Chapter Text
Harry edges forward slowly, wand drawn and at the ready as his eyes scan the final room of the decrepit building he’s assessing. There are no windows and the floor is scuffed up concrete. Wind whistles through a hole in the wall and the chill makes him shiver. He casts a lumos charm to light up the far corners of the room. Empty bottles of Muggle alcohol litter the floor and clink loudly when he kicks them out of his way. Faded graffiti is covering most of the wall space and an old mattress has been shoved into one corner, wiry springs peeking through the frayed fabric. Harry wrinkles his nose at the questionable stains all over it. The entire building looks like a teenager’s shady hangout spot, not the crime den he'd been hoping for.
A recent security sweep had shown higher than normal levels of erratic magical energy in the area. Everyone knows it was probably just a witch or wizard passing through, but it's a predominantly muggle population and Head Auror Clemens' foul mood has been relentless all week. He insisted a secondary sweep couldn’t wait until Monday, meaning somebody had to spend the dying hours of Friday afternoon checking it out. It was a rubbish assignment that no one else wanted, even with departmental promotions around the corner. The other Aurors clapped Harry on the back gratefully when he volunteered but putting his hand up wasn't him being selfless; he just has nowhere else to be tonight and quite frankly, a potential crime den sounds more fun then going home to an empty apartment again.
“I could be three pints deep right now if it wasn’t for you, you little shit.”
Harry's Auror partner, Blaise Zabini, isn’t as understanding about the extra work. He can feel the scowl being directed his way without turning around.
The two of them are an unlikely partnership but they've fallen into a comfortable rhythm and they work well together. They were first paired up back when they’d joined the Auror force, straight after the war, and Harry’d been completely narked off about it. He always imagined he and Ron going through training together, having a laugh and taking down bad guys for the rest of their lives. But then Ron decided to help George run his shop and Clemens threw Harry and Blaise together, and Harry had quickly discovered that in between training sessions, most of their assignments were spent doing paperwork and filing reports, not chasing bad guys.
He'd known very little about Blaise at first — just that he was a friend of Draco Malfoy’s, and that he and his mother remained neutral during most of the war. It wasn’t until a few months after training started that Hermione told him Blaise had come back and fought alongside the Order in the final battle, and after that Kingsley told him Blaise had spent his seventh year laying low and protecting younger students from the Carrows.
Harry was surprised at first, but now that he knows Blaise better — knows how his mind works and how fiercely committed he is to protecting those who can’t protect themselves — he thinks it makes perfect sense.
Harry glances over at him. Blaise is tall and slender, always impeccably groomed and dressed; even the gold buttons on his Auror robes are shined perfectly. His hair is cropped short and his face is always smooth and stubble free. Harry, on the other hand — with his hair pulled into a messy knot at the back of his head, his Auror robes in a perpetual state of unkemptness, and the beard on his face getting thicker everyday — is Blaise’s polar opposite.
“I’m going to have to throw these robes away, you realise,” Blaise is muttering as he runs a diagnostic charm over the other side of the room. “Probably burn them too, for the sake of the health of those around me. I can literally feel the smell of this place seeping into the fabric.”
“Then you’ll only have— what? A hundred sets of identical ones left?”
Blaise shoots him a dark but they both know he wouldn’t have come out here if he really didn’t want to. The thing about Blaise Zabini is that if he doesn’t want to do something, not even Clemens has a hope in hell of making him do it.
He extinguishes the blue light of the diagnostic charm he's been casting and turns to face Harry. “Nothing,” he declares. “Not a single trace of magic in the place. As I suspected and stated rather vocally before we got here, this was a waste of time and we’ve spent an hour in this hovel for no reason.”
Harry lowers his wand too, a little disappointed by the dead end. He checks his watch. “It’s just gone five. You want to head back and do the paperwork now? Get it out of the way?”
“No, Potter. I do not want to go to the office and do our paperwork,” Blaise scoffs. “It’s Friday night and I have not been laid in a week. I want to go home, get changed, and go out and find a nice girl to do bad things with, before I start thinking even you’re a good option— and might I add, if that day ever comes, I’ll thank you to hex me immediately.”
Harry only half hears the rant. He frowns as the graffiti words on the wall becoming fuzzy. A wave of nausea passes over him and he swallows to try and push the feeling away. Maybe the sandwich he'd eaten at lunch was bad. Hermione is always warning him not to eat food from the Muggle food truck that parks across from the Ministry, but he can never resist.
“Why do you look weird?” Blaise asks.
Harry looks at him. He’s not sure if the room is spinning or if somehow, two Blaise's are now standing in front of him. He shakes his head to clear away the spots that are suddenly clouding his vision. Something is wrong with him. His magic is unsettled. An itch under his skin is forming, and he reaches frantically for the wall as he feels himself begin to lose his balance.
“Harry, what the fuck?”
Blaise sounds far away. Harry stumbles, fingers grasping at the wall to hold himself upright, and he’s filled with the inexplicable need to get away from here. To get… to get somewhere. He doesn’t know where, but he needs, urgently, to go.
He tries to move forward — he has to get to the door — and he thinks he hears a shout, someone saying his name maybe, but it feels as though a heavy fog is settling over him, forcing him down, and then he’s falling, darkness creeping in.
And then, there is nothing at all.
ooOoo
A loud whistling noise was coming from somewhere close by, and Harry realised he was sitting in a familiar compartment. Was this the Hogwarts Express? The world outside the window was racing past, a blur of green fields and blue sky, and he should have been more curious to know why he was there, but he knew somehow that this was where he was supposed to be. So he waited.
This was a dream, he thought, as he looked around. The edges of his vision were blurred slightly, not quite able to come into focus, but he felt strangely calm. He stretched his legs out in front of him, sinking lower into the seat. He may as well enjoy the peace while he was here.
The compartment door slid open and his calm disappeared, replaced by uncertainty. The door slid shut, but Harry couldn’t see anyone.
“You came,” he heard himself say. Has his mouth moved?
“I said I would,” came an irritated voice from in front of him. Harry couldn’t see them, but there was relief mixed in with his uncertainty that they’d shown up.
Harry was staring at the empty space. He waited for more words to come, from himself or from his guest, but silence stretched out between them.
“You’re a fool to be so trusting,” the voice finally declared. “How did you know I wouldn’t just keep this cloak?”
And that makes sense, Harry realised. He’d given this person his cloak so they could sneak in here.
“I don’t trust you,” he said, his voice sounding far away, though his mouth was definitely moving. “And I know you don’t trust me. But we want the same thing, so I knew you’d show up.”
“Idiot Gryffindor,” was the muttered reply. “We can’t help, you realise,” they continued dramatically. “There’s nothing we can do. We're only sixth years, Potter, not adults. It’s hopeless.”
“If there was really no hope, you wouldn’t have answered my owls,” Harry said confidently. “And you wouldn’t be here.”
“So I’m here,” they snapped. “Talk.”
“What I need from you,” Harry said, glancing towards the compartment door to make sure no one was out there, “is to tell me everything you know about what Draco Malfoy did this past summer.”
ooOoo
Harry comes to slowly. His body feels heavy as he blinks his eyes open, the way he feels sometimes when he takes a nap and oversleeps. The room is fuzzy without his glasses, but he recognises the crisp white walls of St Mungo’s and can smell the strong scent of the magical cleaning solution the janitors use on the floors. It’s all very familiar to him after many, many visits in the past.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to align his thoughts and focus on how he got here this time. He remembers being in the old building with Blaise, determining that there was no danger, and he remembers the moment right before he passed out; there’d been a strange, overwhelming feeling of need that had consumed him out of nowhere. He realises abruptly that the itch is still there, just below the surface of his skin. He rubs at his arm. It’s not a painful sensation but it’s becoming more irritating the more he thinks about it.
The door to his room opens.
“You’re a right bastard, you know that?”
Harry gropes beside him to find his glasses and pushes them back onto his face. Blaise stands at the end of his bed, still in full Auror uniform, which means Harry hasn’t been out for that long — there’s no way Blaise Zabini would ever wear the same clothes more than one day in a row.
“My dick is furious with you,” Blaise continues, crossing his arms, “and I’m not too happy either. What was that little scene all about?”
“Blaise, honestly.” Hermione follows him into the room, coming to Harry’s left side and dropping a kiss on his head. “Are you alright?” she asks. “Penelope is on her way— the spell we put on the room notified us you were awake, but she had to finish up with another patient.” She’s watching him worriedly while he pulls himself up into a sitting position. Her curls are pulled back neatly into a sleek bun and she’s wearing one of Ron’s old hoodies over the top of an elegant black dress.
“You and Ron had a date night tonight,” Harry groans. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be stupid, it’s fine.” She waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Ron’s back at home with Rosie. She's thrilled, obviously, because Ron is giving her have pizza for dinner. I’ll have to Floo him and let him know what’s happening shortly.”
“Still,” Harry says apologetically. “It was your date night; I’m sorry to drag you down here.”
“Excuse me,” Blaise interrupts. “What about my date?”
“Casual sex with someone you haven’t met yet isn’t a date, Blaise,” Harry says. “I’ve told you that before.”
Blaise huffs. “Some poor girl is missing out on—” He gestures broadly to his face. “—all of this right now. I hope you can live with yourself knowing that, Potter. Knowing I had to Apparate your sorry arse out of that place and drag you here again.”
“I think I’ve probably just saved this imaginary girl from a night of hearing sleazy pick up lines,” Harry tells him.
“I’m a Zabini,” Blaise says proudly. “There is nothing sleazy about anything I do.”
Hermione shakes her head. “You two are so odd,” she comments. “You’ve not even asked how he is,” she says to Blaise.
“He’s fine, Granger,” Blaise replies. “He lives to cockblock me, so he won’t be dying anytime soon. I’m half-convinced he only defeated Voldemort so we could be paired up at the Ministry and he could ruin my weekends.”
“You’re the most dramatic person in the world,” Harry sighs.
Hermione snorts. “Draco,” she offers as explanation when Harry looks at her curiously, and Blaise gives a rare chuckle.
“True,” he agrees. “You really should have more patience with me, Granger, considering you have to deal with that man almost daily. He’s much worse than I am. In every sense.”
“It’s a photo finish,” Hermione mutters.
Harry isn’t listening properly to them anymore; the itching has flared up again, like his magic is prickling him from just below the surface. He’s shifting against the bed trying to find relief from the uncomfortable sensation when the door opens again and Harry’s Healer, Penelope Clearwater, comes in.
Penelope looks much the same as she had in school — tall and willowy, with kind eyes and a permanent smile fixed on her face. She has her wand tucked behind her ear, and is holding Harry’s chart, but Harry knows her well enough by now to know that her soft exterior is masking one of the toughest and most efficient Healers in St Mungo’s.
“Back again?” she says cheerfully, flipping open the chart and flashing Harry her trademark grin.
“Of course he is— he’s obsessed with you,” Blaise offers unhelpfully.
“I haven’t been here in months,” Harry grumbles.
Penelope glances down at her notes. “Three weeks, actually,” she confirms. “What was it this time?” she asks Blaise. “Another top secret mission?”
“Not this time,” Blaise replies with a smirk. “We were in an empty room in no immediate danger and he fainted.”
“Hmm,” Penelope says thoughtfully, tipping her head to the side as though considering Harry. “He’s getting less and less heroic, isn’t he? We might go a full month without seeing him one of these days.”
Harry isn’t sure how the strange friendship between his partner and his Healer first started; he only knows that it’s a relationship based purely on mocking him when he ends up in a hospital bed. Which does not happen that often, thank you, and when it does, it’s usually not his fault. He can’t help it if he never quite grew out of being accident prone.
“Alright,” Penelope says, seeing Harry’s petulant pout. “Now that you’re awake, I’ll take some readings, and I have a few questions we need to go through. Would you prefer to continue in private?”
Harry looks at Hermione and Blaise. Hermione will insist she needs to be there and Blaise will just refuse to go without further explanation. They both care about him, in their own ways.
“They won't leave even if I ask them to,” he says.
Penelope nods, then plucks her wand from behind her ear and begins casting her diagnostic spells, her charmed quill adding notes on Harry’s chart as she goes.
Harry answers her questions robotically, so used to them now that he doesn’t even need to think about the answers. No, he isn’t experiencing any additional stress. No, he hasn’t been ill. No, he hasn’t been out of the country. No, he hasn’t experienced any unexplainable pain in his limbs. It’s a familiar routine, one not dissimilar to the one he and Madam Pomfrey’d had in school.
“Okay, let’s talk about today,” Penelope says, waving her wand in a complicated motion close to Harry's temple without looking up. “Can you describe to me how you felt both before and while the episode was happening?”
“I felt like I was going to throw up,” Harry says. “And I got dizzy. I sort of felt like I was far away, but I could see the room I was in. Then I just…” He frowns, looking down at his hands as he twists them in the sheet. “I had this urge, like an itch. I needed to get out of there. To get somewhere else.”
Penelope is watching him carefully when he looks up. “How do you feel now?” she asks. “Are you still feeling any of those things?”
“The itching,” Harry says. “It’s my magic, I think, under my skin. It feels unsettled. It’s not unbearable, it’s just annoying.”
Penelope is frowning at her chart, which he isn’t used to.
“What is it?” he asks uncertainly.
She scans the notes again, and then looks at Harry. “There’s an unusual undercurrent in your magic that I'm picking up on,” she explains. “There’s nothing to explain it in your previous medical history, and I’ve never seen it in the readings I've performed on you before. It’s very faint, but—” She hesitates. Harry glances at Hermione, and is reassured that she looks confused as well. “I need to know,” Penelope continues. “Have you ever performed or allowed someone else to perform any kind of bonding spell on you?”
Hermione makes a small noise of surprise beside him and Blaise arches an eyebrow. “Wild night in Vegas you forgot to mention?” he asks Harry. “Do you have a secret husband we don’t know about?”
“No,” Harry denies. “I wouldn’t even know how to do a bonding spell. And I’d know if someone had performed one on me, wouldn’t I?”
“Not necessarily, no,” Penelope says, tucking her wand away and closing the chart. “There's a myriad of different bonding spells, the most common obviously being for marriage, but that leaves a much stronger trace than what I’m seeing here.”
“So maybe it’s not a bond, then?” Harry asks hopefully. “Is it some sort of curse?”
“It’s not a marriage bond, no,” Penelope corrects. “And no, I don’t think you’ve been cursed. Obviously I can’t confirm anything yet, because what I’ve picked up on is too faint, but based on what I can see, and the symptoms you’ve described, I do think you’re experiencing the effects of some other sort of bonding spell.”
“Is there any indication of the bond’s nature?” Hermione asks. “Is he in any immediate danger?”
Penelope shakes her head. “Again, I can’t say anything with certainty yet, but there doesn’t appear to be any immediate threat. I’ll continue to monitor him closely but unfortunately, in this kind of situation, we have to rely on the symptoms to guide us. If they come back, I’ll be able to get a clearer picture of what effect the spell is having on him.”
“Can’t you just—” Harry searches frantically for an idea. He hates the idea of there being something wrong with him that’s beyond his control, that’s potentially in the control of someone else. “Can't you just do a spell or something? Figure out what it is? Surely there aren’t that many possibilities?”
“I wish I could,” Penelope says, “but the problem is, Harry, there are bonding spells for essentially every reason imaginable, and some are very, very subtle. There are, of course, some that have obvious requirements — things like the bondees being forced to remain physically touching — but that particular branch of bonding magic is very outdated, and if that were the case here, you’d be in immense pain. The most common of the more subtle bonds are those used for tracking. They’re very popular right now, particularly with parents on their teenagers. They leave minimal magical residue, so they’re hard to spot without a Healer reading, and considering your line of work and who you are, that seems likely. But even so, generally the caster needs to be present, so I don’t want to promise you anything until I get a better read on this. Are you absolutely sure there was no one in that building? Is there any chance you could have missed something? Someone?”
“It was just me and Blaise,” Harry says. “We checked everywhere and cast all the normal spells, so unless he did it—”
“Oh, no, don’t look at me,” Blaise says, holding his hands up in front of him. “He causes me enough problems without having him stuck to me permanently.”
“Is it possible it was cast elsewhere?” Hermione asks Penelope. “Is there a chance it wasn't even cast today?”
“There's every chance.” Penelope nods. “It's faint, which could either indicate it's a weak spell, or that it’s been dormant and is only now starting to show itself — though that kind of thing is very rare — but even that much is speculation right now. All I can say at this stage is that there is some sort of bonding magic intertwined with Harry’s, and as he doesn't know when it was cast or to whom he is bonded, we need to monitor this very closely.”
Harry slumps further down into his pillows. “I’m bonded to somebody,” he says miserably. Suddenly, his boring Friday night alone seems a lot more appealing.
“Most likely,” Penelope agrees. “Again, we need to determine what kind of bond this is, but the good news is that your symptoms are mild for any bonding spell. You should consider yourself lucky it’s been nothing more than a fainting episode.”
Harry isn’t feeling particularly lucky and the looks on both Hermione’s and Blaise’s faces indicate that they share his feelings. “And if it gets worse?” he asks. “If you can’t work out what it is?”
“Then we will need to track down either the person you're bonded to, so the spell will settle and we can work on it in a contained environment, or we find the person who cast it so they can remove it.”
She doesn’t need to say it, but the look on her face tells Harry all he needs to know — neither of those options are likely when they have no starting point.
“I’ll be writing a Healer’s Recommendation that you be given the next week off work and owling it to Head Auror Clemens,” Penelope continues. She holds her hands up as Harry starts to protest. “Just until we sort this out, Harry. We don’t know how serious it is, so I’d like you to come in each day so I can assess you. Ideally, we’ll resolve it much faster than a week, but I want to be sure we have enough time. Also, when you’re not here, I’d recommend staying with someone else, just as a precaution. With Hermione and Ron maybe?” she asks Hermione.
“Of course,” Hermione agrees. “You can stay as long as you need, Harry.”
Harry runs both his hands over his face in frustration, his beard scratching his palms.
“It was an abandoned Muggle shithole and you still managed to end up completely fucked, Potter,” Blaise says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You never fail to make me eternally grateful I'm not you.”
Harry looks up to glare at him, but Blaise is smirking and Harry can’t muster the energy. “I have to go,” Blaise announces. “Now that you’re not dying or doing anything else equally terrible on my watch, it seems like a good time to go. Owl me if you want.”
“Here’s hoping you enjoy your night more than I’ve enjoyed mine,” Harry grumbles.
Blaise chuckles. “No doubt I will. I might Floo Draco and see if he wants to come out. We’ll see what happens.”
He’s gone a moment later with an elegant swirl of his robes, but Harry can’t focus on anything around him because the itching is getting worse and it’s driving him completely mad.
“Harry,” Hermione says. He feels her touch his arm again but it barely registers. “What is it?”
He drags his nails over his skin but it doesn’t help. The itching is so persistent. “I need— ” He swings his legs off the bed. He should follow Blaise, that's what he should do. “I need to go,” he says earnestly.
“Go where?” Penelope asks, moving close to him, her wand alight with a diagnostic charm. “Are you feeling compelled to follow Blaise, Harry?”
“Yes,” Harry says, but he knows that's not right as soon as he says it. “No. I—” He's confused. He tries to push off the bed. Hermione is holding onto his arm to stop him moving. “I need to go,” he says again. He can hear the urgency in his own voice and he doesn’t know how to get them to understand. “With him. Blaise. Not with him, but that way. I don't know.” He groans. It feels as though he's going mad. His magic, his body — all of it is trying to pull him, to make him get up and move, but Penelope and Hermione won’t let him.
“Harry,” Hermione says again, her voice strained with worry. “Harry, do you need to follow Blaise because he's going to see Draco?”
And the itching erupts further. It's everywhere, completely out of control and Harry needs to move, to follow, to go with Blaise now. It’s the only thing that will help, that will settle his magic and this feeling, he has to go, needs to go, because that's where…
“Yes,” he manages, his brain registering what Hermione has said, and it makes so much sense, of course that's where he needs to go, he needs to move, needs to go now. “Malfoy,” he says, trying to push his way off the bed again. “I need to see Malfoy right now.”