fault," Teddy said apologetically. "Sorry about that. I'll make sure we do tomorrow before you heal people."
"It's okay," Nat said again as she turned to Harry. "I've never seen that poison before, but it's not spreading outside of her body. She can be processed like normal, maybe get Rose in to try to identify it."
"Alright," Harry said as he took a seat. "What else can you tell me?"
Nat hesitated and then glanced over to Al, then back to Harry. "She wasn't under any kind of control. She acted of her own free will."
Harry had been hopeful, but not surprised that she'd been a willing player. "We're checking into her financial information, trying to see if she was getting money from somewhere, but she was paid well as a Quidditch player, so nothing is standing out just yet."
"She had the birth control potion," Nat told them slowly. "But she wasn't married."
That was interesting. "The year one?"
"Yeah," Nat confirmed. "It's not a stretch to say that Crabbe could have given that to her. It's also not a stretch that she could have picked it up in another country while traveling for work. I don't suppose that potion is checked for in medical screenings for the players."
Harry didn't know but he'd have doubted it. That would have been something that was more likely to be overlooked by the Healers on duty for the teams. "Alright, anything else?"
"No, I think that's it," Nat told him.
"You two go on home, then," Harry told them and said for James to do the same. "We'll let you know if there's something else, and I know you have an appointment with Bill in an hour to discuss houses."
"Let me cool you first," Teddy told Nat before they covered her and left.
When they were gone, Harry turned to Teddy and they both sat, wordlessly staring at the letter that Crabbe had left for Harry, delivered by the dead hands of Heather.
"It seems straight forward enough," Teddy told him as he reached over and took up the folded bit of parchment that they'd already determined was nothing but parchment. "She's demanding you hand over Lily and if you don't, she's going to keep killing women."
"But she's already killing women," Harry said sadly as he studied the flat surface of the conference room table. "She's killed millions of Muggles with a pandemic that we had to work hard to keep her from profiting from with the cure. She's still poisoning magical women to make their babies not magical, keeping those babies sick. We still only have Nat to try to heal them although I'm still hopeful Rick can make a difference, but so far he hasn't been able to."
"As soon as they have a baby for them to adopt you know she's going to want to turn her focus there," Teddy told him quietly. "She's always wanted children."
"I know and I don't blame her for that, one bit," Harry assured him. "But I can't stop this by handing Lily over. She won't stop."
"No, she won't, and you can't hand Lily over because you wouldn't hand anyone over," Teddy reminded him. "But we have to have some kind of break or we're just going to keep spinning our wheels. She wants you to put in the Daily Prophet when you're handing Lily over."
Harry had considered that and had come to his conclusion. "I'm going to ignore it. She's going to keep doing what she's doing, but she was going to anyway. We double down on security, which includes making sure Al and Nat's new home is secure, and then we keep hunting for her. Kingsley said when he was here for the wedding that he'd made a few contacts, but he doesn't have anything concrete yet. We'll have to wait and see."
Teddy let out a long sigh. "I'm going to go with Hermione to notify Heather's parents of her death, at least officially. It's leaked out somehow."
"No, I'll go," Harry told him. "Well, you should come along. We need a united front on this one when we tell someone their child was trying to murder someone else."
Then he stopped and looked at Teddy. "She was trying to murder my son."
"Yeah, she was," Teddy agreed.
They found Heather only had her father left and when he was told what had happened he shook his head. "Figures," was all he told them and then he let them search her room where they found folders and folders of evidence that Heather had been stalking James for years and a journal entry that explained that Crabbe had promised her James in exchange for helping Crabbe with information, but that Heather hadn't been providing enough information and Crabbe had threatened to have James killed if she didn't deliver the message and attempt to kidnap James.
It had all gone wrong and she'd taken the suicide pill that Crabbe had given her.
It was a sad, stupid end to a life.
