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amand_rTitle: D For Defender (1/4)
Author: Amand-r
Team: Snitch in the 2009 Snarry Games
Genre(s): Alive and Kicking (EWE)
Prompt(s): Green Lantern, Enemy At The Gate
Rating/Warnings/Kinks: NC-17 for sex (contains fisting), R for violence. Some canon deaths ignored. Also? Kinda cracky.
Word Count: 28,000+ some
Summary: There's a man stalking the Wizarding world. Or a bat. Maybe a Man-Bat. Severus is probably having an affair, Harry's tired all the time, oh, and those drunks out in East Anglia are complaining about the green lights. Again.
Author Notes/Disclaimers/Betas Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jadzialove for being the best sidekick beta evar, cleaning up parts 1-3. joanwilder, aka Alfred, hit all of it, especially part 4, with a batarang of spag (Thanks beth for a few quick saves!). All italicized bumper quotes from The Tick: The Animated Series.
PART ONE: RUMOURS. THEY SAY HE'S A BAT.
Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny. No sir. And, you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy.
Harry was about four fingers into Severus's arse when it occurred to him that the reason Severus had been acting oddly of late was probably that he was having an affair. Listening to the man moan, Harry pulled his hand back minutely and laid a kiss on his balls before giving the matter some further consideration. Late nights, sleeping all day, welching on obligations, increased libido, willingness to try new things. Harry glanced down at his fingers as he worked his thumb against Severus's perineum and the man arched like a cat.
The thought had been enough to interrupt his rhythm, and he stopped in the middle of adding his thumb to Severus's hole. Severus raised his lower half up in the air, placing most of his weight on his shoulders, and then slid down the bed a little to goad Harry on, but nothing happened. Harry looked at his partner critically for a second: long, lithe, a little pale, not classically handsome, but still fit. He was entering his middle age, really, what with the longer life span, and so maybe, maybe all the odd things recently were a mid-life crisis.
"Merlin's balls, Harry," Severus groaned. "You're a fucking tease." Harry shook his head and tended to his own cock with his other hand as he twisted his wrist and folded his thumb in towards his palm. Yeah, he'd think about this later, after they'd both come all over the place. Sometimes a gift horse was really a gift horse.
He hadn't really harbored much excitement about this act in particular when Severus had suggested it, and then snarkily thrown a few dog-eared Wizarding sex manuals at him before shutting himself in his lab for a few weeks, but the more Harry had studied the moving pictures (moving pictures! Hello Wizard porn!), the more he'd been curious, and now he was downright ready to finish himself off all over Severus's chest. The man was sweating and writhing a little, and Harry could feel the muscles enveloping his fingers and thumb, his whole hand really, and when he closed his eyes it was is if that was his cock in there, and it was. Wow, he could imagine every twitch and ripple of movement. He closed his hand once he was in, like the manuals had said, and Severus screeched, his fingers scratching at the sheets.
Hopefully that was good.
Harry worked his hand, unclenched his fist, teased the prostate, trying to keep himself from coming, but Severus opened his eyes and looked at him, looked right at him, and said, "You may come now, Harry," and that was enough to make him lose it.
Harry came on his own chest and Severus's legs, and then he reached forward with his sticky hand and worked Severus's cock and arse in rhythm, desperate to make the man's back bend, his hair stick to his neck, his face contort, eyes screwed shut. Those hands, so skilled at duelling or Potions, smacked the bed uselessly and his legs strained, taut lines in his thighs standing out, Harry thought to himself, just so that he could kiss them, lick them.
Severus came, screaming, and Harry waited until he was done, lying there, legs akimbo, before he pulled his hand free and staggered to the toilet to wash himself up.
When he returned, tossing a warm damp flannel at his husband, he fell face forward onto the bed and huffed into the pillow.
"You were right," he said grudgingly, though not that grudgingly. All the flashes and suspicions that had come to him in the middle of sex, they all faded in the afterglow. Of course Severus wasn't having an affair. It was preposterous.
Severus shifted on the bed, and Harry heard the sound of cloth on skin. "I know. I'm always right."
But how preposterous? It wasn't that Severus was unattractive. It had been fifteen years since the end of the war, and still Harry often found letters addressed to him when he was going through his fan mail: usually some older woman or sixteen year old girl who couldn't believe that Severus was gay, only that he just hadn't met them yet, and then what usually followed was a plea for a date or meeting of some sort. Harry's fan mail was much the same way, but with a wider range and more vehement arguments for his 'conversion' (i.e. Everyone seemed to think Severus had Imperiused him. Highly unlikely. He was Harry Potter). Better still were the offers of a three or foursome, or the occasional requests for naughty photos.
Severus thought the letters were terribly amusing. Years before they might have made him angry, but retirement from teaching and the end of the war had seen him lighten a little. He was by no means charming, humorous, or tolerant of, well, anyone, but he was loads better than Harry remembered him being at Hogwarts.
Well, that, and his arse looked good in Muggle trousers.
Harry flipped over then, so that he could watch Severus toss the rag over in the direction of the toilet.
Severus rolled over to him and pressed his body into Harry's, running his tongue behind his ear as his hands traveled up his sides and then onto his chest, pinching his nipples. "You look like you could use a drink, Mister Potter."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Gods, yes."
Severus reached over to his bedside table and retrieved two glasses of what proved to be water. Harry struggled to sit up, which was difficult because Severus was practically holding him down. He downed the water and barely got the glass on his nightstand before his head hit the pillow again and he yawned.
"Go to sleep," Severus whispered in his ear as he closed his eyes. Harry felt the dip of the mattress when Severus moved away from him, getting up from the bed. He never heard him leave the room.
***
Harry stood at the foot of the bed and watched Severus's leg dangle over the edge. Soft snores emanated from the head of the bed somewhere. There were a lot of pillows, and a great deal of them were piled on Severus's head. Harry contemplated the mountain of them as they shifted when Severus shifted; there had to be at least a half-dozen of them. How had that even happened? This had left the realm of comfortable and into the area of shameless hedonism.
He scrubbed his face with his hand and realized that he didn't really care about the pillows. What he needed was a massively strong cup of tea, and possibly to stop waking in the mornings feeling like utter shite.
"Hey," he said, sitting lightly on the edge of the bed and slapping Severus's calf. "Hey, are you planning on getting up today?"
In response, Severus's hand raised itself from its dangle over the edge of the bed, twirled once at the wrist, gave him a half-hearted V, and then fell back down to hang listlessly.
Harry sighed. "Okay then. Good to know."
The kitchen was spotless in that strange way kitchens had when they hadn't been used in a long time, and Harry thought about searching the icebox for something worth drinking or eating before realising that he needed to be in to work fifteen minutes ago. Years ago he would have been out of the house and jogging to work instead of Apparating, but lately he just hadn't felt like it; most days he barely heard the alarm.
He wondered if he wasn't coming down with something, but there wasn't time to think about that, because Ginny would be at the house, banging on the doors if he didn't leave soon, so Harry tossed on a jacket, inventoried his pockets, holstered his wand and stomped his way out of the house without worrying about waking Severus. Would serve him right for sleeping in, the lazy arse.
Harry Apparated to the back alley that he used to get into the Ministry, and then stood there for a few seconds, nodding to people who passed him, all waving cheery hellos. He was knackered. If he hadn't seen the clock, he would never have guessed that he'd got a full eight hours of sleep.
There was nothing for it, though. Harry steeled himself for a full day of work, yawned once, waved to the guard, and stepped into the lobby.
He passed the newsstand, though his eyes caught the headlines of the Daily Prophet (Ministry Supply Houses Vandalised), the Quibbler (Who is the Man Behind the Bat?!!?), Witch Weekly (We Give That Mystery Man Three Brooms Up! Rowr!) and Quidditch News (How to Mod your Broom Like the Best of the Best!). If there were anything interesting or relevant to him, he'd hear about it in the office. Romilda was a great assistant like that. He was late, but a cursory glance at the schedule on his wristwatch, the one Romilda had charmed in the manner of a wearable Wizarding PDA, revealed that he was actually free for about twenty minutes, and then of course, Ginny would be banging on his door, and he wasn't even there. He considered being late just to take the piss out of her.
Harry joined the queue of the Ministry's lobby café and stared at the menu blearily. Did he want tea? One of those fancy coffees that Hermione chugged like water? Something that ended in 'ino'? Too many choices. He was developing a decision making disorder just looking at the board above the 'bearista's' head (bless the Wizarding World and their malapropistic ways.)
"Hem hem," said a noise behind him, and he turned to find Dolores I-was-Imperioused-No Really-I-Swear Umbridge staring at him through her glasses, face set in a permanent scowl. "The queue is moving, Mister Potter."
She still refused to call him an Auror. Harry smiled and shrugged, shuffling forward in the queue. He could hear her muttering to herself as they wended their way through the rat maze in front of the shoppe.
Harry turned suddenly. "So, how is the steno pool these days, Dolores?"
Umbridge narrowed her eyes. He knew for a fact that Dolores was languishing away in the steno pool, where she would probably stay forever, because she generally tried to take over the job of whomever she was supposed to be typing and taking dictation for. As far as he was concerned, she had got a huge break, because if he'd had his way, she'd have been languishing away in Azkaban and not in the basements of the Ministry where she could wait, gestating some plan to return to power.
The 'bearista' smiled when he shuffled forward. "Auror Potter! Good morning! What can I make for you?"
Harry waved a hand. "Whatever you like. Something with caffeine. Frappy-crappy-rappy whatever you give Solicitor Granger."
The woman behind the counter smiled brightly, then looked over her shoulder at the coffee station. "Triple non-fat espresso soy sweet-cane with a shot of Bertie's!"
Harry shook his head and dug about in his pockets for change. No wonder Hermione was awake twenty-four hours a day.
***
Romilda greeted him at his desk when he dragged himself in, her face bright and smiling. She'd obviously been practising the Granger method of caffeine application. Or maybe everyone looked so energetic because he wasn't. Romilda was a great assistant, and she didn't mind being shared between six of them; he was insanely happy that he had been able to have her hired. In fact, if she hadn't been, Harry figured he'd still be filling out the exact same expense report that he'd had on his desk when she'd come in three years ago, asking for a job.
Ginny was already there, sitting at her desk across from his. They'd once been across the room, but soon after they had been paired together, they'd shoved their desks to face each other. To this day, Harry wasn't sure that that had been such a great idea; Ginny, unlike her brother, was a bit more liberal with the tossing of office supplies.
He set the coffee down on the desk and unloaded his outside cloak on the wall hook. He dropped into his chair and put his head in his hands.
"You're late," Ginny said. A paperclip landed on his blotter.
"I'm exhausted," he answered. "Just looking at you makes my body tired."
Ginny made a noise of derision. "It's all that kinky sex you're having," and for a second Harry thought she knew something she shouldn't until he heard her bark a laugh. "You're getting old, Snitch."
Harry looked up and smiled at her, resting his chin on his hands. The office was fairly busy already, though that wasn't surprising since he had been the last one to arrive. He'd seen Colin Creevy on his way to the loo while walking in, and 'Milda was flitting about the office, delivering post. Susan Bones sat at her desk and scowled at a paper in her hands, and their two other officemates were probably out of the office. Harry rarely saw them since they had taken the night shift.
"I suppose that we have to get to work sooner or later," he said feebly. "What are we doing today?"
Ginny grinned and tossed a stack of newspapers on his desk, and the resounding thud of them sloshed the coffee though the drink spout. "I want to talk about the Man-Bat." She smiled and waited for it to sink in.
Harry stared at her for a second, because he thought she'd said 'Man-Bat'. When Ginny's expression didn't change, but her eyes drifted down to the stack of papers in front of him, he realised that she was completely serious. He glanced down at the cover of The Prophet, whose caption he had ignored earlier, but the moving photo was about as clear as those Muggle photographs of Bigfoot out in the woods. Over and over, the photo showed the shadow jumping from one of the Ministry's storehouses in Ottery St. Catchpole. The headline all but screamed in outrage that the warehouse had been looted, and then set on fire.
Harry slid the papers away from him. "I don't want to talk about the Man-Bat," he said snippily. He didn't like the idea of there being something, no no, someone, out there that made people think he or she wasn't even human. It fostered fear, and awe. And sometimes imitation.
Harry wasn't taking the Man-Bat seriously, but apparently he was going to have to, if the person had finally upgraded from stopping the occasional crime in Wizarding communities to vandalising private property. Private Ministry property.
"Do we have to take this assignment?" he asked blearily. "And also, please don't call it 'Man-Bat'. It's ludicrous."
Ginny crossed her arms and leaned on her desk. "Batman, then."
Harry shook his head and skimmed the article. There was no mention of what had been in the warehouse, only that it had been Ministry property. This was the second Ministry warehouse this week. Minister of Magic Shacklebolt had no comment, but a 'source' said that the warehouses were filled with old equipment that had been slated for demolition. Harry rolled his eyes. What old equipment? Fax machines? Snowcone makers?
Not that he knew or cared what was in the warehouses. Or rather, he would have to soon, and he would be able to get that sort of information from a more reliable source: the actual inner channels of the Ministry itself.
Harry tutted at Ginny. "We call him that, someone'll get sued."
Ginny raised her arms out on either side and contorted her face. "I am the night," she growled.
Harry snorted and folded the paper. "Yes, well. We'll cover the Man…Bat…Thing," he agreed, choosing to ignore Ginny and her sugar rush. "We should send a memo down to Storage to find out what was in those warehouses. And then we should actually go look at the second one, though I don't think it'll do any good."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "The first one was a burned out husk." She leaned in even further. "What happened to all the old equipment 'slated for demolition'?" She looked about, and Harry leaned in to her. They looked like they were going to kiss, and maybe fifteen years ago, they might have. Everyone knew better now. Ginny's face was inches from his, her ponytail flipping into her face. "I think the Man-Bat is on to something," she whispered.
Harry smiled. "Like an avenging angel."
Ginny grinned. "Yeah. Like a certain war hero—"
"I'm not the Man-Bat," Harry said suddenly. He saw where this was going. He shoved back and glared at her, wishing that Ginny would stop with this line of questioning. He wasn't some masked vigilante. He doled out plenty of justice and drew a paycheque at the same time; he certainly didn't need to do it in the off hours.
He could tell by the nature of her smile that she was more amused than seriously kicking the idea about. "You are awfully tired these days, Snitch."
Harry gave her the finger. "Believe me, if I had more energy, I'd be using it elsewhere." For a second, he thought about telling her about Severus and the affair that he might or might not have been having. It was too soon to mention. So far he'd been at work for about ten minutes, and already he and Ginny were gossiping about a mass conspiracy, a Batman, and adding Severus's secret imaginary lover to the mix would turn it into a soap opera.
Ginny smirked. "Okay then, 'Milda sends the forms down to Storage, and we move on." She set the papers aside and picked up another file folder. "Those irritating people have written again," she said, waving what looked like the remains of a Howler. "'Milda opened it with tongs, and yet, it incinerated our stack of take-away menus."
'Milda, when he sneaked a glance at her, looked a little…singed. She gave him big eyes and slammed a few files about her desk.
"They keep complaining about the lights," Ginny said grumpily, putting her feet up on the edge of her desk. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say that they're all drinking something out there."
Harry sipped his coffee and made a face. Too sweet; Hermione must have been making up for all those years when her dentist parents wouldn't let her have sugar. He pushed it towards Ginny and sat back. "Well, what did Creevy say?" He'd handed the assignment to Creevy because he had no interest in going out to listen to the complaints of a bunch of barmy old wizards in East Anglia.
Ginny picked up the coffee and sniffed it. "He said he was all over the place back there, and there's nothing. There are no lights." She sipped the coffee. "This is horrendously sweet."
Harry shrugged. "Didn't Fred and George used to have a warehouse out there? A testing site? Something?"
Ginny set the coffee on Creevy's desk behind her. "I think so. That was the one they burned down. Or blew up. Or caused to be structurally unsound." She grinned and tilted her chair back on two legs. "They have so many ways of destroying things."
It was true too. Harry knew for a fact that the Ministry had paid them not to make things for the public, and instead placed orders for various tricks and tools that had become Ministry proprietary.
He watched Creevy return from the loo, regard the coffee on his desk delightedly, and make a wistful face at Ginny. Harry wondered if Ginny was even aware that Colin was sweet on her. Then Colin sipped from the coffee, made a face, and set it gingerly on the edge of his partner's desk. Susan raised her brows at Colin and tossed the whole thing in the rubbish. That was right, pregnant Susan was off caffeine.
Harry sighed. He wanted a pick-me-up. His PDA read that he was blanked for an hour. "Hey," he said to Ginny, who spilled herself out of her chair and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Let's go ask your brothers about the area. You know," he said gravely, "for research."
Ginny clapped her hands once, beaming. "Oh! Outdoors research! Very very important indeed. Can we stop for kebabs?"
***
Ginny picked her teeth with her kebab stick. "So, Snitch, are we actually going to ask questions, or are you going to spend twenty minutes playing with George and Fred in the backroom again?"
Harry shrugged and tossed his kebab stick in a bin as he passed it. They were at the far end of Diagon Alley, back where the twins had relocated—a huge building they had torn down and then rebuilt right in the same spot. Harry wondered what they could have possibly needed with a new building, but remembering their testing warehouses and the spectacular ways some of them had incinerated, he figured that their onsite testing facilities were probably made of Permacrete. Or Titanium. Or Permacrete with titanium flecks in it.
Harry shrugged. "It's not my fault," he said as they tripped through the open door. A bell dinged and they glanced about for the source. Magical bells. "They make me."
Ginny rolled her eyes, but she was all smiles for Angelina, who emerged from the backroom and gathered them in an awkward hug. Harry let himself be crushed to her very pregnant belly and grinned at Ginny over Angelina's shoulder. Ginny leaned against the counter and poked at a cage full of Pygmy Puffs. They squealed and one of them licked her finger. Harry wondered if she'd got one for James yet, or if he wasn't the kind of child who wanted a Pygmy Puff or fluffy pet. He made a note to ask her; he should probably be keeping track of things like that anyway.
"You here officially, then?" Angelina said, eyes flitting to the clock and the wands in their holsters. She sat on a high stool behind the counter and leaned back against a standing shelf perilously. "They'll be wanting to unload all sorts of things on you, you know."
Harry raised his hands. "Officially, but we're not peddling any more of their special wares to the Ministry. They can get another shill or go through proper channels." He leaned on the counter next to Ginny and rested his head in his hands. He really wanted to take a nap. Just a small kip. Maybe he could accidentally dose himself with one of the twin's trick sleeping powders.
There was a loud bang from the back room, and then Angelina sighed. "It's the Whistle Jimmies," she muttered. "They're going to both end up at St. Mungo's and then I'll go into labour. OI YOU!" she shouted towards the back room. The green curtain shuddered, and then a plume of pinkish gray smoke billowed from the gap. "The authorities are here to cart you away!"
Ginny snorted and messed about with her ponytail, but Harry just laid his head on the counter. "I don't have the energy to arrest them. If they're back there cooking children parts or something, Gin, just take care of it."
Ginny raised her hands. "Can't. Family get a free pass, you know that."
"Oooh, speaking of nepotism," Angelina murmured, sitting forward in her stool as much as her massive belly would allow. "Have you seen Draco Malfoy?" Her eyes lit up and she waved her hands before settling them on the top of her stomach and flipping her hair out of her face. "They say he went raving mad and his wife found him walking about the grounds of the Manse, starkers and muttering to himself. Been in St. Mungo's for a week."
Ginny sighed. "Poor Draco, I had such high hopes for him after his dad and mum were shipped off to Azkaban." Harry closed his eyes and thought about Draco Malfoy.
The war hadn't, for all that last minute allegiances had been changed, managed to do Draco Malfoy any favours in the temperament department. And leniency for Harry Potter in his hour of need had certainly softened the sentencing blow for both of his parents, but Narcissa Malfoy had died in her third year of imprisonment, and Lucius Malfoy had managed a daring escape, probably fueled by his utter lack of feelings, making him undetectable to the Dementors. There weren't even really that many Dementors there anymore, anyway. Not many of them had been interested in returning to Azkaban after the war, and Harry had breathed a sigh of relief. Occasionally, the Aurors had to go out and deal with a rogue one on the edges of a town somewhere in the North, but wherever they had gone, it was a mystery Harry was in no hurry to solve.
"Well," he said, "I'm sure Severus has something to share. If I get any information, I'll pass it along." And in the meantime, "Are they really back there?"
"WHEN ARE WE NOT?" George shouted, and then popped his head out from behind the green curtain, like the great and powerful Weasley. "Come on then, arrest me. I have been bad." His face sobered mockingly. "I solemnly swear I'm up to no bloody good." Then he grinned and one crooked finger snaked out from behind the curtain. "Come into the lair."
Harry shuffled towards the curtain. Ginny and Angelina were still hashing out the gossip about Draco Malfoy, but he knew Ginny was leaving him to the rest of their visit with the twins. Besides, sometimes she had hunches, and apparently her hunch was taking her to Draco Malfoy; he'd learnt over the years not to question her. Sometimes her niffler ways of gathering information came from strange places and ended up being quite useful.
"What are you doing?" he asked, peeking about the curtain.
George waved him in, and Fred looked up at him owlishly through goggles that magnified his eyes three times over. Harry was flooded with unpleasant visual memories of Sybill Trelawney. "It's classified. You aren't our shill anymore, right?"
Ha ha, so yes, they'd heard everything. "I don't have time to sit in the patent office. Once I figured out that you were using us all as couriers, I decided that you can do your own filing."
George grinned. "Rats. Well, this is still classified. This one—" he jerked his thumb at Fred, "thinks that we keep jinxing new inventions by talking about them before we're done." He turned an index finger around his ear.
Fred threw down the tool in his hand. "This is shite. We need a Muggle soldering gun, like Dad's." He looked up at Harry. "Do you know how to use a soldering gun?"
Harry shook his head. "Nope." He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from touching anything. Fred and George's workshop and back storeroom was like a wonderland of mischief. Sticky fingers tended to get in trouble. He leaned in to inspect some jars filled with fluorescent green moving goo and wrinkled his nose at the smell that emanated from them. "That warehouse-hangar thing out in East Anglia. The one you tested in for a while? Remember that place?"
Fred lifted his goggles and rolled his eyes. "Oh, do I remember that. It was a shite place. One of our first—"
"They hated us out there, they did—"
"Claimed that we did all sorts of things that we didn't—"
George tapped the cylinder experimentally and frowned when nothing happened. Harry desperately wanted to know what was supposed to happen, but he figured that he could wait. Plus, he didn't want to derail the conversation. "So," George said. "We dug about, you now, get to know the neighbours out there, make sure that the other lessees weren't doing anything we might get blamed for—"
Fred turned the handle on the cylinder and smiled when a puff of pink steam exploded from it. "That's about right," he said to George, and then looked back up at Harry. "Turns out, the whole lot's owned by the Ministry. Three old hangars from the last war in the forties, a water mill, and a bunch of old barn structures that haven't had animals in them for ages." He frowned. "I dunno what they wanted them for. Never saw a soul the whole time we were out there, but heard things."
The cylinder began to whistle, and everyone stepped back. "Is it…is it supposed to do that?" Harry asked.
Fred picked up the cylinder with one gloved hand. "Uh, no." George ran behind him and opened a large metal door in the concrete wall and Fred gingerly set it inside the compartment. George slammed the door just in time for them to hear a huge boom. Harry blinked.
"Did that—"
Fred sighed. "It will work someday." He dusted his hands. "So, the hangar. Yeah, right. Here's the thing. We didn't burn it down. It just sort of…exploded one day when we weren't there." He shrugged. "Could have been our fault. Mister Plastique here was going through a second honeymoon with Muggle incendiary devices."
"Oi!" George said, washing his hands at the sink in the back corner of the room; Harry noticed that they'd installed a drenching shower next to it. What were they doing back here? "Did I say anything when you had that obsession with Muggle condoms?"
Fred tilted his head. "No," he murmured dreamily.
It was time to stop all the mental trains and bring them into the station where Harry was. He shuddered and cleared his throat. "But the strange things, that happened? Did you ever see a green light? They're complaining about seeing green lights out there."
"Could be fairies," Fred offered, wiping his hands on a towel. "Or they could all be drinking heavily in secret. I vote on the latter."
Harry grinned. "That's what Ginny said."
"Country Wizards," George said, rolling his eyes. "You think we're stuck in the dark ages." He turned off the faucet and put his hands on his hips. "So, while you're not shilling for us anymore," and here he winked, "I bet Ginny's out there gossiping about Malfoy and the nutter brigade. So," he said, rubbing his hands together, "want to see the new stuff? It's all shiny."
Harry's hands twitched in his pockets. "Oh yeah."
Thirty minutes later, Harry's pockets were stuffed with things that he didn't even really know what to do with ("Try them at home," George had said. "Outside, though," Fred had added in distracted afterthought."), and Ginny had managed to cover her forearms with sleeping Pygmy Puffs. Angelina was devouring a meat pie and laughing at something Ginny had pointed out in the open issue of Witch Weekly on the counter.
Harry sauntered up to them and nudged Ginny's arm. "It's amazing that we still get paid for all the work we don't do," he told her earnestly.
The magazine slid in front of him with a push of Angelina's hand. "Witch Weekly thinks you're Man-Bat," she said jovially.
Harry glanced down at the article, festooned with pink scrolling text and a breakdown of his movements in the past five years, a small interview he'd given them ten years ago in which he'd made the mistake of answering their insipid questions about his favorite food and sign of the zodiac, and a few pictures of him juxtaposed with another rather shoddy picture of the supposed Man-Bat.
It was a person, he could tell that much. Instead, he flipped the magazine closed. "Okay, that's a great use of company time, then," he added and shook his head as Ginny pulled a Pygmy Puff from her robes and plopped it in the pen. "We're out of here."
"Oi!" Fred said, his head popping out from the back curtain of the shop. "Tell that husband of yours that if he wants another contract from us, he'll deliver the order of Scream In A Bottle that we paid for already. He promised it a week ago."
Harry shrugged nonchalantly, but it was just an act. Severus was usually scrupulous about filling his brewing orders on time, and he never forgot any of them. "Oh you know him. He probably hated the tint and threw the whole batch out even though it was perfectly fine."
Angelina rolled her eyes and leant against the counter as far as her pregnant belly would go. Harry vaguely wondered if it was Fred's or George's. He wondered if even they knew. Or if they cared. Probably not.
As they strolled out of the shop, Harry felt distinctly irritated. As if he wanted to go home in the middle of the day and catch Severus doing something illicit with the milkman. Instead, he turned to Ginny. "Severus is having an affair."
Ginny shoved her hands into her pockets and whistled. "You're daft." They passed a few market stalls and she smiled at the man selling pasties. Harry nudged her away with a sharp tilt of his head. "What? I like him. I'm a single mum. I have to meet men somehow."
Harry shook his head. "The meat pie man?"
Ginny turned and waved at the man, still walking backwards. "Why not? His name is Bertram, and his backside is gorgeous." Without looking at him, she changed the subject. "He's not having an affair."
Harry turned backwards to look at Bertram the meat pie man again. He was kind of adorable, once one got past the fact that he sold meat pies. And well, who didn't love a good meat pie? Except for vegetarians? And people who wanted to avoid hepatitis? "You're right," he said to her, and they turned around before they could crash into someone laden with packages. "He does have a gorgeous backside."
***
Severus straddled Harry and worked on the muscles in his shoulders. "There has to be some mediwizard you can see for this," he griped.
Harry smiled into the pillow. "You want some other man to give me a sensual massage?"
The hands paused, and Severus shifted on his back so that he was settled more firmly on the swell of Harry's arse. Harry could smell the oil that Severus was using: something with valerian and mint; the mint was trying very hard to mask the other ingredient, but it was nearly impossible to cover up valerian root.
"I didn't realise that we'd gotten to that part yet," Severus said softly. The hands ran down Harry's back and thumbs pressed into his spine. "Shall we skip foreplay? I suppose I could be inconvenienced for this evening."
Harry grinned. Severus hated foreplay. "Oh, I think this qualifies. As sex, too."
Severus tugged on an earlobe disapprovingly. "If you fall asleep, I'll have to put your hands in warm water." It was a completely idle threat for obvious reasons. Harry smashed his face into the pillow and wondered if now was a good time to ask the question.
Apparently, it was. "If you were interested in leaving our relationship," Harry mumbled into the pillow, "you'd say something, right? No subterfuge?" The hands on his shoulders didn't even pause; they rubbed with the fingertips, locating a knot on Harry's left shoulder and running in circles.
"You are an idiot," Severus said again, and the tint in his voice was reassuring. Well, as reassuring as he could be when he honestly thought someone was being an idiot. Which was often, actually. Severus still, after fifteen years, referred to Dudley as 'The Walking Mistake'.
Harry waved a hand at the wrist, rather like he'd seen Severus do that morning. He was also considering the pile of pillows that supported him. Now he remembered why they had them. Merlin's balls, he was a hedonist. "I just want you to know that if you wanted to leave—"
Severus thumped his fists on Harry's back in rapid succession, and the rest of the words wouldn't come out. He did manage to hear a repeated, "Idiot."
Well, that was that, then.
"Fred says you owe them an order of Scream," he said into the pillow, glad to change the subject.
Severus snorted behind him. "Messieurs Weasley and Weasley will just have to wait." There was a pause. "Or shall I call them Messieurs Johnson and Johnson?" Severus reached over to Harry's nightstand and opened a drawer. Harry restrained a snort of glee. This was going to be good; he loved this game.
Harry lifted his head from the pillow in time to catch the wicked gleam in Severus's eye as he popped open the restraining cuffs. "I think they might like that," he answered.
He was rewarded with an eyeroll, and then those long fingers traversed up his biceps, up his forearms and threaded into his own. "And what would you like?"
Harry smiled. "Oh my list is so very long."
***
Out in the middle of a field, behind a series of decrepit buildings, there was a bang, and the windows of the warehouse flashed with green.
***
Return to Master Post
Author: Amand-r
Team: Snitch in the 2009 Snarry Games
Genre(s): Alive and Kicking (EWE)
Prompt(s): Green Lantern, Enemy At The Gate
Rating/Warnings/Kinks: NC-17 for sex (contains fisting), R for violence. Some canon deaths ignored. Also? Kinda cracky.
Word Count: 28,000+ some
Summary: There's a man stalking the Wizarding world. Or a bat. Maybe a Man-Bat. Severus is probably having an affair, Harry's tired all the time, oh, and those drunks out in East Anglia are complaining about the green lights. Again.
Author Notes/Disclaimers/Betas Thanks to
jadzialove for being the best joanwilder, aka Alfred, hit all of it, especially part 4, with a batarang of spag (Thanks beth for a few quick saves!). All italicized bumper quotes from The Tick: The Animated Series. PART ONE: RUMOURS. THEY SAY HE'S A BAT.
Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny. No sir. And, you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy.
Harry was about four fingers into Severus's arse when it occurred to him that the reason Severus had been acting oddly of late was probably that he was having an affair. Listening to the man moan, Harry pulled his hand back minutely and laid a kiss on his balls before giving the matter some further consideration. Late nights, sleeping all day, welching on obligations, increased libido, willingness to try new things. Harry glanced down at his fingers as he worked his thumb against Severus's perineum and the man arched like a cat.
The thought had been enough to interrupt his rhythm, and he stopped in the middle of adding his thumb to Severus's hole. Severus raised his lower half up in the air, placing most of his weight on his shoulders, and then slid down the bed a little to goad Harry on, but nothing happened. Harry looked at his partner critically for a second: long, lithe, a little pale, not classically handsome, but still fit. He was entering his middle age, really, what with the longer life span, and so maybe, maybe all the odd things recently were a mid-life crisis.
"Merlin's balls, Harry," Severus groaned. "You're a fucking tease." Harry shook his head and tended to his own cock with his other hand as he twisted his wrist and folded his thumb in towards his palm. Yeah, he'd think about this later, after they'd both come all over the place. Sometimes a gift horse was really a gift horse.
He hadn't really harbored much excitement about this act in particular when Severus had suggested it, and then snarkily thrown a few dog-eared Wizarding sex manuals at him before shutting himself in his lab for a few weeks, but the more Harry had studied the moving pictures (moving pictures! Hello Wizard porn!), the more he'd been curious, and now he was downright ready to finish himself off all over Severus's chest. The man was sweating and writhing a little, and Harry could feel the muscles enveloping his fingers and thumb, his whole hand really, and when he closed his eyes it was is if that was his cock in there, and it was. Wow, he could imagine every twitch and ripple of movement. He closed his hand once he was in, like the manuals had said, and Severus screeched, his fingers scratching at the sheets.
Hopefully that was good.
Harry worked his hand, unclenched his fist, teased the prostate, trying to keep himself from coming, but Severus opened his eyes and looked at him, looked right at him, and said, "You may come now, Harry," and that was enough to make him lose it.
Harry came on his own chest and Severus's legs, and then he reached forward with his sticky hand and worked Severus's cock and arse in rhythm, desperate to make the man's back bend, his hair stick to his neck, his face contort, eyes screwed shut. Those hands, so skilled at duelling or Potions, smacked the bed uselessly and his legs strained, taut lines in his thighs standing out, Harry thought to himself, just so that he could kiss them, lick them.
Severus came, screaming, and Harry waited until he was done, lying there, legs akimbo, before he pulled his hand free and staggered to the toilet to wash himself up.
When he returned, tossing a warm damp flannel at his husband, he fell face forward onto the bed and huffed into the pillow.
"You were right," he said grudgingly, though not that grudgingly. All the flashes and suspicions that had come to him in the middle of sex, they all faded in the afterglow. Of course Severus wasn't having an affair. It was preposterous.
Severus shifted on the bed, and Harry heard the sound of cloth on skin. "I know. I'm always right."
But how preposterous? It wasn't that Severus was unattractive. It had been fifteen years since the end of the war, and still Harry often found letters addressed to him when he was going through his fan mail: usually some older woman or sixteen year old girl who couldn't believe that Severus was gay, only that he just hadn't met them yet, and then what usually followed was a plea for a date or meeting of some sort. Harry's fan mail was much the same way, but with a wider range and more vehement arguments for his 'conversion' (i.e. Everyone seemed to think Severus had Imperiused him. Highly unlikely. He was Harry Potter). Better still were the offers of a three or foursome, or the occasional requests for naughty photos.
Severus thought the letters were terribly amusing. Years before they might have made him angry, but retirement from teaching and the end of the war had seen him lighten a little. He was by no means charming, humorous, or tolerant of, well, anyone, but he was loads better than Harry remembered him being at Hogwarts.
Well, that, and his arse looked good in Muggle trousers.
Harry flipped over then, so that he could watch Severus toss the rag over in the direction of the toilet.
Severus rolled over to him and pressed his body into Harry's, running his tongue behind his ear as his hands traveled up his sides and then onto his chest, pinching his nipples. "You look like you could use a drink, Mister Potter."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Gods, yes."
Severus reached over to his bedside table and retrieved two glasses of what proved to be water. Harry struggled to sit up, which was difficult because Severus was practically holding him down. He downed the water and barely got the glass on his nightstand before his head hit the pillow again and he yawned.
"Go to sleep," Severus whispered in his ear as he closed his eyes. Harry felt the dip of the mattress when Severus moved away from him, getting up from the bed. He never heard him leave the room.
***
Harry stood at the foot of the bed and watched Severus's leg dangle over the edge. Soft snores emanated from the head of the bed somewhere. There were a lot of pillows, and a great deal of them were piled on Severus's head. Harry contemplated the mountain of them as they shifted when Severus shifted; there had to be at least a half-dozen of them. How had that even happened? This had left the realm of comfortable and into the area of shameless hedonism.
He scrubbed his face with his hand and realized that he didn't really care about the pillows. What he needed was a massively strong cup of tea, and possibly to stop waking in the mornings feeling like utter shite.
"Hey," he said, sitting lightly on the edge of the bed and slapping Severus's calf. "Hey, are you planning on getting up today?"
In response, Severus's hand raised itself from its dangle over the edge of the bed, twirled once at the wrist, gave him a half-hearted V, and then fell back down to hang listlessly.
Harry sighed. "Okay then. Good to know."
The kitchen was spotless in that strange way kitchens had when they hadn't been used in a long time, and Harry thought about searching the icebox for something worth drinking or eating before realising that he needed to be in to work fifteen minutes ago. Years ago he would have been out of the house and jogging to work instead of Apparating, but lately he just hadn't felt like it; most days he barely heard the alarm.
He wondered if he wasn't coming down with something, but there wasn't time to think about that, because Ginny would be at the house, banging on the doors if he didn't leave soon, so Harry tossed on a jacket, inventoried his pockets, holstered his wand and stomped his way out of the house without worrying about waking Severus. Would serve him right for sleeping in, the lazy arse.
Harry Apparated to the back alley that he used to get into the Ministry, and then stood there for a few seconds, nodding to people who passed him, all waving cheery hellos. He was knackered. If he hadn't seen the clock, he would never have guessed that he'd got a full eight hours of sleep.
There was nothing for it, though. Harry steeled himself for a full day of work, yawned once, waved to the guard, and stepped into the lobby.
He passed the newsstand, though his eyes caught the headlines of the Daily Prophet (Ministry Supply Houses Vandalised), the Quibbler (Who is the Man Behind the Bat?!!?), Witch Weekly (We Give That Mystery Man Three Brooms Up! Rowr!) and Quidditch News (How to Mod your Broom Like the Best of the Best!). If there were anything interesting or relevant to him, he'd hear about it in the office. Romilda was a great assistant like that. He was late, but a cursory glance at the schedule on his wristwatch, the one Romilda had charmed in the manner of a wearable Wizarding PDA, revealed that he was actually free for about twenty minutes, and then of course, Ginny would be banging on his door, and he wasn't even there. He considered being late just to take the piss out of her.
Harry joined the queue of the Ministry's lobby café and stared at the menu blearily. Did he want tea? One of those fancy coffees that Hermione chugged like water? Something that ended in 'ino'? Too many choices. He was developing a decision making disorder just looking at the board above the 'bearista's' head (bless the Wizarding World and their malapropistic ways.)
"Hem hem," said a noise behind him, and he turned to find Dolores I-was-Imperioused-No Really-I-Swear Umbridge staring at him through her glasses, face set in a permanent scowl. "The queue is moving, Mister Potter."
She still refused to call him an Auror. Harry smiled and shrugged, shuffling forward in the queue. He could hear her muttering to herself as they wended their way through the rat maze in front of the shoppe.
Harry turned suddenly. "So, how is the steno pool these days, Dolores?"
Umbridge narrowed her eyes. He knew for a fact that Dolores was languishing away in the steno pool, where she would probably stay forever, because she generally tried to take over the job of whomever she was supposed to be typing and taking dictation for. As far as he was concerned, she had got a huge break, because if he'd had his way, she'd have been languishing away in Azkaban and not in the basements of the Ministry where she could wait, gestating some plan to return to power.
The 'bearista' smiled when he shuffled forward. "Auror Potter! Good morning! What can I make for you?"
Harry waved a hand. "Whatever you like. Something with caffeine. Frappy-crappy-rappy whatever you give Solicitor Granger."
The woman behind the counter smiled brightly, then looked over her shoulder at the coffee station. "Triple non-fat espresso soy sweet-cane with a shot of Bertie's!"
Harry shook his head and dug about in his pockets for change. No wonder Hermione was awake twenty-four hours a day.
***
Romilda greeted him at his desk when he dragged himself in, her face bright and smiling. She'd obviously been practising the Granger method of caffeine application. Or maybe everyone looked so energetic because he wasn't. Romilda was a great assistant, and she didn't mind being shared between six of them; he was insanely happy that he had been able to have her hired. In fact, if she hadn't been, Harry figured he'd still be filling out the exact same expense report that he'd had on his desk when she'd come in three years ago, asking for a job.
Ginny was already there, sitting at her desk across from his. They'd once been across the room, but soon after they had been paired together, they'd shoved their desks to face each other. To this day, Harry wasn't sure that that had been such a great idea; Ginny, unlike her brother, was a bit more liberal with the tossing of office supplies.
He set the coffee down on the desk and unloaded his outside cloak on the wall hook. He dropped into his chair and put his head in his hands.
"You're late," Ginny said. A paperclip landed on his blotter.
"I'm exhausted," he answered. "Just looking at you makes my body tired."
Ginny made a noise of derision. "It's all that kinky sex you're having," and for a second Harry thought she knew something she shouldn't until he heard her bark a laugh. "You're getting old, Snitch."
Harry looked up and smiled at her, resting his chin on his hands. The office was fairly busy already, though that wasn't surprising since he had been the last one to arrive. He'd seen Colin Creevy on his way to the loo while walking in, and 'Milda was flitting about the office, delivering post. Susan Bones sat at her desk and scowled at a paper in her hands, and their two other officemates were probably out of the office. Harry rarely saw them since they had taken the night shift.
"I suppose that we have to get to work sooner or later," he said feebly. "What are we doing today?"
Ginny grinned and tossed a stack of newspapers on his desk, and the resounding thud of them sloshed the coffee though the drink spout. "I want to talk about the Man-Bat." She smiled and waited for it to sink in.
Harry stared at her for a second, because he thought she'd said 'Man-Bat'. When Ginny's expression didn't change, but her eyes drifted down to the stack of papers in front of him, he realised that she was completely serious. He glanced down at the cover of The Prophet, whose caption he had ignored earlier, but the moving photo was about as clear as those Muggle photographs of Bigfoot out in the woods. Over and over, the photo showed the shadow jumping from one of the Ministry's storehouses in Ottery St. Catchpole. The headline all but screamed in outrage that the warehouse had been looted, and then set on fire.
Harry slid the papers away from him. "I don't want to talk about the Man-Bat," he said snippily. He didn't like the idea of there being something, no no, someone, out there that made people think he or she wasn't even human. It fostered fear, and awe. And sometimes imitation.
Harry wasn't taking the Man-Bat seriously, but apparently he was going to have to, if the person had finally upgraded from stopping the occasional crime in Wizarding communities to vandalising private property. Private Ministry property.
"Do we have to take this assignment?" he asked blearily. "And also, please don't call it 'Man-Bat'. It's ludicrous."
Ginny crossed her arms and leaned on her desk. "Batman, then."
Harry shook his head and skimmed the article. There was no mention of what had been in the warehouse, only that it had been Ministry property. This was the second Ministry warehouse this week. Minister of Magic Shacklebolt had no comment, but a 'source' said that the warehouses were filled with old equipment that had been slated for demolition. Harry rolled his eyes. What old equipment? Fax machines? Snowcone makers?
Not that he knew or cared what was in the warehouses. Or rather, he would have to soon, and he would be able to get that sort of information from a more reliable source: the actual inner channels of the Ministry itself.
Harry tutted at Ginny. "We call him that, someone'll get sued."
Ginny raised her arms out on either side and contorted her face. "I am the night," she growled.
Harry snorted and folded the paper. "Yes, well. We'll cover the Man…Bat…Thing," he agreed, choosing to ignore Ginny and her sugar rush. "We should send a memo down to Storage to find out what was in those warehouses. And then we should actually go look at the second one, though I don't think it'll do any good."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "The first one was a burned out husk." She leaned in even further. "What happened to all the old equipment 'slated for demolition'?" She looked about, and Harry leaned in to her. They looked like they were going to kiss, and maybe fifteen years ago, they might have. Everyone knew better now. Ginny's face was inches from his, her ponytail flipping into her face. "I think the Man-Bat is on to something," she whispered.
Harry smiled. "Like an avenging angel."
Ginny grinned. "Yeah. Like a certain war hero—"
"I'm not the Man-Bat," Harry said suddenly. He saw where this was going. He shoved back and glared at her, wishing that Ginny would stop with this line of questioning. He wasn't some masked vigilante. He doled out plenty of justice and drew a paycheque at the same time; he certainly didn't need to do it in the off hours.
He could tell by the nature of her smile that she was more amused than seriously kicking the idea about. "You are awfully tired these days, Snitch."
Harry gave her the finger. "Believe me, if I had more energy, I'd be using it elsewhere." For a second, he thought about telling her about Severus and the affair that he might or might not have been having. It was too soon to mention. So far he'd been at work for about ten minutes, and already he and Ginny were gossiping about a mass conspiracy, a Batman, and adding Severus's secret imaginary lover to the mix would turn it into a soap opera.
Ginny smirked. "Okay then, 'Milda sends the forms down to Storage, and we move on." She set the papers aside and picked up another file folder. "Those irritating people have written again," she said, waving what looked like the remains of a Howler. "'Milda opened it with tongs, and yet, it incinerated our stack of take-away menus."
'Milda, when he sneaked a glance at her, looked a little…singed. She gave him big eyes and slammed a few files about her desk.
"They keep complaining about the lights," Ginny said grumpily, putting her feet up on the edge of her desk. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say that they're all drinking something out there."
Harry sipped his coffee and made a face. Too sweet; Hermione must have been making up for all those years when her dentist parents wouldn't let her have sugar. He pushed it towards Ginny and sat back. "Well, what did Creevy say?" He'd handed the assignment to Creevy because he had no interest in going out to listen to the complaints of a bunch of barmy old wizards in East Anglia.
Ginny picked up the coffee and sniffed it. "He said he was all over the place back there, and there's nothing. There are no lights." She sipped the coffee. "This is horrendously sweet."
Harry shrugged. "Didn't Fred and George used to have a warehouse out there? A testing site? Something?"
Ginny set the coffee on Creevy's desk behind her. "I think so. That was the one they burned down. Or blew up. Or caused to be structurally unsound." She grinned and tilted her chair back on two legs. "They have so many ways of destroying things."
It was true too. Harry knew for a fact that the Ministry had paid them not to make things for the public, and instead placed orders for various tricks and tools that had become Ministry proprietary.
He watched Creevy return from the loo, regard the coffee on his desk delightedly, and make a wistful face at Ginny. Harry wondered if Ginny was even aware that Colin was sweet on her. Then Colin sipped from the coffee, made a face, and set it gingerly on the edge of his partner's desk. Susan raised her brows at Colin and tossed the whole thing in the rubbish. That was right, pregnant Susan was off caffeine.
Harry sighed. He wanted a pick-me-up. His PDA read that he was blanked for an hour. "Hey," he said to Ginny, who spilled herself out of her chair and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Let's go ask your brothers about the area. You know," he said gravely, "for research."
Ginny clapped her hands once, beaming. "Oh! Outdoors research! Very very important indeed. Can we stop for kebabs?"
***
Ginny picked her teeth with her kebab stick. "So, Snitch, are we actually going to ask questions, or are you going to spend twenty minutes playing with George and Fred in the backroom again?"
Harry shrugged and tossed his kebab stick in a bin as he passed it. They were at the far end of Diagon Alley, back where the twins had relocated—a huge building they had torn down and then rebuilt right in the same spot. Harry wondered what they could have possibly needed with a new building, but remembering their testing warehouses and the spectacular ways some of them had incinerated, he figured that their onsite testing facilities were probably made of Permacrete. Or Titanium. Or Permacrete with titanium flecks in it.
Harry shrugged. "It's not my fault," he said as they tripped through the open door. A bell dinged and they glanced about for the source. Magical bells. "They make me."
Ginny rolled her eyes, but she was all smiles for Angelina, who emerged from the backroom and gathered them in an awkward hug. Harry let himself be crushed to her very pregnant belly and grinned at Ginny over Angelina's shoulder. Ginny leaned against the counter and poked at a cage full of Pygmy Puffs. They squealed and one of them licked her finger. Harry wondered if she'd got one for James yet, or if he wasn't the kind of child who wanted a Pygmy Puff or fluffy pet. He made a note to ask her; he should probably be keeping track of things like that anyway.
"You here officially, then?" Angelina said, eyes flitting to the clock and the wands in their holsters. She sat on a high stool behind the counter and leaned back against a standing shelf perilously. "They'll be wanting to unload all sorts of things on you, you know."
Harry raised his hands. "Officially, but we're not peddling any more of their special wares to the Ministry. They can get another shill or go through proper channels." He leaned on the counter next to Ginny and rested his head in his hands. He really wanted to take a nap. Just a small kip. Maybe he could accidentally dose himself with one of the twin's trick sleeping powders.
There was a loud bang from the back room, and then Angelina sighed. "It's the Whistle Jimmies," she muttered. "They're going to both end up at St. Mungo's and then I'll go into labour. OI YOU!" she shouted towards the back room. The green curtain shuddered, and then a plume of pinkish gray smoke billowed from the gap. "The authorities are here to cart you away!"
Ginny snorted and messed about with her ponytail, but Harry just laid his head on the counter. "I don't have the energy to arrest them. If they're back there cooking children parts or something, Gin, just take care of it."
Ginny raised her hands. "Can't. Family get a free pass, you know that."
"Oooh, speaking of nepotism," Angelina murmured, sitting forward in her stool as much as her massive belly would allow. "Have you seen Draco Malfoy?" Her eyes lit up and she waved her hands before settling them on the top of her stomach and flipping her hair out of her face. "They say he went raving mad and his wife found him walking about the grounds of the Manse, starkers and muttering to himself. Been in St. Mungo's for a week."
Ginny sighed. "Poor Draco, I had such high hopes for him after his dad and mum were shipped off to Azkaban." Harry closed his eyes and thought about Draco Malfoy.
The war hadn't, for all that last minute allegiances had been changed, managed to do Draco Malfoy any favours in the temperament department. And leniency for Harry Potter in his hour of need had certainly softened the sentencing blow for both of his parents, but Narcissa Malfoy had died in her third year of imprisonment, and Lucius Malfoy had managed a daring escape, probably fueled by his utter lack of feelings, making him undetectable to the Dementors. There weren't even really that many Dementors there anymore, anyway. Not many of them had been interested in returning to Azkaban after the war, and Harry had breathed a sigh of relief. Occasionally, the Aurors had to go out and deal with a rogue one on the edges of a town somewhere in the North, but wherever they had gone, it was a mystery Harry was in no hurry to solve.
"Well," he said, "I'm sure Severus has something to share. If I get any information, I'll pass it along." And in the meantime, "Are they really back there?"
"WHEN ARE WE NOT?" George shouted, and then popped his head out from behind the green curtain, like the great and powerful Weasley. "Come on then, arrest me. I have been bad." His face sobered mockingly. "I solemnly swear I'm up to no bloody good." Then he grinned and one crooked finger snaked out from behind the curtain. "Come into the lair."
Harry shuffled towards the curtain. Ginny and Angelina were still hashing out the gossip about Draco Malfoy, but he knew Ginny was leaving him to the rest of their visit with the twins. Besides, sometimes she had hunches, and apparently her hunch was taking her to Draco Malfoy; he'd learnt over the years not to question her. Sometimes her niffler ways of gathering information came from strange places and ended up being quite useful.
"What are you doing?" he asked, peeking about the curtain.
George waved him in, and Fred looked up at him owlishly through goggles that magnified his eyes three times over. Harry was flooded with unpleasant visual memories of Sybill Trelawney. "It's classified. You aren't our shill anymore, right?"
Ha ha, so yes, they'd heard everything. "I don't have time to sit in the patent office. Once I figured out that you were using us all as couriers, I decided that you can do your own filing."
George grinned. "Rats. Well, this is still classified. This one—" he jerked his thumb at Fred, "thinks that we keep jinxing new inventions by talking about them before we're done." He turned an index finger around his ear.
Fred threw down the tool in his hand. "This is shite. We need a Muggle soldering gun, like Dad's." He looked up at Harry. "Do you know how to use a soldering gun?"
Harry shook his head. "Nope." He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from touching anything. Fred and George's workshop and back storeroom was like a wonderland of mischief. Sticky fingers tended to get in trouble. He leaned in to inspect some jars filled with fluorescent green moving goo and wrinkled his nose at the smell that emanated from them. "That warehouse-hangar thing out in East Anglia. The one you tested in for a while? Remember that place?"
Fred lifted his goggles and rolled his eyes. "Oh, do I remember that. It was a shite place. One of our first—"
"They hated us out there, they did—"
"Claimed that we did all sorts of things that we didn't—"
George tapped the cylinder experimentally and frowned when nothing happened. Harry desperately wanted to know what was supposed to happen, but he figured that he could wait. Plus, he didn't want to derail the conversation. "So," George said. "We dug about, you now, get to know the neighbours out there, make sure that the other lessees weren't doing anything we might get blamed for—"
Fred turned the handle on the cylinder and smiled when a puff of pink steam exploded from it. "That's about right," he said to George, and then looked back up at Harry. "Turns out, the whole lot's owned by the Ministry. Three old hangars from the last war in the forties, a water mill, and a bunch of old barn structures that haven't had animals in them for ages." He frowned. "I dunno what they wanted them for. Never saw a soul the whole time we were out there, but heard things."
The cylinder began to whistle, and everyone stepped back. "Is it…is it supposed to do that?" Harry asked.
Fred picked up the cylinder with one gloved hand. "Uh, no." George ran behind him and opened a large metal door in the concrete wall and Fred gingerly set it inside the compartment. George slammed the door just in time for them to hear a huge boom. Harry blinked.
"Did that—"
Fred sighed. "It will work someday." He dusted his hands. "So, the hangar. Yeah, right. Here's the thing. We didn't burn it down. It just sort of…exploded one day when we weren't there." He shrugged. "Could have been our fault. Mister Plastique here was going through a second honeymoon with Muggle incendiary devices."
"Oi!" George said, washing his hands at the sink in the back corner of the room; Harry noticed that they'd installed a drenching shower next to it. What were they doing back here? "Did I say anything when you had that obsession with Muggle condoms?"
Fred tilted his head. "No," he murmured dreamily.
It was time to stop all the mental trains and bring them into the station where Harry was. He shuddered and cleared his throat. "But the strange things, that happened? Did you ever see a green light? They're complaining about seeing green lights out there."
"Could be fairies," Fred offered, wiping his hands on a towel. "Or they could all be drinking heavily in secret. I vote on the latter."
Harry grinned. "That's what Ginny said."
"Country Wizards," George said, rolling his eyes. "You think we're stuck in the dark ages." He turned off the faucet and put his hands on his hips. "So, while you're not shilling for us anymore," and here he winked, "I bet Ginny's out there gossiping about Malfoy and the nutter brigade. So," he said, rubbing his hands together, "want to see the new stuff? It's all shiny."
Harry's hands twitched in his pockets. "Oh yeah."
Thirty minutes later, Harry's pockets were stuffed with things that he didn't even really know what to do with ("Try them at home," George had said. "Outside, though," Fred had added in distracted afterthought."), and Ginny had managed to cover her forearms with sleeping Pygmy Puffs. Angelina was devouring a meat pie and laughing at something Ginny had pointed out in the open issue of Witch Weekly on the counter.
Harry sauntered up to them and nudged Ginny's arm. "It's amazing that we still get paid for all the work we don't do," he told her earnestly.
The magazine slid in front of him with a push of Angelina's hand. "Witch Weekly thinks you're Man-Bat," she said jovially.
Harry glanced down at the article, festooned with pink scrolling text and a breakdown of his movements in the past five years, a small interview he'd given them ten years ago in which he'd made the mistake of answering their insipid questions about his favorite food and sign of the zodiac, and a few pictures of him juxtaposed with another rather shoddy picture of the supposed Man-Bat.
It was a person, he could tell that much. Instead, he flipped the magazine closed. "Okay, that's a great use of company time, then," he added and shook his head as Ginny pulled a Pygmy Puff from her robes and plopped it in the pen. "We're out of here."
"Oi!" Fred said, his head popping out from the back curtain of the shop. "Tell that husband of yours that if he wants another contract from us, he'll deliver the order of Scream In A Bottle that we paid for already. He promised it a week ago."
Harry shrugged nonchalantly, but it was just an act. Severus was usually scrupulous about filling his brewing orders on time, and he never forgot any of them. "Oh you know him. He probably hated the tint and threw the whole batch out even though it was perfectly fine."
Angelina rolled her eyes and leant against the counter as far as her pregnant belly would go. Harry vaguely wondered if it was Fred's or George's. He wondered if even they knew. Or if they cared. Probably not.
As they strolled out of the shop, Harry felt distinctly irritated. As if he wanted to go home in the middle of the day and catch Severus doing something illicit with the milkman. Instead, he turned to Ginny. "Severus is having an affair."
Ginny shoved her hands into her pockets and whistled. "You're daft." They passed a few market stalls and she smiled at the man selling pasties. Harry nudged her away with a sharp tilt of his head. "What? I like him. I'm a single mum. I have to meet men somehow."
Harry shook his head. "The meat pie man?"
Ginny turned and waved at the man, still walking backwards. "Why not? His name is Bertram, and his backside is gorgeous." Without looking at him, she changed the subject. "He's not having an affair."
Harry turned backwards to look at Bertram the meat pie man again. He was kind of adorable, once one got past the fact that he sold meat pies. And well, who didn't love a good meat pie? Except for vegetarians? And people who wanted to avoid hepatitis? "You're right," he said to her, and they turned around before they could crash into someone laden with packages. "He does have a gorgeous backside."
***
Severus straddled Harry and worked on the muscles in his shoulders. "There has to be some mediwizard you can see for this," he griped.
Harry smiled into the pillow. "You want some other man to give me a sensual massage?"
The hands paused, and Severus shifted on his back so that he was settled more firmly on the swell of Harry's arse. Harry could smell the oil that Severus was using: something with valerian and mint; the mint was trying very hard to mask the other ingredient, but it was nearly impossible to cover up valerian root.
"I didn't realise that we'd gotten to that part yet," Severus said softly. The hands ran down Harry's back and thumbs pressed into his spine. "Shall we skip foreplay? I suppose I could be inconvenienced for this evening."
Harry grinned. Severus hated foreplay. "Oh, I think this qualifies. As sex, too."
Severus tugged on an earlobe disapprovingly. "If you fall asleep, I'll have to put your hands in warm water." It was a completely idle threat for obvious reasons. Harry smashed his face into the pillow and wondered if now was a good time to ask the question.
Apparently, it was. "If you were interested in leaving our relationship," Harry mumbled into the pillow, "you'd say something, right? No subterfuge?" The hands on his shoulders didn't even pause; they rubbed with the fingertips, locating a knot on Harry's left shoulder and running in circles.
"You are an idiot," Severus said again, and the tint in his voice was reassuring. Well, as reassuring as he could be when he honestly thought someone was being an idiot. Which was often, actually. Severus still, after fifteen years, referred to Dudley as 'The Walking Mistake'.
Harry waved a hand at the wrist, rather like he'd seen Severus do that morning. He was also considering the pile of pillows that supported him. Now he remembered why they had them. Merlin's balls, he was a hedonist. "I just want you to know that if you wanted to leave—"
Severus thumped his fists on Harry's back in rapid succession, and the rest of the words wouldn't come out. He did manage to hear a repeated, "Idiot."
Well, that was that, then.
"Fred says you owe them an order of Scream," he said into the pillow, glad to change the subject.
Severus snorted behind him. "Messieurs Weasley and Weasley will just have to wait." There was a pause. "Or shall I call them Messieurs Johnson and Johnson?" Severus reached over to Harry's nightstand and opened a drawer. Harry restrained a snort of glee. This was going to be good; he loved this game.
Harry lifted his head from the pillow in time to catch the wicked gleam in Severus's eye as he popped open the restraining cuffs. "I think they might like that," he answered.
He was rewarded with an eyeroll, and then those long fingers traversed up his biceps, up his forearms and threaded into his own. "And what would you like?"
Harry smiled. "Oh my list is so very long."
***
Out in the middle of a field, behind a series of decrepit buildings, there was a bang, and the windows of the warehouse flashed with green.
***
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