The Wall

As Remus finished unpacking the last box, Harry looked around his tiny flat. Tonks was doing a reasonably good job of arranging his furniture and personal items in a pleasant and practical way. Most of his few furnishings were new. There was just a single bed that was placed along the wall, a small circular table with two chairs, a nightstand, a small television, and a dresser. Harry carefully placed a magical photo of his mum and dad on top of the nightstand and watched them spin and laugh for a moment before pointing his wand at it. He said "Desiit", and the photograph stopped moving. He then headed to the small kitchen and started stocking the small fridge with the purchases Tonks had brought for him. After finishing, Harry put the brand-new kettle on the oven to make some Earl Gray tea. He had been overseas for five years and was happy to return and see his only remaining friends in the Wizarding world. Few people knew how instrumental they had been in the victory over Voldemort. His heart still ached for those that had been lost; Sirius, Shacklebolt, Moody and Dumbledore. All six of them had hidden and trained him for his ultimate destiny.

As he waited for the water to boil, he looked out the balcony's window. The flat's location was ideal. It was across a small park and within walking distance of King's College, London, where he was starting his first semester in criminal law. His ultimate goal was a career in law enforcement... Muggle law enforcement.

One year after killing Voldemort, Harry had renounced the Wizarding world. He was fed up with it. The prejudices against creatures like Remus and Muggle-borns persisted. The privileges of the oligarchic pure-blood families had hardly been dented. After Dolores Umbridge was elected Minister of Magic with promises of establishing order, Harry had had enough. His open opposition to the policies of the new Minister had gotten him in all kinds of trouble. The Wizarding press had hounded him and accused him of being a power-hungry, attention-seeking menace that wanted to subvert the established order. The fact that he had killed Voldemort and saved Wizardkind was hardly mentioned anymore. It was yesterday's news. Sometimes Harry felt that the politicians resented having been saved by a half-blood, barely of age. Even the way he had killed Voldemort was now the subject of derision. He had killed him the Muggle way... with his bare hands and a combat knife.

He had never admitted it to anyone, because it was sickening even to him, but he had enjoyed beating the life out of Voldemort. It was the ultimate insult for the Dark Lord to have his throat cut like a common Muggle criminal after being beaten into submission. He had begged Harry to kill him with a wand.

"My mother also begged, but she got no mercy," Harry had growled before sinking the tantō blade of his combat knife into Voldemort's throat.

Harry's problems with the Ministry reached the boiling point when a group of four Aurors had showed up while he was having dinner at The Leaky Cauldron, demanding that he surrendered his wand in the name of public safety.

"Which one of you is the one that's going to try and take it away from me?" he had asked with narrowed eyebrows.

After Dumbledore's and Voldemort's deaths, the mantle of "world's most powerful wizard" had fallen squarely on Harry's shoulders. He quickly disarmed the four Aurors and sent them on their way with a message.

"Tell that toad face bitch that calls herself Minister, that I dare her come herself to take my wand away."

For the second time in his life, Harry had been declared "Undesirable #1", and forced into hiding. He decided that the British Wizarding world was not worth fighting for, so he flew to Paris and joined the French Foreign Legion at the recruitment office in the Rue Vauban. He signed his five-year contract under the "declared identity" of Harry James Evans. After four months training, he became part of the Second Infantry Regiment based in Nîmes. The Legion experience had been rewarding for the most part. He had served in combat in Afghanistan, and there had become close friends with a fellow Briton, a former "hooligan" from Manchester; also with a former East German "Stasi" agent from Berlin; and an older Legion veteran who was a former Nicaraguan "Contra". Harry learned a lot from his new friends. The extensive CIA training and combat experience of the Nicaraguan they knew as "Zubi", had saved their lives in more than one occasion. The brawling abilities of "Becks", as they called his fellow Brit, had gotten them out of many a bar fight. The cool-headed sneakiness and surveillance abilities of "Kraut", as they unceremoniously called the German, had kept them out of a lot of trouble. Harry was by far the youngest of the group, and the other three had taken him under their wing. Unbeknown to them, the reason all four had "miraculously" survived a suicide bombing attempt while on patrol, was the Protego shield that Harry had raised wandlessly when he sensed trouble.

After his contract with the Legion expired, Harry decided he had had enough of the military life. There was no getting around the fact that while one was in military service, one couldn't be a free man. Being a Legionnaire, despite the good camaraderie, meant being a prisoner to the whims of French politicians. Harry received news from Remus that Umbridge had been removed from office amid a scandal over reforms she had instituted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which had reinstated corporal punishment. When a pure-blood witch died after being hung from hooks for a "public display of affection", suddenly the eyes of the public were opened to the sadist streak in the Minister of Magic. As a result, there had been sweeping changes, and Harry Potter was no longer "Undesirable #1". As a matter of fact, the events of six years ago, with the killing of Voldemort and its consequences, were a distant and shameful memory for most.

Harry, nevertheless, didn't want to return to the Wizarding World. Wizardkind was retrograde, and he figured it was slowly going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Despite the haughtiness and delusions of superiority of pure-blood wizards over those they condescendingly called, "Muggles", the reality was that Muggle society was much more advanced than Wizarding society. Muggle technology was outpacing magic by leaps and bounds, and there was hardly anything that wizards could do that Muggles couldn't do with the aid of science and technology. For example, the Foreign Legion had paid for corrective laser eye surgery to fix his myopia, while wizards were still stuck with antiquated eyeglasses. The reality was that wizards had to hide their world from Muggles and not the other way around, because Muggle weapons, in enough quantities, would overwhelm wizards. He realized the reason Death Eaters attacked only the most helpless Muggles, in small towns and isolated places, was because not even Voldemort's best shield could stop the 120 mm shell of a tank, much less a tactical nuclear weapon.

"You could afford a much bigger place, Harry," Remus said. "Do you realize how much Muggle money you have if you just convert a fraction of your Galleons into Pounds Sterling?"

"Yes, Remus, but I'm trying to be just like any other student and not call attention to myself," Harry answered as he poured the tea. "Besides, after five years in the Legion, and three and a half in Afghanistan, I'm used to fairly Spartan accommodations."

"I still can't get over how much you've changed," Tonks added taking a sip of the cup that Harry had handed her. "Your scar is hardly visible anymore, and you look so much stronger. The only thing that remains the same are your eyes, and your hair," she concluded with a silent laugh.

Harry had done some physical training along with his magical training during the Second War but had always remained on the scrawny side. The weight of the responsibility that hung on his shoulders; kill or be killed by Voldemort, and the death of friends at regular intervals had always influenced his appetite. His face, topped with wild raven hair, was now chiselled around deep-set green eyes, giving him a predatory look. Under his shirt, wide shoulders with muscular deltoids and pectorals were evident.

"Hauling thirty-five kilo backpacks up an Afghan mountain will do that to you," Harry answered with a smirk. "The French at least fed me well. As far as the scar is concerned, ever since Voldemort died, it has been fading a little at a time."

"So, explain to me what it is exactly you are studying?" asked Remus.

"Criminal law deals mostly with the legal and jurisdictional aspects of crime and punishment. I'm doing a one-year LL.M undergraduate degree. My ultimate goal is not to become a solicitor or barrister, but to go into law enforcement with Scotland Yard in a SFO unit of the Counter Terrorism Command."

"What's SFO?" Tonks asked.

"It stands for Specialist Firearms Officer..."

"Haven't you had enough of that already, Harry?" Remus interrupted in a sombre tone. "Enough of war?"

"What else can I do?" The frustration was evident in the voice of the twenty-three-year-old young man. "Become a florist?" After a silent pause, he continued. "I'm an adrenaline junkie, Remus."

"I just wish we didn't have to worry about you," Remus said sincerely.

"You won't have to worry for at least an entire year. I'll be just another struggling student in big old London."

"Won't you get bored here, being all by yourself?" Tonks asked.

Her question made Harry think for a moment. "I don't think so. I'll have my classes and a part-time job at the school library."

Remus laughed. "I have a hard time picturing you in a library, Harry."

"I've actually developed quite a taste for Muggle literature. There's plenty of boredom in the battlefield, so I always carried a few books from the camp library with me." Harry looked at his watch. "I hate to hurry you along, but I have my first shift at the library in forty minutes."

"We also have to run along," Tonks said getting up and kissing Harry on the cheek.

"Thanks for all the help... both of you," Harry said hugging Remus. He stood by the door watching the pair go down the hallway and waved at them as they turned the corner.

After moving some things around the flat and tying on a pair of trainers, he left for the Maughan Library, walking along the Strand and Fleet Street to Chancery Lane. He stood in front of the impressive Gothic building for a moment before walking in.

o-o-o

Harry returned to his flat six hours later holding a paper bag of Chinese take-out food. He sat on a chair of the small circular table and started eating the fried rice and ramen noodles. The job at the library was more physically demanding than he had expected. The head librarian, an old spinster with pinched nose and thick eyeglasses, had taken a quick look at him and put him on re-shelving detail. "You look like a bloke with a strong back," she had said succinctly before assigning another older female librarian to show him the layout of the cavernous building. She had explained the indexing and shelving system of the library in exhausting detail. They picked up a trolley stacked with books at the Reading Room and started re-shelving the books. It had been torture being reminded every other minute of the critical importance of shelving the books in the right place.

After finishing his meal, Harry undressed and put on a tee-shirt and pyjama bottoms before jumping into bed. He pulled his laptop computer from the nightstand drawer to catch up with the news of the day. Several hours later, late in the night, he had turned off the light on the nightstand and was starting to drift into sleep when he heard the noise of the door closing in the flat adjacent to his. He was surprised to clearly hear light footsteps as the person moved around the flat. A woman started humming a song and turned the shower on.

Harry pressed his ear against the wall next to his bed and was startled to be able to hear the woman going through her drawers, possibly pulling clothes out. The muffled sounds amid the humming told him she was undressing. Harry carefully turned on the light and walked along the wall on tiptoes as the woman on the other side walked towards the sound of the running water. The point where the sound of the water was the strongest was behind the closet, so Harry opened it, pushed the clothes aside, and pressed his ear against the wall once more. The woman, possibly a young woman judging by her singing voice, was in the shower. The involuntary mental image of a naked young woman, with water running down a supple, curvy body, came to his mind. Harry was startled by his own thoughts and pulled back. He walked back to his bed and laid down. He tried to think of something else. She's probably ugly, he tried to convince himself.

Harry became intrigued by the amount of sound that came through the wall. The woman was still humming in the shower on the other end of the room, so he lightly tapped it with his knuckles. It felt hollow and very thin. He got up from the bed and did a visual inspection of the joint points along the ceiling and the floor. For the first time he noticed that this wall had not originally been there. It seemed that the landlord had made two flats out of what initially had been one larger flat. It was located at the end of the hallway, so the woman had no other neighbour. Harry, on the other hand, had a neighbour on the opposite wall. He walked towards it and tapped it. That wall was made of solid bricks, confirming his assumption.

He went back to bed and turned off the light, but all his senses, especially his hearing, were on edge. Harry closed his eyes when the water stopped running. In his mind's eye he saw a big breasted blond woman with droplets of water running down her soft skin. She wrapped a towel around her long silky hair and raised her right foot to the edge of the tub, drying it with another towel. She then sensually ran the towel along her long shapely leg and repeated the motion with the other one. Harry realized he was getting aroused and opened his eyes. Bloody hell.

It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. While they were stationed in Nîmes, there had been plenty of willing French women happy to bag a Legionnaire, but once in Afghanistan, there had only been the occasional female UN aid worker, as desperate for sexual release as he was.

Harry kept expecting the sound of a hair dryer, but it never came. The telly was turned on to some sort of comedy program, because occasionally, melodious laughter erupted from the other room. After an hour, the television was turned off and all went silent.

o-o-o

The next morning Harry took a shower and made himself breakfast. After looking outside and confirming it was a beautiful summer day, he got dressed and stepped out of his flat to go get familiar with the Strand campus of King's College London. His classes started in a week, and he wanted to be sure he knew where everything was. As he walked down the hallway, he heard the distinctive bell of the lift doors opening.

"Hold the lift!" he called out breaking into a run.

He came to a sliding stop just in front of the doors that were being held open by a gorgeous redhead.

"Thank you," Harry said walking in.

The redhead just smiled at him and pressed the button for the ground floor. Harry stepped all the way back, and pretended to be looking up at the numbers on top of the door as they lit up showing their descent. With his peripheral vision he noticed the long, silky and unnaturally bright red hair that fell like a curtain to the middle of her back. A clean flowery smell filled the lift, and Harry took a noisy deep breath, prompting the girl to take a quick look at him. Her brown eyes were bright and full of life, the sharp but delicate features of her face made an alluring ensemble. The blue jeans she was wearing emphasized the soft curves of her hips. She was on the short side, but perfectly proportioned. Judging by his own height of 1.85 metres, she was about 1.62 metres tall. Harry was carefully eyeing the swell of her breasts, which were only hinted at through the loose-fitting blouse when they reached the ground floor and the doors opened with the ring of the bell. The redhead looked up briefly at him before stepping out. At the entrance to the building, she turned right, and Harry had to go to the left. He watched her walk down the street for half a block. Her step was light and airy, somehow less challenged by gravity than normal, her hips had a very feminine sway. Harry tore his eyes from her and started walking in the opposite direction. He missed the moment when she gave a quick look back and saw his retreating back.

o-o-o

Harry did his errands for the day and reported to work at the library. He was on the way back to his flat in the early evening when he walked by a store that advertised itself as a "Spy Shop". He stood in front of the window for a long time, trying to decide if he should do what he was thinking of doing. He finally made up his mind and walked in.

"Do you have a wall probe microphone?" he asked the attendant.

The man pulled a box from one of the displays and went into a long-winded exultation of the capabilities of the probe. Harry knew the equipment was rubbish for amateurs, but considering the thinness of the wall involved, it should do a decent enough job. In any case it was more subtle than those "extendable ears" they sold in Diagon Alley. "It even includes the headphones," the salesman said to conclude his pitch.

Once he reached his flat, Harry set up the wall probe and cooked himself some dinner. That was another thing he had learned in the Legion, cooking. He frequently slipped into the camp kitchen to watch the chefs at work. A couple of hours later, Harry was sitting at the table with his computer, when the door of the flat next door opened. Harry went to his bed and put the earphones on. He immediately had to tear them off when the sound of high-pitched static hurt his ears. Harry lowered the volume and tried to adjust the probe, but the noise persisted.

Serves you right, you bleeding pervert. You got swindled!

Harry just listened as the girl started humming in the shower. She then began singing, but he could not make out the words. Frustrated, he grabbed the suction cup of the probe and moved it around the wall. He discovered that as he moved it towards the entrance the static noise was lessening. Finally, he found a spot close to the floor where there was barely any noise. He sat on the floor, listening. She was singing a hit song of the moment with a lovely voice. She stepped out of the shower, and after a couple of minutes drying her body, he could clearly hear her brush her teeth and spit into the sink. She eats outside, Harry thought. His fantasy ran wild again, but this time he pictured the redhead he had seen that morning.

He heard the sounds of a spring bed and the sound of a drawer next to it opening and closing. She was mostly quiet, but every other minute there was the distinctive sound of pages rustling. She's reading. After an hour Harry was almost asleep when the sound of the drawer opening and closing again woke him up. There was silence for a couple of minutes. Harry felt a twinge of guilt for eavesdropping on his neighbour. It was not nearly as exciting as he had expected. Nothing really interesting seemed to be happening and he felt like a perverted fool for wasting a hundred Pounds Sterling on the crappy wall probe. She is probably hideous anyway. Just when he had resolved to rip the probe off the wall and throw it in the bin, a long moan came from the other side. His eyes opened wide, and an expression of concentration and surprise came over his face. After a few seconds of silence, came another moan of pleasure. Her breathing was getting laboured, puffing air in and out from time to time. The cries came more frequently, and the pitch of her mewling was getting higher and higher. Harry closed his eyes and imagined the small hand of the redhead touching her own pussy. She inserted one finger, slowly moving it in and out as her thumb remained firmly over the hood of her clit. The sounds continued for several minutes. With her other hand the redhead pinched her pink nipples. She arched her back against the mattress while her eyes rolled to the back of her head with a loud hissing cry. She curled the finger inside her pussy, looking for the elusive spot. "Yes!" The breathing was fast and irregular now. The pressure deep inside her was building, and the cries became muffled. She's biting a pillow; she's going to come. Her toes curled on the yellow bed sheets, pulling on them. Her thumb started to flick rapidly over her clit, as she plunged a second finger deep into her soaked opening. She pulled on her nipples again and there was an explosion inside her. "Fuck, yes!" The cries of her orgasm were shouted against the pillow for what seemed to be a long time. She laid in bed breathing heavily for a couple of minutes.

Harry opened his eyes, and realized that he too, was breathing heavily. His throbbing erection made his boxer briefs rise up and down with every heartbeat. In the other room he heard the woman get up from bed and walk unsteadily to the bathroom. The water of a bidet was turned on, and the sound of water splashing indicated she was washing herself. Harry, on the other hand, reached for his wand and silently cast a Tergeo spell to dry the wet head of his member. The woman returned to her bed and Harry heard the click of the lamp being turned off.

Right then and there, Harry resolved to get rid of the microphone.

o-o-o

The next day, sometime around mid-morning, Harry was gathering the rubbish to bin it along with the wall probe microphone, when he heard the door of the flat next-door opening. He ran to his own door and looked through the peep hole. There was the sound of keys as the door was being locked. Then, a slightly distorted shape walked across the front of his door. There was a flash of bright red that made Harry's heart start to beat wildly. He quietly opened the door, and slowly leaned out.

It was she. The girl in the lift.

Her hair was swaying in tune with the light, airy step of her gait, and the subtle movement of her hips. She was holding a bright yellow plastic bag which she swung in one hand. The redhead was wearing some kind of uniform consisting of black pants and a dark polo shirt. She reached the end of the hallway and was about to turn towards the lift, forcing Harry to quickly pull his head back inside his flat. He slowly sank to the floor, his heart still beating rapidly. The images that his imagination had conjured the previous night came back in a rush and he felt his face heat up. He had a deep blush of shame. He wanted to meet this girl, but how could he face her now... after audibly witnessing what she had done the night before... after what he had done the night before.

An hour later, Harry was downstairs disposing of his rubbish, when he noticed a bright yellow plastic bag in one of the bins. Harry struggled with himself. During one their conversations about their past lives, his Legionnaire German Stasi friend had told them about how rubbish could be a treasure trove of information. He threw his bag in the bin and grabbed the yellow one, taking a quick glance inside. There were several papers and the detritus of everyday life. He turned around and started heading towards the lift but stopped suddenly in his tracks. After a brief, but intense internal struggle, he turned around, and headed back to the rubbish bins where he fished the wall probe out of his plastic bag.

Just one more day, he said to himself.

When he reached his flat, he sat on the floor and started taking out the items inside the yellow bag one by one. First, he took out a wrapper for an ice-cream cone. He pulled out two more and made a note of the flavour, vanilla. He then took out a couple of bitten apple cores and a box of breakfast cereal. He was surprised that there were no more organic materials, which confirmed his deduction that she usually ate out. He then pulled out an empty bottle of red nail polish; several cotton buds; an old cleaning rag; a couple of pink razors, and several strands of long hair that were red all the way to the root. She is a natural redhead.

Now he got to the real treasure trove of the bag's contents, the papers. He found pay stubs from a neighbourhood cafeteria where she worked thirty hours a week and another pay stub of a pub where she worked twenty hours a week. She was a hard-working girl. He also found several papers that indicated she was studying nursing and midwifery at King's College, London. All the documents had two names: Ginevra, or Ginny Weasley. Harry noted the names and addresses of the places she worked at in a piece of paper.

At the bottom of the bag there was one last piece of paper. It was crushed and crumpled into a tight ball. Harry undid the ball and smoothed the paper as best he could. There was a line, written in a fine and delicate script and several illegible, scratched-out lines underneath. Its meaning puzzled Harry. The line read:

His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad.

O-o-O-o-O