Losing Harry

Notes: written 5 Nov. 2008; Edited for errors/improvement 18 July 2009. This chapter beta-ed by Newshound. Thanks so much! Also thanks to Kathryn for a second round of beta-ing. (o:

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Harry sat huddled on a narrow, grassy path between two small Muggle houses, his Invisibility Cloak secure over his shoulders and head, hiding every part of himself from view. In that moment, he was glad that the days of trying to fit three people under the cloak were gone. He felt certain that two grown adults would hardly fit under the Cloak now, much less three.

It was cold outside, and though Harry had dressed in layers with what little clothes he had with him, the cloak around his shoulders wasn't meant to serve as a shield against the biting winter winds. It wasn't quite winter yet, but the season was approaching, he reminded himself.

In truth, Harry hadn't taken much notice of the days passing. His mind had become singularly focused - obsessed, perhaps. Though he hadn't rightly seen his obsession, if that's what it was or had become, because in moments when such a thought flitted past, it was always pushed out of his mind with such swift forcefulness that he wasn't sure it had existed at all.

Still, 'obsessed' seemed to ring in his head in a familiar tone - a tone that, if he let himself, he might think belonged to Hermione.

Hermione...

Harry frowned. He hadn't seen his friend in a while, and he wondered if anyone had figured out his plan yet. He felt certain that the daily owls would have kept Ginny appeased for a time. She certainly wasn't dimwitted or inattentive, but he was counting on their recent series of rows to cloud her judgement. When that failed, he also knew that it would be of no surprise to her for his Auror duties to take him away for a time. Though Ginny might feel a kind of uncertain suspicion, Harry relied on her good nature, trust, and inexperience to not push the matter - at least for a brief while. Long enough for him to get started.

On the other hand, if Hermione found out, she would know right away that something wasn't quite right. Not only was she clever, but with her experience and their past together, she was the one real threat to the secrecy of Harry's mission.

His mission was important, though, and Harry refused to be deterred. He couldn't let himself pause long enough to think of all the reasons why he shouldn't be crouching in the shadows of a Muggle neighbourhood while his family remained behind, without word or trace of him. On a day like today, he should have been opening owls from Hogwarts, with stories of his children's latest adventures, sharing breakfast with his wife and heading off to work in his office or in the field with his partner and coworkers. He wasn't supposed to be hiding alone under his invisibility cloak, off on an adventure like he was seventeen again.

He couldn't think of all that, though.

Something had to be done, and if the Ministry and the Aurors weren't going to take it seriously, Harry had determined to take matters into his own hands. The last time people had mysteriously gone missing, the world had stood by and let a Dark Wizard get away with death and things worse than death, letting their fear immobilise them. It was something that could have been stopped, if only people would not have stood by and watched it.

He doubted that the latest disappearance was related to that same Dark Wizard. It wasn't impossible, even if it was improbable, but ignoring it was impermissible.

Harry still remembered, two months ago, when he had found himself standing in the Archives room in the Aurors office, putting away some of his files when a discussion had broken out in the coffee room adjacent.

"He's a Death Eater. Who cares?" Miles said. Harry easily recognised the voice of his newest partner.

"Ex-Death Eater," someone else corrected. It was a voice Harry remembered hearing around the office but couldn't place with a name or face.

"Don't they say, 'Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater'?" Miles asked unconcernedly. "Besides, he probably just ran off with a mistress. What makes anyone think there was any kind of foul play?"

"His wife said when she returned home on the day he went missing, there was a broken clock and a shattered teakettle," a female voice replied.

"And?" Miles asked, sounding unimpressed.

"You think the bloke broke a clock, threw a teakettle, packed a bag, and left with his mistress?" another asked. Harry thought it was Kevin, an Auror he knew fairly well.

"It's not like it matters, I suppose," the female voice responded. "The Ministry isn't concerned. They have enough on their plate right now, and they don't think there's enough evidence to warrant a search for him. People run off to France or America or Romania every day, don't they?"

"After throwing a teapot at a clock, of course," Kevin laughed bitterly.

The conversation had ended as the coffee-drinkers had dispersed to their desks. The attitude surrounding the situation hadn't changed, however. Nothing was being done about the disappearance, and nothing was going to be done - that had been evident. Perhaps Malfoy had been Harry's arch-rival in school, but Harry had saved his life once before, and Mrs Malfoy had saved his. He couldn't pretend to know what had made the man suddenly disappear, but he couldn't ignore the feeling in his gut that something wasn't right. That Malfoy hadn't simply run off to escape his current wife or take a new mistress.

To Harry, it had appeared as though the wizard had the perfect life and had acquired everything he had ever wanted. His name was clear and gaining respect again; his son was at Hogwarts, not quite head of the class but not dim either, by all of Al's accounts. Malfoy's wife was beautiful, his parents' sins were forgotten, his career was taking off, as each had occasionally been reported by the Daily Prophet during the recent years. There was nothing Harry could fathom that would explain a sudden and long-lasting disappearance.

And Harry couldn't just sit by and hope that people who never looked for Malfoy would just happen to find him one day.

Especially not when Malfoy's son was best friends with Harry's son. Somehow, the Potters and Malfoys were linked now. Harry hadn't been able to shake the image of the subdued little Malfoy in the hospital wing with Albus.

Harry knew what it was like not to have a father. A boy needed his dad. Perhaps it was too oversimplified, but those moments with those boys that morning in the Hogwarts Infirmary had made the decision very clear: Harry had to find Malfoy. A twisted feeling like knots in his stomach had plagued him since that day in the hospital wing, and the knots had only tightened after the meeting with McGonagall.

Somebody had to find Malfoy, and Harry was that somebody. Maybe they had once been enemies, but things had changed in their seventh year. A decade or more had passed since then. Each new school year found Harry and Malfoy on the platform of King's Cross Station again, this time seeing their children off to Hogwarts, each standing behind and waving as the red engine of the Hogwarts Express disappeared over the horizon. Their rivalry grew questionable as the iciness between them dissipated with each passing year, as if time brought some kind of inescapable warmth with it. They had even shared a few words at the beginning of Al's third year. It had been a brief exchange, conducted before Ginny had dragged Harry away and proceeded to lead the attack against Harry for speaking to someone like Malfoy. Ron had readily joined in to support his sister's opinion.

Harry wasn't sure that Ginny and Ron had got over, or would ever get over, the horrible treatment they had endured from Malfoy during their Hogwarts years. Some Wizarding family rivalries were too old and nearly impossible to break. Some would say it was Harry's spousal duty to take up his wife's cause and not only understand the bitterness, but defend her opinions, too. The entrance of Scorpius Malfoy into Albus Potter's life had changed the circumstances, however.

Harry had once been that young Potter boy who had turned down the young Malfoy hand offered him. A generation later, Harry wasn't going to let the pointless rivalries of days gone by prevent the new generation from bridging the gaps that should have not been created or exacerbated by their parents before them.

And so Harry had made up his mind.

Because of that, Harry now found himself remaining steadfast under his Cloak, huddling closer to the side of the house and ignoring the winter winds, scanning another block of houses for the white blond hair he had sworn he had seen that summer during one of his Auror assignments. The glimpse had been brief, and the unexpectedness of it had not allowed the vision to take root in Harry's mind at first. In fact a considerable amount of time had passed before news of Malfoy's disappearance forced Harry to dig deep into the wells of his memory and recover the glimpse he had seen - the familiar white-blond hair and a shake of the head, before his vision had been averted. Though the assignment Harry had been on had been completely unrelated to Malfoy, nevertheless, one glance of that hair had been enough to trigger a connection of the dots. Harry was certain he had spotted the elusive Malfoy without having even known he was missing yet.

Harry squared his shoulders and let his gaze trace the lines of the long street stretching left and right, extending on either side of where he was. The Muggle houses along the street were all done in a cookie-cutter-style, each one resembling its neighbour, but in alternating pale colours. There were no stone mansions or dark, recessed manors that would immediately give away a Malfoy dwelling.

Down the street, Harry watched an elderly lady speaking with the postman, her wool coat pulled tight around her body. A man with walking crutches lowered himself to the garden just below his window in his front yard, a warm cap protecting him from the chill. In the other direction, a blond man had his fingers being tugged on by two little blond children, all of them wearing thick winter jackets.

Harry hadn't expected the weather to turn so chilly so quickly. He tried to think of a Warming Spell but decided on transfiguring something into a coat instead. He was looking for an adequate object to use when the front door of one of the houses opened.

Harry's eyes snapped up, always waiting to catch that blond glimpse he had once seen in the vicinity months ago. The man who exited the house, however, had dark brown hair. He stood on the porch of the house where the man with the crutches was working in the garden. The two spoke, but Harry couldn't hear them from across the street.

He watched with little interest, waiting for something to catch his eye and provide a better distraction from the cold. The brunet climbed down from the porch and set his hands to the other man's shoulders. They spoke again.

Harry tilted his head to the side.

The brunet kissed the side of the gardening man's face, then strode toward the driveway, where he climbed into his car to leave. The exchange was so small and nonchalant, and yet so meaningful and intimate. Or it could have been. Harry wasn't sure. He didn't know the men and had no idea what their stories were, but for some reason that hand on the shoulder and those gentle lips replayed in Harry's mind, over and over.

He shook his head, hoping to clear the clouds, and for a brief moment questioned himself and what he was doing. He had a wife and a family, and who in Merlin's name did he think he was, traipsing across the country (and possibly the world) on a wild goose chase? A goose chase to find someone who had never held any interest in him in his entire life. A man who had never been named among Harry's family or friends, not a person he cared for, whose welfare he was interested in...

Ginny would be furious, his kids would be worried... Harry could forget the whole thing and just go home. But Scorpius Malfoy would still have a missing father.

Harry's jaw tightened and he stood from his crouching position, turning toward the street and to the south. Perhaps he had seen Malfoy on another block, or in another neighbourhood altogether. Where ever he was, Harry needed to find him, and find out what had happened. Reports had suggested that the 'missing' wizard had left of his own free will or otherwise indicated nothing suspicious or worth investigating.

But every single one of them had left out any mention of the traces of Dark magic found on the clock and the samples of blood collected on the fragments of the teakettle.

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Harry needed a plan - a real plan. Something better than watching Muggle neighbourhoods and hoping to get lucky again. He couldn't go back for more information, though, and he couldn't take off the wards he had used to keep himself untrackable and unlocatable. Had he not used those, he was sure countless owls would have reached him by now, no doubt giving away his whereabouts, which Harry couldn't be certain wasn't a danger or to his detriment. He still wasn't quite sure what he was dealing with, but caution was something he had learned could be helpful.

But planning wasn't always his strongest suit, and in the past he had always had faithful companions to help balance out his quick and not-quite-thought-through reactions. Granted, he had always survived on his own up to this point, but he had always known a day could, and most likely would, come when he would find himself in too deep.

Harry paced in the small attic of the abandoned house. It was better to stay off the records and out of sight, than to give himself up for help. It was hard to hide being Harry Potter, and he couldn't take the risk of being recognised, even in a predominantly Muggle area. Enough time had passed that he knew the Magical world was probably looking for him by now.

That was the injustice of it, he had reasoned. And if it took him disappearing for someone to find Malfoy, it would be worth it. If only Harry could find Malfoy.

"Right then, interview and gather information," Harry suggested to himself. "He's here somewhere."

That was how Harry found out that the elderly woman's name was Frances and she had a tendency to rub her fingers together, over and over again, when she spoke. Harry tried asking after a 'Draco Malfoy,' but the woman seemed to find it a name so strange that it offended her. He supposed the name would sound a bit odd to a Muggle, but he rather hoped in questioning neighbours that someone would recognise it, rather than be appalled by it.

Phil, a middle-aged man down the opposite end of the neighbourhood, had informed Harry that there hadn't been any new neighbours to move onto the street in years. A divorce here and there and some children leaving for university, but otherwise, the residents hadn't changed much.

Harry frowned at the information. Malfoy had gone missing in the summer, so it had been several months, not several years, since his disappearance.

He decided to go out once more for investigation before heading back to his sources for a rendezvous and clarified information. Wearing his Muggle jeans and jumper, Harry straightened his glasses and made sure his wand and Cloak were tucked securely in his bag, in case they were needed at a moment's notice. He was on his way to meet the blond man and his children who lived halfway down the block.

Harry turned and had just stepped out to cross the street when he heard a loud noise that jerked his gaze to attention.

A groan followed, and Harry's eyes tracked the noises to the figure he saw lying along the sidewalk, head cushioned on the grass of the yard, his hands clutching at his legs, with the aluminum crutches tangled up in his limbs.

Harry bolted over and dropped to the man's side.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, reaching for him.

"I'm fine. I'm fine," the man said testily, pushing Harry's hands away and attempting to right himself into a sitting position.

Harry blinked as the man's face came into view.

"Just stupid cramps and crutches," the man complained, pushing at his wool cap and grimacing.

Harry stared as the man's grey eyes remained averted for a few moments before snapping to attention.

"What?" the man asked with a tone of mild irritation.

"N-nothing." Harry shook his head, rising slowly to his feet.

"Do you need help standing?" Harry asked, watching every movement carefully.

The man stiffened slightly, then looked up, as if calculating Harry's presence.

"Yes, thanks," he said shortly, raising a hand into the air.

Harry clasped the hand into his own, tugged the man to his feet and helped him reach for the crutches until finally they were both standing eye to eye, on a darkening Muggle street as the sun moved to make its bed.

"Malfoy?" Harry said slowly, his eyebrows furrowing.

"What?" The other man frowned.

"Malfoy..."

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Malfoy asked.

Harry's mouth fell open, uncertain as to how to respond.

"I've not seen you around here before," Malfoy continued, his eyes roaming along Harry as if looking for a clue to recognition.

Harry didn't speak, and Malfoy's reaction was to shift his weight on the crutches, where he let his weight rest. He looked very different with the crutches, the less-than-polished, humble clothing, and the wool cap hiding his hair. But the grey eyes were still there, that same strong jaw line and those unforgettable pointy features Harry had learned as a child.

He was still struggling for words when Malfoy leaned forward to speak again, sounding impatient.

"Are you all right there, mate?"

"Y-yeah," Harry stuttered. "But, don't you remember me? Malfoy?"

The knots in Harry's stomach hadn't loosened as he had suspected they would when he finally found Malfoy. Instead, each passing moment seemed to twist them tighter. More feelings of wrongness flooded him.

"Who's Malfoy?" the man in the wool hat asked.

"Who're you?" Harry countered, wondering what exactly was going on and how he could best keep himself from falling into a trap.

"Me?" Malfoy asked, ducking his head back. He looked around, shrugged, and then replied.

"I'm Matthew Greyson. Who're you?"