The first thing Harry was aware of was warmth.
Not the vague, formless warmth of sleep, but something else and fuck did it feel very, very good. He stirred slightly, his mind hovering in that pleasant half-awake state, trying to make sense of what he was feeling. Then it registered properly and his eyes opened.
Natalia's dark hair pooled across his lower abdomen, her lips wrapped around the head of his cock, her tongue doing something utterly sinful as she moved with slow, sensual strokes. She knew he was awake. He could tell from the way her eyes slid up to meet his, dark and amused and full of promise, without slowing down in the slightest.
"Morning," she said, pulling off just long enough to say it, her breath warm against the wet tip, before going right back to work.
Harry let out a rough breath and dropped his head back onto the pillow. To his left, Daphne was propped up on her elbow watching him, her blonde hair falling over one bare shoulder in a loose wave. Her blue eyes were warm and lazy with the last dregs of sleep, and she looked effortlessly stunning in the way she always did, as if looking good were simply a state she existed in rather than something she had to work at. She leaned in and pressed her lips to his jaw, soft and slow.
"You looked too peaceful to leave alone," she murmured against his skin, and then trailed a slow line of kisses down his neck.
On his right, Tracey had her cheek against his shoulder, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his chest. She turned her face and pressed her lips just below his collarbone, then moved upward toward his neck as well, her breath warm and her mouth soft.
"She's been at it for five minutes," Tracey told him, her voice still husky with sleep. "We drew lots. She won."
"Or lost," Natalia said against him, with a note in her voice that made it perfectly clear she thought she'd won very handily indeed.
Harry's hand found her hair automatically, not guiding so much as just touching, feeling the silky weight of it between his fingers as she took him deeper. The flat of her tongue dragged along the underside of his cock in a long, slow pull that made his toes curl, and then she wrapped her lips tighter and sucked steadily as she drew back up. He exhaled slowly, his eyes closing again. "Not the worst way to wake up."
"High praise," Daphne said drily, and then bit his earlobe just enough to make him twitch.
He turned toward her and caught her mouth in a slow, deep kiss. She melted into it immediately, her hand coming up to cup his jaw. Harry kissed her confidently, knowing exactly how much she liked it, feeling her small sound of approval vibrate against his lips.
Tracey pulled back to watch them with undisguised appreciation, then pressed her mouth to Harry's throat and sucked lightly. Her fingers kept moving on his chest, playing with the muscle there as she left a trail of warm kisses up to his jaw.
Meanwhile, Natalia worked him with a patience that was almost diabolical. She had her hand wrapped around the base, her grip firm and sure, and her mouth was doing the rest, the wet heat of it drawing the tension in his body tighter and tighter without quite tipping him over. She wasn't going to let this end quickly. She knew it and he knew it and she was thoroughly enjoying that particular power. Her tongue circled the crown deliberately, then she pulled back until just the tip rested against her lips, exhaled warm air across it, and then slid back down again in a single smooth motion that made Harry's breath come out uneven against Daphne's mouth.
"Getting a bit distracted?" Daphne asked with a smile when they broke for air.
"Can you blame me?" He rasped.
She laughed softly and pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth before pulling back. Tracey took her place immediately, turning his face toward hers and kissing him more hungrily, one hand fisting in his hair. She kissed differently to Daphne, with more edge to it, more urgency, and Harry kissed her back in kind, his free hand sliding into her dark hair and tightening at the nape of her neck. She made a pleased noise into his mouth.
Below, Natalia made a soft approving sound around him. Harry could feel it everywhere.
Daphne moved downward now, pressing kisses to his chest, his ribs, the flat plane of his abdomen, taking a slow and wandering route that made his skin prickle with anticipation wherever her lips landed. Her hair fell forward, trailing across his skin as she moved lower, and she didn't rush any of it. When she reached his hip she paused deliberately, and he felt her look up at Natalia.
"My turn?" she asked.
Natalia pulled off with a wet pop and sat back on her heels, looking very pleased with herself. Her dark eyes were bright and her lips were full and swollen and glistening. "I was getting comfortable," she said, but she shifted to the side willingly enough, freeing the space with a regal little tilt of her head, as if she were doing Daphne a favor.
Daphne moved into position with the particular unhurried grace she brought to everything and took over. Where Natalia had been slow and broadly teasing, Daphne was precise, her tongue targeting with a focused intent that was a completely different kind of torture. She worked the underside in long, deliberate strokes, then turned her attention to the tip, her tongue swirling in a tight circle before her lips sealed around it and she sucked, steady and controlled and deeply purposeful. Harry's hips wanted to lift off the bed. He kept still with some effort that cost him.
Natalia, freed from her position, moved up beside Harry on Tracey's side. She ran her warm palm down the center of his chest, feeling the tension in his muscles, then leaned up and bit his shoulder lightly. "You have no idea how long I've been thinking about this morning."
"Since last night, I'd guess," Harry said.
"Since three days ago," she corrected, entirely unembarrassed. "I had very specific thoughts."
"Tell me."
She did. Her lips went to his ear, her voice dropped to a low murmur, and she described those thoughts in precise and leisurely detail, her breath warm against the side of his face. The combination of her voice and what Daphne was doing to him was threatening his composure in a genuinely serious way. Tracey, who had pulled back to watch with her chin resting in her hand, let out a quiet laugh.
"Your face right now," Tracey said.
"Come here and give me something better to do with it," Harry told her, and she grinned and kissed him hard.
Daphne worked steadily and without mercy, unhurried and thorough, and Harry could feel his control beginning to genuinely fray at the edges. He broke the kiss with Tracey and looked down at Daphne, who glanced up at him through her lashes with her usual composed amusement fully intact even in this position, as if chaos were something that simply happened around her and never to her.
"Daphne."
"Mm?"
"Come up here."
She pulled back, her lips curving. "Already?"
"Unless you want this to end right now."
She considered that for a moment, apparently genuinely weighing it, which was exactly the sort of thing Daphne Greengrass would do. Then she moved gracefully up beside him. Natalia slid straight back down to replace her, taking him in her hand and resuming with an aggression she hadn't bothered with the first time, her grip firmer and her mouth working harder, all patience gone. Harry pulled Daphne toward him and kissed her thoroughly, tasting himself faintly on her lips, and felt her breath catch against his mouth before she kissed him back properly.
Tracey pressed in from the other side, her lips at his neck and her hand trailing down his chest. The three of them moved around him in a fluid rotation that should have felt complicated but felt entirely natural, the ease between them the result of weeks of this kind of closeness.
Below, Natalia's rhythm had lost every pretense of patience. Her hand stroked him in a fast, twisting pull while her mouth worked the rest, and Harry could feel his control unraveling the way a rope frays all at once after holding steady for too long. His fingers found the sheets. He felt the familiar tension build past the point of managing it and let out a rough sound against Daphne's mouth.
"Don't hold back," Tracey said against his jaw.
He didn't. When it hit, it hit properly, his hips lifting despite himself, his hand fisting in the pillow. Natalia took it without hesitating, swallowing and continuing until he was genuinely oversensitive, and he had to tug gently at her hair before she pulled back with a satisfied expression that bordered on outright smug.
She moved up to lie across his chest, her chin propped on her folded hands, looking at him. "Good morning."
"You said that already."
"It bears repeating."
Daphne pressed a lazy kiss to his temple. Tracey traced something on his sternum that he was fairly certain was a rude word in the old rune system they'd been learning for fifth year. He chose not to call her out on it.
Outside the Room of Requirement, the castle was barely stirring. They lay like that for a while, warm and boneless, the fire from the night before burned down to nothing but the room keeping itself comfortable regardless. This was, Harry had come to think, one of the better qualities of the room.
"What time is it?" Natalia asked eventually.
"Early," Daphne said. "Half six at most."
"We should probably—"
Whatever Tracey had been about to say was cut off by the flat, static-tinged sound of a radio coming on. The Room of Requirement had conjured one at some point overnight, a small brass thing sitting on the side table, and it crackled to life now with the Wizarding Wireless morning chime.
Harry sat up slightly. The others shifted around him. None of them moved to turn it off.
Then Fudge's voice filled the room, and Harry's jaw tightened.
-Break-
The Room of Requirement, when Harry asked it for space to practice, gave him a cathedral.
Or near enough. The ceiling soared high above him in a long, vaulted space that the room had created from nothing, its stone walls bare and scorched from previous sessions. The floor was a blackened expanse with the faint outlines of old impact craters, the detritus of months of increasingly advanced practice. The room knew what he needed and shaped itself accordingly, and what it had given him tonight was space. Plenty of it.
The radio sat on a raised stone plinth near the far wall, its brass face glowing faintly. Harry had spelled it to remain audible no matter where in the room he stood. He'd been listening to the Wizarding Wireless for the better part of an hour as he worked, the mundane morning programming washing over him as he pushed himself harder and harder through an increasingly brutal set of spells.
He was working on what he privately thought of as the heavy work. Combat magic that wasn't in any Hogwarts textbook. He'd found most of it in the restricted books he'd been pulling since third year, some of it from Dumbledore's private library during a supervised session the Headmaster had set up for him after the Chamber incident, and a few pieces he'd worked out himself through a combination of theory and practice that had left the room looking progressively worse each time. It was chaotic magic, the kind that was heavy on raw force and light on the kind of precision that made the Ministry comfortable, and Harry was very good at it.
He moved across the scorched floor, casting in rapid bursts, chaining spells in sequences that would have been impossible for a less instinctive caster. A concussive blast from his right hand, wordless, hit the far wall and left a smoking indent six inches deep. He pivoted, cast a violent rotating curse that hit a conjured stone pillar and sheared it in half, the top half spinning fifteen feet before it crashed. He moved again, keeping in motion the way Moody had verbally drilled into them in their classes, and cast three rapid blasting curses in succession, each one hitting a conjured target with enough force to reduce it to ash and rubble.
He was sweating properly now, his shirt discarded in a corner, his wand moving in tight and vicious arcs.
Then Fudge's voice came through the radio, again, and Harry's next curse hit the wall with notably more force than intended.
"—deeply saddened with the passing of Bartemius Crouch Senior, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and former Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a titan of wizarding public service whose contributions to the safety and stability of our society cannot be overstated—"
Harry cast again. The blast hit the stone hard enough to shatter it along a six-foot fault line.
"—exemplary career spanning more than forty years, during which Mr. Crouch served with a distinction and a dedication to duty that set the standard for every member of this Ministry. His work in the aftermath of You-Know-Who's rise was instrumental in ensuring the safety of our world. He was tireless, he was brilliant, he was committed, and this Ministry is profoundly lessened by his loss—"
Another cast. Stone chips scattered across the floor. Harry stepped through the debris without looking down, his eyes forward and his expression cold and controlled.
"—naturally, the question that weighs on every concerned citizen's mind is how this tragedy could have occurred. I want to be honest with the British wizarding public, because I believe you deserve honesty. I will not pretend we are not disturbed, because we are. I will not pretend we have all the answers yet, because we don't. But I want to reassure you that every resource of this Ministry—"
Harry threw a rotating concussion curse across the full width of the room. It hit the far wall like a cannonball, plaster and stone exploding outward in a shower of debris, dust billowing up toward the vaulted ceiling.
He kept moving.
"—in recent months, this country has already weathered considerable turmoil. The escape of Sirius Black from Azkaban, an event unprecedented in the history of that institution, demonstrated that certain dangerous individuals, when given any measure of opportunity, will not hesitate to strike at the foundations of our society. The Ministry has been tireless in the effort to bring Black to justice—"
A chain of three spells, each one building on the last. The first a violent localized compression, the second a detonation, the third a force scatter that turned a conjured stone block into a cloud of powder and sent fragments ricocheting off every wall. Harry walked through the settling dust without flinching.
"—considering Mr. Crouch's long tenure in law enforcement and his personal role in sending many of You-Know-Who's followers directly to Azkaban, it would be naive to believe that those former associates harbor anything other than the deepest hatred for him. Sirius Black, as we know, was among the most dangerous of the Dark Lord's inner circle, a man of exceptional cruelty who murdered poor Peter Pettigrew and thirteen muggles in a single act of cowardice. Given his history and his apparent freedom to move through wizarding Britain undetected, the possibility of his involvement cannot and must not be dismissed—"
There was a moment of absolute stillness.
Then Harry raised his wand, and what he cast was not a single spell but something closer to a sequence of cascading magical force that he'd spent three weeks developing. It hit the far wall from top to bottom in a vertical line, the stone face cracking and crumbling in a controlled collapse that left a six-foot section of the wall nothing but rubble. The explosion was concussive enough that Harry felt it in his chest from eighty feet away. Dust and fragments rained down. The ceiling high above shed small chips of stone that fell in a slow, quiet shower.
Harry stood in the ruins and listened.
"—I want to personally assure every witch and wizard in Britain that this Ministry takes the death of Bartemius Crouch with the utmost seriousness. We will find whoever is responsible. We will bring them to justice. The work that Bartemius dedicated his life to, the work of keeping this world safe, will continue and will not be intimidated by—"
The static crackled once. Then again. Then the Wizarding Wireless faded smoothly back into its regular morning programming, a cheerful presenter in a voice that did not belong to the same hour as everything that had come before.
Harry lowered his wand.
The room was a wreck. The far wall was demolished. The floor was covered in stone rubble and scorch marks and the powdered remains of a dozen conjured targets. The air was thick with dust that caught the room's ambient light and turned it hazy and grey. Cracks ran up both side walls in radiating patterns from the impact points, and two of the overhead stone supports had shed chunks that now lay scattered across the floor.
Slowly, quietly, the Room of Requirement began to put itself back together. The rubble shifted and rose. The cracks in the walls sealed themselves. The dust settled and vanished. Stone replaced itself fragment by fragment in a process that looked almost organic, growing back in fast motion. It took about two minutes, and when it was done the room looked much as it had when Harry had arrived, minus the slight shimmer in the air that suggested it had put in some genuine effort.
Harry sat down on the bare stone floor and stared at nothing.
Sirius had been in Azkaban for thirteen years. Thirteen years for a crime he hadn't committed, without a trial, without anyone pushing back with sufficient force to matter. Harry had known this for almost a year now. He'd told Amelia Bones everything he knew. She was building a case, and the case was real and it was progressing. Fudge had been made aware of the question marks around Sirius's conviction and had declined, firmly and repeatedly, to engage with it or even consider his words.
And now there was a conveniently dead Ministry official and Fudge was on the Wizarding Wireless dragging Sirius's name back into the mud for a new audience.
The first thought that came to him was Amelia Bones. He dismissed it almost immediately.
It wasn't that he doubted her. He didn't. But Dumbledore had said something to him once, during one of the quieter evenings in his study after the Chamber business, while they were talking through the broader picture of what lay ahead. Harry had been frustrated that day, impatient in the way he sometimes got when the pieces were all visible and the people with the authority to act were still moving too slowly. He'd said something to that effect, and Dumbledore had looked at him over his half-moon spectacles with that particular expression he had, the one that looked like patience but was actually something sharper underneath.
"The most dangerous thing a young man in your position can do," Dumbledore had said, "is act the moment he feels the urge to act. Not because acting is wrong. But because in politics, Harry, timing is not a detail. It is the entire argument. Evidence presented too early, before the audience is ready to receive it, does not persuade. It simply gives your opponent the chance to build his defenses. You must learn to want the right outcome more than you want to feel as if you are doing something."
Harry had thought about that conversation more than once since. He thought about it now.
Amelia was careful because she had to be. She was building something solid, something that would hold up when it finally landed in front of the Wizengamot, and the last thing she needed was a documented trail of direct communication with him at the exact moment Fudge was already rattled and looking for someone to blame. One letter could give the Minister's people exactly the ammunition they'd want: Harry Potter and Amelia Bones, coordinating in private, constructing a case against the Ministry. It would let Fudge reframe the entire thing as a political conspiracy rather than a factual one. Amelia knew that. Harry knew it. Which was why the letter he was thinking about writing would not be going to her.
He also knew something else now, something that had been crystallizing since he'd sat down on this floor. He understood, in a way he hadn't entirely before tonight, what he represented in wizarding Britain. Not Harry Potter the boy who'd survived a curse as an infant. That was a myth, a story people told because it was easier than the truth. He meant something more specific and more real than that. He was the only person Fudge could not ignore, dismiss, or discredit with any authority, because the public's attachment to him was too deep and too irrational to be talked away by a Ministry press release. He'd been aware of this in an abstract sense for a while now. What Fudge's announcement had done tonight was make it concrete.
He had weight. He knew it now in his bones in a way he hadn't before. The question wasn't whether to use it. The question was how.
The Room obligingly produced a writing desk and an inkwell and a sheet of parchment, and Harry sat down. He thought for a moment, tapping the quill against the edge of the desk, working through exactly what he wanted to say and who he wanted to say it to.
Then he wrote. Not a long letter, but a careful one. He chose his words with precision, striking out twice and rewriting. When he was done, he read it back once, then folded it.
He'd addressed it, but the recipient's name wasn't one he said aloud. The Room of Requirement, as if it had read his intent, opened a small window high in the wall above the writing desk, and a school owl sailed in from somewhere beyond and landed on the desk's edge, tilting its head at him.
Harry tied the letter to its leg. The owl departed through the window, which sealed itself behind it.
He sat for another moment in the quiet room, then stood, collected his things, and walked into the newly materialized room for a much-needed shower.
-Break-
The Three Broomsticks was dark except for the lamps behind the bar when Harry arrived. He knocked twice at the back entrance, the specific pattern that Rosie kept just between the two of them, and heard footsteps almost immediately. The bolt scraped back.
Rosmerta opened the door and the smile that broke across her face was entirely genuine and not the calculated flirtatious one she deployed for the daytime crowd.
"Harry." She reached up, grabbed his collar, and pulled him in by it.
He went willingly. Her mouth found his in the dim back corridor and she kissed him hard and immediately, her hands sliding from his collar to his jaw, holding him exactly where she wanted him. Harry's arms went around her waist and he kissed her back, meeting her fully, and she made a low sound of approval against his mouth that he felt more than heard.
Rosie kissed like she ran her bar. Warm and capable and completely in charge, with an undertone of mischief that surfaced whenever she decided to use her teeth.
She pressed him back against the corridor wall with a firmness that left no room for debate, her body flush against his, and Harry got both hands in her hair and kissed her deeper, loving the feel of her large, soft mounds pressed flush against his chest.
She tasted like the good firewhisky she kept behind the bar and something sweeter underneath it, and she kissed with the confidence of a woman who knew what she wanted and had long since stopped being coy about wanting it. Her hands roamed freely, one fisting in his shirt and the other sliding down his chest with a familiarity that made his pulse kick up. Harry's hand dropped from her hair to her waist, then lower, palming the curve of her rear and pulling her harder against him. She broke the kiss just long enough to exhale sharply against his mouth, then came back for more, rubbing her lower belly against his pulsating manhood.
She used her teeth now, catching his lower lip and tugging with just enough pressure to make his grip on her tighten, before she finally pulled back to look at him. Her eyes were bright and her hair was loose, dark gold in the lamplight, and she was wearing a low-cut blouse that Harry was certain she had not been wearing while cleaning up the bar earlier.
"You look tired," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You look tired," she repeated pleasantly, and ran her thumb along his jaw. "Lot on your mind?"
"Bit, yeah."
She studied him a moment longer with those sharp, perceptive eyes of hers that had watched enough people across enough years to read what was under the surface very quickly. Then she released him with a practical little pat on his chest.
"Your guest is already here," she said.
"Good." He paused. "Has anyone else been in tonight?"
"Just the usual stragglers before closing. No one who'd have noticed your guest arrive." She gave him a dry look. "I do know how to run a discreet establishment, love."
"I know you do."
"Go on, then." She turned back toward the bar and then stopped as he moved past her, turning back with a look that was exaggeratedly wounded. "That's it? You come in here, give me two whole minutes, and then you're off to your meeting?"
Harry turned back and looked at her. He then reached out and smacked her on the arse, sharp enough to make her gasp in the way that made it clear she liked it rather than minded it, and she spun around with a grin that was nothing short of saucy.
"Later," he said.
"You'd better," she called after him as he walked down the corridor.
He could hear her still smiling as she went back behind the bar.
-Break-
He didn't knock. He pushed the door open and walked in, pulling it shut behind him smoothly, and took a moment to take in the room.
His guest was waiting for him.
She was seated at the small round table in the private back room, one ankle crossed over the other, her posture straight without being stiff. She'd left her crocodile-skin bag on the floor by her chair, and her dictaquill and a fresh scroll of parchment were laid out on the table before her. She was ready. She'd been ready, probably, since fifteen minutes before she said she'd arrive.
She looked different from the version of herself that was more publicly known, just like last time. The Rita Skeeter of the newspaper columns was all harsh lines and weaponized artifice, everything calibrated to intimidate and dominate. The woman across from him had pulled back the aggressive edges of that persona without losing the competence underneath it. She'd kept the severity of her bun but set it lower, a few dark gold strands escaping at her temples in a way that softened her cheekbones. Her jeweled glasses were the same as in their previous meeting and she'd worn a different dress tonight, deep green with a modest neckline that nonetheless drew the eye naturally to the elegant line of her throat and the curve of her collarbone. The fabric fit her well. Very well. She had a figure she clearly knew how to present, and the way the dress skimmed her waist before flaring slightly said that she'd put thought into tonight's appearance.
A man who didn't know her might have seen a composed, very attractive woman in her late thirties with excellent taste and a quietly arresting presence, and felt pleasantly off-balance without fully understanding why.
A man who did know her saw all of the above plus the intelligence behind those eyes, currently kept on a careful leash.
She met his gaze when he entered and held it, her lips curving in the barest suggestion of a smile.
"Mr. Potter," she said.
"Rita." Harry moved to the seat across from her and dropped into it, leaning back comfortably. He let his eyes do a slow and frank sweep that he didn't particularly bother to conceal, and she noticed it, because she noticed everything, the slight adjustment in her posture and the small movement at the corner of her mouth confirming it.
"Enjoying yourself?" she asked drily.
"You've made an effort, again," Harry said. "It'd be rude not to notice twice."
She looked at him for a beat, and then something in her expression shifted slightly. Not softening, but acknowledging. "Quite an admission, Harry."
She used his first name only occasionally and strategically, and he'd learned to note it. "You surprised or did you expect it?"
"Both." She tilted her head, her jeweled glasses catching the lamplight as she regarded him with what he'd learned to identify as genuine curiosity, as opposed to the theatrical version she deployed on the public. "But I believe it's more the second."
"You heard the announcement," he said. It was not a question.
"The whole of Britain heard the announcement." Her voice was neutral. "Fudge does love the sound of his own voice on the Wireless."
"What did you think of it?"
She paused, considering. She was being cautious with him now, always. She'd learned.
"I thought it was a perfectly executed piece of political theatre," she said, "with the particular grace of a man who understands that the story gets defined by whoever speaks first."
"He blamed Sirius Black."
"He speculated," she said. "Very carefully. He used qualifiers. Plausible deniability built in throughout." She picked up her quill and turned it slowly in her fingers, the emerald end rotating. "It was actually rather well done, if you dislike Sirius Black."
"Hmm."
She set the quill down precisely where it had been. "You said in your letter that you wanted to give me an interview."
"I do."
"May I ask what kind?"
Harry looked at her. He settled back in his chair, completely at ease, and said, "The kind that goes in the paper."
The faintest gleam of interest in her eyes. "Obviously. And the subject?"
"Fudge. His Ministry. Sirius Black's imprisonment. All of it."
Silence. Rita Skeeter was, whatever else she was, a genuine professional, and genuine professionals don't let their reactions show on their faces. But Harry had enough practice reading her by now to catch the way her hands stilled, the way she sat just slightly forward.
"You seem to have become rather generous with me lately," she said, with a tone of careful amusement doing its best to sound casual.
Harry let out a short laugh. "I'm selective, not generous."
"And what's the distinction tonight?"
"This interview," Harry said, "isn't a money-making one. It's not a profile piece or a tournament update or a feel-good story about the heroics of Harry Potter." He watched her. "This one's going to be a bit more... spicy."
Rita Skeeter looked at him for three full seconds. Then she reached down, picked up her dictaquill, and set it beside the parchment.
"Well then," she said, her eyes steady on his. "Shall we get started?"
Harry nodded with an easy smile. "From the top."
TBC.
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