Chapter Text
1 JUNE, 2015. 8:45 AM BRITISH SUMMER TIME
Harry grips his mug of tea and doesn’t notice when the heat sears into his fingertips.
The poster’s eyes are following him again.
Harry knows how magical photography works thanks to the Curse Breaker trainee course on magical science he’d struggled through over a decade ago, so he understands the poster’s subject isn’t actually tracking his movements. He understands it’s a photograph, taken with a magic camera, playing on a loop.
Frown.
Look down.
Deep inhale.
Eye contact.
Squint into the camera’s flash.
Grimace.
Mouth open to speak — it’s here that the loop cuts off.
Over a decade since the photo was taken and the loop takes longer to reset, trapping its subject in an unintentional rictus of open-mouthed horror before the image cuts and restarts, his mouth closed, his lips pressed tight, like they always were back then.
And yet.
Sometimes.
When Harry’s walking from the kitchen to his desk, or adjusting the bag strap on his shoulder as he clumsily excuses himself from after-work pints, he swears he sees a break in the loop. Just the eyes. It’s always just the eyes, not enough of an aberration that anyone else would notice.
After a decade of hanging on the department bulletin board behind his desk, Harry’s not sure anyone else even sees the poster anymore, despite his vigilance in relocating any notices which get tacked on top of it.
Sometimes, when Harry’s avoiding paperwork, he’ll twist around in his chair and waste time imagining what he’d say, if he could see the state of himself.
“Always knew you were a fan of my holes, Potter, but this is ridiculous,” he might quip, motioning to the rips and tears at the edges of the worn parchment.
“Look what you’ve let them do to me, Potter. And you claim you still have hope. Please. Also, you need to water your plant,” he says on days where Harry is feeling morose, unduly weighted with responsibility.
Today is feeling like one of the latter days. Not a surprise, given the time of year.
He always feels worse at the beginning of June. It’s not as bad as September, but pretty bloody close.
“What,” Harry says, clenching his teeth, fingers pressing tight around the mug of tea. He stares into grey eyes, faded with time. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He turns his back on the poster and sits at his desk, only noticing the pain in his hand as he reaches for the first of the day’s new casework files.
Over his shoulder, Draco Malfoy looks down, inhales deeply, looks up, squints. He grimaces and opens his mouth. The loop resets over Harry’s hunched shoulder. Above the photograph: one word, stamped in large, black letters.
MISSING
4:30 PM BST
Harry returns to the Curse Breaker home office two hours late. He technically only has an hour for lunch, but no one has ever approached him about his long lunches before. The older Breakers are bored of him and the Junior Breakers have recently decided, en masse, that he’s gone round the twist, a rumour he has not bothered to correct.
Besides, Curse Breaking doesn’t tend to attract the sort of people who put weight on pesky little things like rules. So long as they get the job done, that’s what counts. They rely on their cross-functional partners in the Ministry to handle the logistics they leave behind.
Or, at least, that’s how things used to be, when Harry joined up.
Funny how regulation and standards always seem to spike in the wake of catastrophe.
Harry can see the trend line in his mind.
Three days out: daily submitted reports from each member of an active case are heretofore made mandatory, starting immediately.
One week: all field assignments are, by new regulation, to be manned by at least one senior member of staff.
One month: in the event of unforeseeable disaster in the field, all Breakers working on the impacted case are to be placed on immediate suspension. The length of said suspension will last for a period of time to be determined, taking into consideration severity of the disaster, until a point at which all lasting impacts of said disaster are properly diagnosed and a recovery plan formalised.
In Harry’s case, he supposes he should, technically, still be suspended.
In Harry’s case, he’s certain he’s the only one still paying attention to anything he does.
Which is why it’s surprising, rounding the corner past Equipment Rentals, to see Bill sitting on the edge of his desk. He’s reaching for the Snitch held safe in a glass cloche, which Harry has been using as a paperweight.
“Wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Harry says, crumpling the packet of pistachios he’d bought just to have something to do with his hands.
Bill turns to face him, an eyebrow raised. The gash that runs across the right side of his face is noticeably redder today. Harry tries to remember when the last full moon was and draws a blank.
“It’s cursed,” Harry says.
“No,” Bill gasps, feigning surprise.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Harry replies. He drops his bag behind his desk but doesn’t sit. He doesn’t get social calls. No one is gunning to be office mates with the Sub-Department of Internal Auditing, of which Harry is Department Head, middle management, and junior associate. He’s been told he may be allotted an intern one day, but it’s been years since he’s seen an application.
“Have a nice lunch?” Bill asks, abandoning the Snitch.
“Paid fifteen quid for tuna salad and they didn’t even remember the sultanas.”
“You should submit a complaint. I hear strongly worded letters are de rigueur,” Bill says. His French accent is perfect, something that gets under Harry’s skin and grates every time he hears it.
It’s like, we get it. You married French. You go to France and do French things, Francily. Would you like your round of applause now or later? Harry remembers saying, drunk in some bar.
Ah, but of course you mean ‘une salve d'applaudissements’, was the response.
“Maybe I’ll just make them disappear,” Harry says, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans against the bulletin board, waggling his eyebrows.
Bill smiles with one half of his mouth. Harry’s been telling this joke for a long time. It wasn’t ever funny.
“Harry, we need to talk,” Bill says, and Harry can taste tuna in his mouth as his lunch spins in his stomach.
“Here?” Harry asks. His desk is in between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the toilets, a location he’s complained about many times over the years, citing noise and unnecessary foot traffic as a distraction to his work.
He should have an office. He’s earned an office. As to when he may finally receive said office, well. He’s not holding his breath. They want him out in the open, although whether it’s to keep an easier eye on him or to serve as a reminder to what happens when you fail a mission and lose your partner, he’s not sure.
“Come with me,” Bill says, his voice kind. He stands and starts walking in the opposite direction of his office, the nice corner one with the windows he keeps spelled to display the sun rising and falling over a field of lavender.
“We’re not going to yours?” Harry asks, tossing the pistachios into his overflowing bin and jogging to catch up.
Bill shakes his head, looking straight ahead.
They turn a corner past Spell Control and another past Permits & Travel, and it’s only when they keep going past Muggle Affairs that Harry realises where they’re headed.
The big office.
The big, big office.
“Bill,” Harry whispers, grabbing Bill’s arm harder than he intends, stopping their forward progress. “Am I about to be sacked? I think you owe it to me, seeing as we’re practically family, to tell me if I’m about to be sacked.”
“Just—” Bill pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just come on. I told them we’d be there twenty minutes ago.”
“Them?” Harry repeats.
He discovers soon enough who them means. Bill holds open the door to a room in the furthest corner of the building, ushering Harry in.
The shock of finding himself in a room with Chief Breaker Neftali Ortiz is dampened somewhat by the fact that they’re using her personal meeting room. Dusting off his rusty field skills, Harry has used the three seconds between seeing her nameplate on the door and seeing her person sat at the head of the shining, mahogany table to deduce several ways this interaction will go, all of which end in him being escorted from the premises.
“Mr Potter,” Ortiz says, standing.
“Chief Breaker Ortiz,” Harry replies. He struggles against the urge to bow. The last time Ortiz and he were in a room together was almost ten years ago; it did not go well. Harry forces himself not to avert his eyes.
“You’re looking well, Mr Potter,” a second voice says.
Sophie Ariti, Head of Being Resources, sitting to Ortiz’s right. To her left — Harry’s mouth goes dry — Auror Yun.
There’s only one reason Auror Yun would be called to the Curse Breaker home office. Harry has it on good authority Yun’s off fieldwork, off trainee duty too, his work these days taking the shape of corporate consultancy, a reward for decades of dedicated service.
“Mr Potter,” Auror Yun nods.
“Hello.” Harry returns the nod, attempts keeping his breath even.
“Can I offer you a glass of water?” Ariti asks.
“Okay,” Harry agrees. “I mean—yes, thank you.”
“Take a seat, please,” Ortiz says, motioning at the chair across from her. Harry steps towards the table and then stops, looking for Bill, who has left the room, soundlessly closing the door behind him.
Harry feels like a child, dragged up the stairs at Hogwarts to a dealer’s choice of professorial offices. Except this time he’s not buoyed by the ignorance of youth, the certainty of his own correctness.
I can explain, he wants to say, despite having no idea why he’s here. It was Malfoy, another old habit rising unbidden in his mind. A cruel joke.
“Please,” Ortiz repeats herself, knocking Harry back to the present.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. His knees pop as he sits down. Maybe being sacked won’t be so terrible. When he’s unemployed he won’t have to crouch over a desk all day. He can remember what it’s like to use his body.
Ortiz watches him shift in his seat, take a drink of water, take a second drink, sniff. When he’s settled, she takes a deep breath before saying,
“Mr Potter, I won’t bore you with niceties.”
Harry swallows. His mouth has gone dry again. He wants to reach for the water, but keeps his palms pressed firmly onto his thighs.
“We’re closing the case.”
It takes a moment for Harry’s mind to catch up, a moment in which his face must be bare to his confusion, because Department Head Ariti jumps in to clarify.
“The Malfoy Missing Wixen Case,” she says. Her voice is devoid of any emotion, yet simultaneously not unkind. Harry thinks that she must practise at it.
“Auror Yun thought it best you were made aware personally,” Ortiz says. She folds her hands on a thin, black folder.
“And what do you think?” Harry asks. His face is hot.
“I agree with Auror Yun.”
“Why?” Harry asks.
“Harry—” Yun tries; Ortiz silences him with a hand, slightly raised.
“I presume you are not questioning my faith in Auror Yun,” Ortiz says. “So the question I will answer is the question I think you’re actually asking.” She slides the folder across the table. “We’re closing the case, Mr Potter, because it is the right time.”
Harry blinks down at the folder. There’s a white sticker affixed to the middle of it, on which has been typed the words:
CASE #MW0506
CASE STATUS: CLOSED
Harry clenches his hands into fists until they stop shaking. He opens the folder.
Inside is a small stack of papers, neatly typed. The documents have started to weather with age. Harry recognises the top form. It’s an old version of the incident intake form, the same form he has completed and affixed to fieldwork claims every day since he was relegated behind the desk.
Harry also knows what this particular form says. He remembers filling it out, or trying to anyway, before Auror Yun — younger, then, without the grey at his temples — took the form from Harry’s shaking hands and asked him to dictate his answers.
They were in a room like this then, too. Harry with his glass of room temperature water, Ortiz and the other adults across the table. Hell, it may have been this room. A lot of the details have since fallen away.
The form, if Harry were to read it now, would describe plainly the facts of what happened on the day Draco disappeared. Harry looks down at it now, and is surprised to see the details so spare. He remembers talking a lot. With one finger, he flips the form over. The back is completely empty.
The remaining pages in the case file are even more worn than the intake form. His statement, typed and signed, taken as the only witness to the event. Here and there a sentence has been scratched out, an amendment handwritten between the lines and dated. The last amendment was dated 2009, six years past.
Harry lets the folder fall closed.
“It’s been ten years,” Ortiz says. Her mouth is turned down at both ends.
“I’m aware,” Harry says, tone harsher than intended.
“We know this isn’t an easy conversation,” Ariti says.
“You wouldn’t be here if it was,” Harry says, heat rising up the back of his neck.
“Harry, if you knew how much time I’ve spent dreading this conversation—” Auror Yun starts, but Harry cuts him off.
“Really?” he says, eyes dark as anger boils past the point where he can contain it. “Is that what you’ve been busy doing instead of solving this case?”
“Mr Potter,” Ortiz says, voice firm. Harry’s eyes snap to her, mouth open to speak until a self-preservation instinct kicks in. He takes a deep breath and drains the glass of water. “Sorry,” he amends.
“It’s been ten years,” Ortiz says again. “The limitation on this missing wixen case has been reached, and according to protocol we will be changing the personnel status of Draco Malfoy from Missing to Presumed Dead.”
Ariti winces. Ortiz glances to her right, frowning.
“Let me rephrase,” she says, refolding her hands. “Unfortunately, the limitation on this missing wixen case has been reached, and while it deeply troubles us to do so, we must follow protocol and change the status of this wizard, regretfully, from Missing to Presumed Dead. Is that better?”
“Um.” Ariti nods.
Ortiz stands. “I have another meeting. Mr Potter, I presume someone in this room has a tissue, should you need to avail yourself of one.”
She makes it to the doorway before Harry stops her, saying,
“Wait.”
She pauses. Harry has the folder open again. Atop the form are bright, red letters, the ink shiny and new.
DECEASED
Below, the intake date on the form.
1 September, 2005
“It hasn’t been ten years,” Harry says. He stands, turning his back on Ariti and Yun, holding the folder open for Ortiz to see. He has an idea, a wildly stupid idea, and she’s the only one he needs to convince.
“Mr Potter…” she warns.
“Give me the full ten years,” Harry says.
“No.”
“What harm will it do?” Harry asks. “If you all think he’s dead, what difference is a couple months? Let me work the case until September, please.”
“Mr Potter,” Ortiz begins, and this time her voice is low, and the look of concern on her face is genuine. “You will only be harming yourself.”
“I don’t care,” Harry says and then stops. It feels dangerously close to admitting something.
Ortiz considers him, her dark brown eyes raking over his unyielding face.
“Fine,” she says, looking thoroughly unhappy. “You have until September to either find Mr Malfoy, or provide unassailable evidence that he is not dead, at which point the case will be re-opened. This does not excuse you from your current duties. You are not permitted to use any Breaker resources or funds. Auror Yun has already cleared this from his caseload, and reallocated his priorities. That will not be changing. I do not wish to speak more of this.” Her eyes drift over Harry’s shoulder. “Ariti, Auror Yun, come with me, please.”
They leave the door open when they leave the room, and Harry can see Bill lingering several desks away, only half aware of the conversation being had at him by the pretty new witch in Muggle Affairs.
Harry doesn’t wait around for Bill to extricate himself. He walks away with a gait that successfully communicates he does not want to be followed. When Harry gets back to his desk, the Missing poster has been taped over with a large sign advertising a new cafe opening in the atrium next week. Carefully, Harry removes the tape and pastes the sign up higher on the bulletin board, prodding several notices until they wiggle out of his way, making room for the newcomer.
Harry avoids making eye contact with the poster as he sits himself back at his desk, the thin black folder turned over, shoved under a stack of paperwork he’s about three months overdue in looking at.
7:45 PM BST
Harry works until everyone else has left, until his inbox is clear and his outbox is sagging beneath the weight of newly audited files, which he’ll have to memo a clerk about coming round to file tomorrow morning. It’s been so long since Harry’s had an audit ready for filing that the clerks no longer include him on their regular rotation.
By the time he’s finished, the office lights have been set for overnight, only turning on where there’s movement. The floor is largely dark. Harry’s desk lamp casts a low, buttery light over the thin black file he’s now holding in his lap.
Ridiculously, he fights the urge to look over his shoulder, to make certain he’s not being watched.
When Harry opens the folder again, the red ink is gone. In its place, a new status:
1 JUNE, 2015:
MALFOY, DRACO L.
MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD
